Pranksters made dummies of an entire police SWAT team when they dialled 999 to report a panther prowling in a back garden.

The elite armed unit spent nearly an hour watching and stalking the deadly beast - only to discover it was just a life sized cuddly toy.

"When officers arrived they saw the creature and identified it as a black panther," said police spokesman Zbigniew Paszkiewicz of Wielkopolska, Poland.

Officers only began to suspect they were the victims of a cat and mouse game when the panther didn't so much as twitch a whisker as they started to approach it.

"From a distance it really looked like a live animal," claimed the spokesman.

Source: www.ananova.com