Daily Mail fails to cover its pawprints over the Essex lion

Go the Daily Mail website and you will find an article laughing at today's furore over the lion that was supposed to be on the loose in Essex.

The headline shouts:

Here, kitty kitty: Image of 'Essex Lion' that sparked massive police hunt is finally revealed as officers call off the search and admit sightings were probably of a 'large domestic cat'

And the article goes on to say:

It also emerged that an image believed to show the lion which was widely viewed online was in fact a fake. 

Essex police warned that 'several doctored photographs are in circulation through social networking sites and other media forums'. 

And officers said one night-time picture in circulation showing the silhouette of what looked like a lion, was 'never one that police were examining'. 

The image - which was widely distributed on Twitter - was thought to show the beast behind a car in a residential area in Basildon, Essex.

And it reprints the phony picture - note the credit to @Twitter.

But where did all those people on Twitter get this photo from? My guess is that for many of them the answer is the Daily Mail earlier today.