The Problem of the Panther

If you want to start a fight quickly with your standard southern US hunter, all you have to do is suggest that Black Panthers are not a common part of American fauna and you will be stunned by the number of fervent eyewitness accounts that you will be told. Every hunter and outdoorsman seems to have a story.

...All for a cat that has never been photographed or killed in the country. There are no laws protecting it, (because it is either unknown to science or it is a potentially dangerous escapee)... and yet nobody has EVER dropped a bead on one. It is essentially bigfoot. The gun always jams. The camera always malfunctions.

I will give my opinions on all this... but FIRST... the disclaimer... before I wander in to this minefield.

1. I am NOT saying what you saw or did not see when you were out in the woods.

2. It is absolutely theoretically possible you saw a black panther in Arkansas... Georgia... or any other state in the union. The question is simply what species it is and how did it get there.

My point with this blog post is to let you know, why, (should you make such a claim), people might treat you with skepticism. This way maybe you won't feel like it is a personal attack if you are not believed.

By a little more understanding of what a "Black Panther" is... and the known data and science surrounding them, you might perhaps cut people some slack when they roll their eyes at you.

OK. LET'S GO.

THE FOLLOWING IS A COMPLETE LIST OF THE WILD BREEDS OF FELINE THAT ARE KNOWN TO NATIVELY LIVE IN THE USA, (EXCLUDING ESCAPED CAPTIVES.)

1. the Bobcat (Lynx rufus) - Named after it's short tail, it is not a particularly large cat at all. Male bobcats will generally weigh between 14 to 40 lbs (6.4 to 18.3 kg), while females weigh around 8.8 to 33.7 lbs (4 to 15.3 kg). The largest bobcat ever officially recorded was a bruiser 52 lb cat killed on December 31, 2008 in Wisconsin, though there are reports of 60lb cats found as roadkill. I definitely would not want to be trapped in a confined space with a bobcat, but I routinely use dumbells in the gym heavier than the largest ever recorded. They primarily are hunters of squirrels, rabbits, and other small game though they are capable of taking a small fawn or injured deer on occasion.

ARE THEY BLACK? - sometimes. HERE is a report of the 12th melanistic bobcat ever reported in North America. (seen above)

2. The Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis) - Closely related to the bobcat and only found in the far northernmost states with a handful in the Rocky Mountains. They are a little taller and lankier than bobcats, though their fur makes them look much larger. They don't weigh much more than bobcats though. Females weigh around 11–26 lb (5–12 kg) while males weigh around 13–37 lb (6–17 kg). A 40 lb lynx is an impressive one. They also chase small game, with the snowshoe hare being its speciality.

ARE THEY BLACK? - at least one was... so it is possible. The first melanistic Canadian Lynx was filmed in 2020 up in the Yukon. (Story HERE.)  More could have been born or even survived to adulthood... but when most of your year consists of hunting in snow, melanism is extremely maladaptive and most probably wouldn't live to pass the genes along.

3. Ocelot (Leopardus pardalis) - The Ocelot is a little smaller than a bobcat and mainly is a jungle cat of South and Central America. But a few range up in to the very southern tip of Texas as well as extreme southern Arizona and New Mexico. It preys on Armadillos and Opossums and other similarly sized prey.

ARE THEY BLACK? Melanism seems to be most common in spotted cats, but I am having trouble finding any photographs of black ocelots. That does not mean it never happens.... but it certainly doesn't seem to be common.

4. Jaguarundi (Herpailurus yagouaroundi) - This feline hardly even looks like a cat. It is about twice the size of a common housecat and eats reptiles and ground birds and small mammals like mice. It HAS been found in extreme southern Texas before but hasn't been in some time.

ARE THEY BLACK? Eh. Kinda dark gray... but if one ran across the road in front of you late at night in south Texas... you could be fooled. Of course... it is the size of a really big housecat.

5. Jaguar (Panthera onca) - The Jaguar is the only cat in the western hemisphere who fits the scientific definition of a "Panther"... being a member of the Panthera genus. They historically ranged up into Arizona and New Mexico where the last one was reported killed in 1949, though occasional sightings throw that in to dispute. They now are considered extinct from the US except when one occasionally swims over from Mexico. There was one named "El Jefe" that was well known from 2011-2015 in the Santa Rita mountains near Tuscon, Arizona. But was last photographed south of the border in Sonora, Mexico. There might be a couple of others though. It wouldn't suprise me if a half-dozen were roaming around in the southwest states.

