Bizarre footage has emerged of a horse, which appears to have been attacked by a large cat in Gympie.

The video, uploaded to YouTube by Australian-based big cat research group PantherPeople, shows a horse with giant scratch marks on its back.

Big cat researcher Vaughan King, a former big cat trainer at Australia Zoo, told the Courier-Mail he believed the horse’s injuries resembled cougar attacks on horses in North America and attempts on zebras by leopards in Africa.

View photos The horse (left) with some of its wounds (right). Source: Youtube/ PantherPeople More

“No Australian natives have got claws that would match that,” he said.

Mr King added the horse’s scratches were too clean, clustered and at too many varying heights to be from the horse rubbing against barbed wire and said the pattern pointed to the paw of an animal.

He said it’s possible the cat fled after it realised it couldn’t kill the horse.

View photos One researcher said the pattern of the scratches was consisent with cougar claw marks in the US. Source: Youtube/ PantherPeople More

“Big cats are very aware of self preservation,” he said.

“They realise their body is their livelihood - if they get injured they can’t hunt.”

The researcher, based on the Sunshine Coast, said the Gympie region has historically been a hotspot for big cat sightings.