PARIS: French officials on Friday scaled down a frantic hunt for a mysterious big cat prowling on the outskirts of Paris after scotching earlier fears it was a tiger.

Sightings of a large feline padding around wooded areas only 40 kilometres east of Paris on Thursday sparked a desperate search operation involving at one point as many as 200 police and soldiers, backed by a helicopter.

Authorities initially claimed it was a tiger but subsequent investigations on the animal’s tracks showed it was probably much less dangerous.

Experts from the national hunting and wildlife office and a nearby big cat park said: “We can exclude the presence of an animal from the tiger species.”

They added though that “the feline is still being hunted”.

An official source told AFP that the search had been scaled back for the moment and the helicopter grounded although forces remained “mobilized” in case of a fresh alert. The story generated wall-to-wall coverage in France on rolling news channels. Local paper Le Parisien splashed a picture of the animal on its front page with the headline: “The unbelievable tiger alert.”

But the threat level was downgraded on Friday, with the local director of public safety, Chantal Baccanini, saying there was “no danger for the general population”.

“It’s between a domestic cat and a bigger feline,” said Eric Hansen from the national hunting and wildlife office ONCFS.

Earlier, police and soldiers armed with tranquilizer guns patrolled the town on the outskirts of Paris as the search for the tiger gripped France and forced panicked residents to barricade themselves in at home. A dozen or so troops from a nearby army base joined the hunt for the fearsome beast which had nimbly eluded all attempts at capture since being spotted prowling around a supermarket car park on Thursday morning.

Police guarded the entrance to local schools on Friday morning in case the tiger put in an unwelcome appearance and a helicopter with thermal imaging buzzed overhead the small town of Montevrain, some 40 kilometers east of Paris, right next to the popular Disneyland Paris theme park.

Tiger expert Frederic Edelstein, from the Pinder circus, told BFMTV the best response to coming face-to-face with the stripy beast, thought to weigh around 70 kilograms, was to “scream, don’t run.”

“Whatever you do, don’t run away. Predators like that wait for their prey to run,” he said.

Meanwhile, authorities were still scratching their heads as to where the feline could have come from.

Disneyland Paris insists tigers are not among the park’s attractions.

Authorities have also made inquiries at a big-cat wildlife park 30 kilometers away.

Suspicion initially fell on a circus that had set up its big top in the supermarket car park a few days ago, but town mayor Christian Robache said it “did not have a tiger.”

Edelstein said the most likely explanation was that an ambitious pet owner had illegally taken on the tiger as a cub and it had made a bid for freedom.

A local woman sounded the alarm early on Thursday morning after spotting the animal in the supermarket car park.