ARE THEY BLACK? Sometimes. Yes. Melanism is known in Jaguars. In fact it is a dominant trait (black jaguars can produce both black and spotted cubs, but spotted jaguars only produce spotted cubs when bred together) and it is estimated that up to 10% are black globally. However... there is a caveat to that. Black Jaguars are most common down in the Amazon rainforest of Brazil. Rarely is one ever seen in a Central American country, and never in Mexico or points north. There has never been a black jaguar photographed or killed in the USA. There are no skins. There are no bones. There are no photographs. There are no records. But it technically is possible. HOWEVER... where there are black Jaguars there are ALWAYS spotted Jaguars... and nobody is reporting any of them out in the deer woods. If a black jaguar is seen in the deer woods it is almost certainly an escaped captive.

6. The Mountain Lion (Felis concolor)  ALSO KNOWN AS - "Cougar"... "Puma"... "Florida Panther"... "Painter"... "Catamount"... and many others.

It is the cat with the most common names but they are all the same species of animal. They were once all but extirpated east of the great plains aside from the everglades, but they can travel enormous distances, and seem to be recolonizing old areas like my home state, Arkansas. No cubs have been found yet but it is only a matter of time, IMHO. There is prey. There is empty habitat. It won't stay empty for much longer if it even is now.

ARE THEY BLACK? - There are almost NO reports of black or melanistic cougars on the books. There is only one photograph that I can find of such a cat and that is of a dead specimen shot in 1959 by Miguel Ruiz Herrero in the province of Guanacaste along Costa Rica's north Pacific coast. Estimated to weigh 100-120 lb, its carcass is seen here alongside Ruiz's herdsman, but what happened to it afterwards is unknown.

One thing you will notice about this cat is that its underside is light... like a cougar... not black.. like a melanistic Jaguar or Leopard.

The picture above is the only evidence for black cougars that exists. There are no specimens. No skins. No Photographs other than this one. Don't let the nickname "Florida Panther" fool you. The cougar is not even a member of the Panthera genus... and they are all the same tawny brown as any one ever encountered in any zoo or wildlife park.

SO HERE IS OUR PROBLEM...

This is the science. I live in Arkansas and have had dozens of people matter-of-factly explain to me that Black Panthers are as common as any other predator out there. But, out of the six species of American cat outlined above, only TWO of them have ever been recorded in MY state (Arkansas) in historical times... The bobcat and the mountain lion.... and there have only been 12 cases of black bobcats in the US and Canada combined, and 1 or 2 of "black cougars" in the world.... and NEITHER of those fit the description of what many people I have talked to claim to have seen.

So what are all these people seeing? Is it an animal completely unknown to science that has never been photographed clearly or killed? Or is it a thriving population of a well-known cat from another country?

WHAT IS A BLACK PANTHER?

Short answer... a Leopard.

There is no SPECIES of animal that is known as a "Black Panther". There are several subspecies of leopards (Panthera pardus)... AND in SOME of the subspecies, melanism is somewhat common. As opposed to Jaguars, in Leopards, it is a RECESSIVE trait. This means that two spotted leopards carrying the gene may produce black cubs, but black leopards will breed true when mated together.

When leopards are black, they are sometimes called a "black panther".

Where do they live?

Well, the leopard is the most adaptive and successful of all the big cats, stretching from the whole of Africa through the deserts of the middle east throughout India and Southeast Asia and all the way up to the snows of Russia, where the Amur Leopard hangs on by a thread next to the Siberian Tiger. But the recessive allele that causes some of them to be "Black Panthers" is most common in Southeast Asia. In fact, on the Malay Peninsula, almost ALL of the Leopards are "Black Panthers" They are rare occurrences anywhere in Africa and unknown in the desert regions.

Here is a photo of a well-known mated pair of leopards from a park in India. Both are the species Panthera pardus. Same species. Same subspecies. Different color phase. A blonde and a brunette. No different than that.

"Black Panther" is just a descriptive nickname for the brunette.

The problem is, that, as widespread, successful, and adaptive as leopards are.. they never managed to swim the ocean and are not native to any part of the western hemisphere.

...so the question we have before us now is this. How might a population of a rare color variant of a species native to Africa and Asia... BUT ONLY THAT RARE RECESSIVE COLOR VARIANT... have managed to colonize the entire southeastern united states to the point that thousands have been reported, yet never photographed or killed? No dead bodies ever found. No road kills. No skulls or skins. ONLY reports of sightings by the thousands.

It also strikes me as odd that nobody ever reports a regular spotted leopard on their deer lease... or a tiger... or a pride of lions. I have actually seen footage of a kangaroo hopping by some Oklahoma goose hunters. Escapes happen for sure. 

