Zebras, rhinos and elephants roam the fields, while big cats nervously pace back and forth in cages.
Alert Steed Malbranque ran round the back of slumbering marker Carlos Cuellar but, though Bardsley's deep cross cleared the Spaniard, the Black Cats midfielder steered his back-post header wide.
Others are more exotic: sterilizing feral cats and then releasing them back to their colonies so they depopulate themselves.
Or take Toxoplasma, a protozoan that needs to move between cats and their prey and back again in order to complete its life cycle.
Stories of big cats in the UK go back to the 1960s and 70s when it was legal and fashionable to keep exotic animals as pets.
The Black Cats came into the match on the back of three straight wins that had seen them climb out of immediate danger at the bottom of the Premier League table.
Some zoologists and naturalists have said there may be as many as 100 big cats at large in the UK and they back up this claim with reference to sightings, photos, paw casts, farm animal carcasses, and video footage.
Nosworthy, 29, can play at centre-back and right-back and has been with the Black Cats since 2005.
When dawn approaches, the cats finish their work, close up the shops, and swarm back across the bridge.
It was also huge, like the vast rolling plains of the Serengeti, only populated by the back catalogue of Ned's Atomic Dustbin and Fleetwood Mac rather than big cats.
Both side's last league action was back on 28 December following the spate of postponements because of the weather - and Black Cats boss Steve Bruce chose to take his team to the Algarve in the meantime in a bid to inspire them to a first win in eight league games.
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