Big Cats are commonly kept as pets. They say there are more tigers in Texas than in the wilds of India. Black Leopards are chic. Many have been bred for the zoo and circus and exotic pet trade, and NO cat would be more capable of survival if turned loose than a leopard would be. In a sparsely populated state with tons of deer and small game, a leopard would be right at home. It would not surprise me in the least that someone turned loose a black leopard and that it survived just fine. They are very secretive and capable.

But one or two escaped or released captives cant explain the number of sightings being to the point that many hunters don't even think that there is any controversy whatsoever. In their mind, there are coyotes, bobcats, armadillos, black bears, black panthers, opossums and whitetail deer in every large patch of forest.

I don't know what the answer is. I can't say definitively what someone HAS seen or not seen. If I saw a giraffe run across the road in front of me, you couldn't tell me I didn't. The question would just be what a giraffe was doing in the area. It is the same with any sighting of a "Black Panther" in the continental USA. They are natives of the other side of the planet. 

I have spent hours in the wild. That being said... I haven't seen a wild bear in Arkansas yet... or an otter... and both have heathy populations.

All I can say definitively is this...

IF you see a black panther in the forest of the eastern US. I don't know of any law prohibiting you from shooting it. That seems harsh but leopards and jaguars aren't supposed to be running around. In the Southwest US, Jaguars may have some legal protection. MAYBE there are laws protecting exotic escapes elsewhere... but they would be dumb in the case of big cats with thousands of years of records of man-eating such as the leopard. 

...and if it ISN'T a leopard of jaguar, then it is a new species unknown to science, and you might even get to name it... and science will be thankful for the ability to study a completely new species of big cat unknown to them.

If hunting isn't your style...then at the very least be the first to ever get a photo of one in America. I was in Kruger national park in South Africa for a grand total of four days and managed to photograph three different leopards. America's wildlife photographers are really slacking if there is a species of big cat living in the forest that has never been photographed here since the invention of the camera... (and everybody has a camera in their pocket these days.)

One other point....

Don't believe everything you see on social media. Every few months, the following photo pops up in my feed with a caption like "Taken with a game-cam near (Insert small town in your state). ...And they say they don't exist!"

YES. This IS a game-cam pic of a black panther. No it wasn't taken in your state.

This particular black panthers name was "Cole" and he belongs to a guy in South Africa.. where this photo was taken. 

All I am saying is this...

If you claim to have seen a black panther in the forest of the USA, you are claiming to have seen an animal that has never been photographed definitively... and never killed... just understand that you are essentially claiming to have seen the equivalent of a tiger (at best) or a "bigfoot".

Black Panthers DO exist... 100%... in India and Southeast Asia (and very rarely in Africa) and in zoos and private collections... and if you count Black Jaguars too... they are walking through the amazon rainforest right now just a few thousand miles away. 

But claiming you saw one the forest in Alabama is exactly the same as seeing a tiger. It is possible.. but it doesn't belong.

So if people don't believe you, don't get angry with them or think they are silly. You are the one who is making the extraordinary claim. You might just not be aware of how extraordinary it is. :-)

The Book of the Dead

For a guy who makes his living in the IT field today, I was a latecomer to all things computer.

In the late eighties I had one or two semesters of a computer class in high school. Very basic programming... (I think it was literally in Microsoft Basic). Green and black monitors. A few quick commands and you could make the screen fill up with your name.

My lab partner and I soon bored with the assignments.. and so we undertook a project of our own. Once I learned the command for making the computer play a tone for a certain length of time. (it was something like [SOUND 3, 22] for each note... or something like that.)

I decided we were going to program the computer to play the guitar solo "Eruption" off of Van Halen's first album.

In one of my many guitar player magazines I had Steve Vai's written transcription of Eddie's masterpiece. So I started there and got to writing down the program on paper at home.

Every day in class, instead of doing our classwork, we would work on programming "Eruption". Then... in the last few minutes of class... we would find a classmate who was having problems with their classwork and quickly debug it for them. (It was usually a simple typo) and then save a copy to turn in as our own work for the day.

The problem was the enormity of the project. We got 1/3 of the solo done before the semester was finished. (I should have started with the last 1/3rd... that is when the fun stuff comes in.)

I still have the big floppy somewhere. But nothing to read it with and the data has long ago degraded. But though it was 8-bit... we were on our way to an impressive feat that was sure to firmly secure our place in Sheridan High School history.

After that, I really didn't do much with computers. I was a music major for a year in college.... then an art instruction major.... then I moved to Atlanta and attended the Art Institute to study Photography for 2 years.

It was well before the digital revolution, so we had ONE "Computers in Photography" class which never even got into Photoshop (if it was around back then.)

All my photography classes were film... camera.. and chemistry. (I didn't even break down and buy a digital camera until 2017.. stubbornly clinging to the F4 and Hasselblad and Sinar. Not that I did much shooting after 2000 or so.)

It was probably around 1995 or 1996 when my buddy, Gordon, turned up at my apartment with a bunch of parts and said "We are going to build you a computer." It was a i386 I think... with 8MB of RAM and Windows 3.11 on it. I think it had Windows Office but as far as I know it might have been pirated. Too long ago to remember. I don't claim to have ALWAYS been by-the-book on everything.

Then I got a modem and set out to figure out how all this stuff worked... starting with email and word processing with Microsoft WORD.

One of the first things I did was to go get a book off my shelf on extinct animals and typed up the paragraphs on the "Quagga"... It was one of the first extinct animals I had ever learned about when I was learning to read at age 5. It was a variant of Burchell's Zebra that only had stripes on the head. I inserted a GIF of a drawing of one and then forwarded the word document to some friends. There is no telling how long it took to send over my old router but it went eventually.

I had no purpose other than just playing around to learn how to do things on my computer.

But my friend Bob, who was way more advanced than me, took my document and set up a rudimentary web site. I was fascinated. I wasn't interested in learning to code HTML at the time but I got a copy of Adobe PageMill and learned to how set up a web page. I didn't even know that this was a thing regular people did before Bob did it.

I chose the name "Steve's Typewritten Book of the Not-So-Grateful Dead" and I would do pages on different extinct animals when I felt moved to. I later branched out in to odd color phases of animals.. pages on White Buffalo... pages on the Kermode Bear, a white color phase of the American Black Bear that shows up in British Columbia in a small area. This section I called the "My-nagerie" and the page containing both sections became "Steve's Hodge-Page". It was written more on a young teen and pre-teen level. Kinda chatty stuff.

This was in the very early days of the internet and there were simply not many sites about extinct animals. So my page got pretty popular. By today's standards, the design is primitive and rudimentary... but at the time, it looked better than many of the sites. And I was about the only site on the subject of historical extinction, which is a subject that had always fascinated me.

Pretty soon I was getting emails from all over the world, and thousands and thousands of hits.

Kids doing school projects on different extinct animals... Magazine writers complimenting me on my writing style.... I somehow ended up as a Wikipedia source on the Kermode Bear... I was interviewed for the book "Internet Guide to Birds and Birding: The Ultimate Directory to the Best Sites Online" by Jack Sanders, which was published in the year 1999. (Many of my pages were about extinct birds such as the Carolina Parakeet, Passenger Pigeon, and Ivory Billed Woodpecker.)

Later, in 2005, when Scientists from Cornell claimed to have rediscovered the Ivory-billed Woodpecker in eastern Arkansas. My page count went crazy. I was the first or second hit if you googled "Ivory-Billed Woodpecker" (and MANY people were googling it at that time.)

At one point, when the page was going strong.. I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life.

I had an Australian.. (or maybe it was New Zealand)... television producer contact me. He wanted to do a series of kids programs and wanted me to write the part of an animated computer who would teach them about extinct animals... at least I think that was the gist of the offer. All he needed me to do was to put up a few more posts on animals so he could pitch it and get the ball rolling.

but I, at the time, was spending more time on my band's web presence and so I completely just... dropped the ball. We emailed a few times and I was like... "Yeah man.. I will get some stuff up..." and I never did.. and never replied to him again.

Who knows what would have come from it? Maybe nothing... or maybe the start of something cool.

Perhaps the pressure was too much and my confidence in my abilities was too low.
I don't know.

I THINK it was just laziness, though.

We don't get a second chance sometimes. That is life. You have to see the opportunities when they come... for what they are truly worth.. and I didn't.

Eventually the "deadbook" just went away when I stopped using that ISP. I have it backed up on a drive at the house... I would never think to try to start it up it again.

I was just at the right place at the right time. Now there are hundreds of sites about extinct animals and I wouldn't get ten views a month.

But for a while... I was a mighty web designer and one of the world wide web's foremost authorities on extinct species. It is funny. It looks SO rudimentary now. But few could imagine the state of most web design in the late 90's if you weren't there to see it.

Little did they know I was just a broke photographer doing it from the bedroom of my tiny two room apartment because I was bored and lonely. Reaching out to talk about something nearly nobody was interested in but me. I found people all over the world who cared about it.