If you have seen a large black cat and have photo evidence, I would love to see it and verify it along with other experts. You can send them to hello@fancyscientist.com
When I see this big cat again I will film it. This cat was huge shiny black and thick. The long u shaped tail had a darker bushy end on it. The cat left the field and hid it’s eyes from my headlights. I went by it right beside the road and the cat wasn’t afraid of me whatsoever. I was amazed and just don’t think to take a photo or film it. Area was kettle Island Ky Hwy 221 around March 17, 2020. Again if I see it again I’ll send some pics.
@@lakelover37824 you are right all you need is hunters and farmers and you will get the stories here in fl we do have them all black however some have spots you can barely see it's funny how they claim Panthers are only in south fl😅🤣 I lived here since 2000 and we have them in central fl Kissimmee,St Cloud,Melbourne and polk county.I seen a regular fl panther Dead on 192 going to Melbourne years ago it looked like it was hit by car sad beautiful animals.
I`ve seen three in Louisiana up close since the 1960s. The last one I saw was about 6 miles below Logansport Louisiana on the Sabine River in 1990. There`s no mistaking a huge black cat larger than a big dog from under 20 feet away in broad daylight. The locals told me they were there when I moved there. Three others saw it in the same area. The local high school football team is called the Stanley Panthers. Huge cat tracks were everywhere in the area. There was a large bounty on these huge black cats at one time because they were attacking supply wagons between Houston and Shreveport. I`ve been a hunter, trapper, fisherman and outdoorsman since I was very young. I know what I`ve seen.
In southern Va there was a mountain lion that was caught a game camera. And mountain lions have been spotted in West Virginia so much that game officials put up flyers telling people to be ware and to call a number. This is around the dolly sods area
So, if wildlife biologists don't sign off on a sighting, then it never happened? There are far more hunters and hikers than wildlife biologists, and these are the same people who doubted the mountain gorilla and the Coelacanth. I admire people who invest in their intellect, but to think they are the final arbiters of truth is just wrong.
Saw a big black cat about a week ago. Looked like a juvenile that weighed around 45lbs but its body was longer than a 90lb german shepherd and its tail was as long or longer than its body. There are definitely mountain lions in southwest Virginia and southern west Virginia, and hundreds of folks im my area claim theyve seen a "black panther"- Marion Va.
I grew up in the middle of nowhere central Georgia in the 70's. We had many hunting dogs and a cat much larger than the standard bobcat became treed by some of our dogs. Up a pine tree on our property there was a very large feline animal. It was there all day but managed to escape after dark. It was black and it damned sure was not a housecat.
I just had one in my back field yesterday morning. Black, much larger than a bobcat. Was too far away to see details well. But I have an 88lb dog who spends a lot of time back in that field, and the cat was probably 20 lbs larger than my dog! Home security footage did catch it, but it’s about 120 yards from the house so it’s hard to see clearly.
I saw a panther here in central georgia without a doubt. This was a giant black cat about the size of a full grown Labrador. I saw him in the foothills near Thomaston. As kids, we spent most of our time in these woods and hills and I came face to face with this enormous black cat. It had those golden eyes and everything. I've never seen one again, but I have absolutely no doubt in my mind as to what I saw.
@@GideonHawk-j8i There are sightings of black panthers in the freakin UK This lady is just playing smart. We already know that the US or the UK is not exactly the natural habitat of a jaguar. But some people own exotic animals. They can't take care of them so they set them free. It does happen often and it's a tragedy.
My daughter and I saw 2 of them together north of the lovewell lake in north central ks in January of 2019. 100yards off the road. We watched them for about 10min in a open pasture. I have hunted for years so I know the difference between big cat and little cats. These animals are around . I don't doubt anyone who says they have seen them
Translation: I read books in a building that say no. I choose to ignore the word of 100’s of eyewitnesses and authors for over 100 years by people who actually go into the wild.
Did you watch the video? I talk about how we have camera traps set up all over the country and no evidence. It's not books - it's data from cameras, roadkill, prints - of which there are none.
@@FancyScientist As a young child, I personally witnessed a black panther crossing a road near a creerk just down the road from me. My uncle, and a cousin were there, and we set hounds on it. They chased it, but it eluded them. That was in the sixties. In the early 2000s, a friend of my, whom I know to be truthful, saw a black panther on the same creek, but a few miles upstream. Perhaps you should set cameras out on Black Creek, near where hwy 46 crosses the creek, or on Arcola Rd, where it crosses Black Creek. Thus, you do have eye witnesses, though no photos. In a courtroom, multiple eye witnesses have sent people to prison, or worse.
In the spring of 2019 I encountered a large black cat. Its tail was every bit of 3 feet long. Not only did I see it, with in a week my friend saw it in a field and he thought it was the black goat he had. But when it got up from sitting he saw it tail too. By the way the goat was about 50 to 60 pounds, and was stood about 2 1/2 to 3 feet tall. This cat was only about 20 from me when I saw it. I not saying it was a panther, but it was not a house cat. I realize that there a large breeds of house cats i.e. Maine Coon etc., but this thing had a slick black coat. I only got to see its body and tail, I wish I could have seen its head.
I saw a black panther plain as day in the daylight in someone’s front yard. I was walking quietly and it heard me from about 65 yards out. It froze in place and ran around the corner of the house in the blink of an eye. It was like it was never there
There is one beautiful panther in Siberia: Luna the panthera. A lovely black leopard girl who lives with her Rottweiler sister and human parents... ♥️♥️♥️
My grandfather was born in a tiny town in the foot hills of the Catskill mountains in New york state in 1914 he always talked about black mountain lions / panthers when he was growing up they happened to be very real and very abundant he's not the only one in my family that has mentioned this and loggers around the area see them too in the present day
Lmao! Man you people done seent it all huh? Interesting that we can get the 3 jaguars in the US on trail cams but there isn't one shred of evidence of a black panther in the US. You a giant moron claims they are all over the place yet there is more evidence of Bigfoot being real.
Saw one at Fort Benning Georgia during basic training in 2013. Me and another guy were standing guard by an ammo truck underneath a very well lit awning. It ran right in between us, like within 10 ft. I thought to myself there was no way, I was tired, it must have been a dog or something, but the other guy conformed with me he saw the panther too. Craziness!
Certain animals don't realize that they are not supposed to exist. What they need is for a university educated expert to explain to them that they don't exist.
This caught my eye, I few years ago I was fishing at Penny creek in Quilcene Washington. My friend and her really tough Belgian malinois were standing and watching me fish, her eyes got the size of plates and said turn around quick and behind me was a black panther about 50 lbs was just walking up to the creek about 30 feet from us. We all just stood there in trance while he slowly walked across the water and this whole time my eyes were locked with it , after about 10 to 15 seconds the dog who is fearless finally barked and started moving at that same instant the cat jumped up a 25 ft stone face with a huge snare laying upward on the mountain. He got to the snare in a blink, as he did he looked me straight in the eyes then turned up facing up the mountain as he did this his tail swung around and it was the length of his body like a cougar tail then shredded up a 100ft tree in a blur like he was showing off his speed and power it was very awesome sighting...his eyes were brilliant yellow gold a beautiful specimen...
I think theses are other worldly black cats and that’s why science can’t discover them, I don’t dis believe ur story one bit cuz 100’s of people claim to have seen them all over the u.s.
With all due respect ma'am people have been seeing Panthers in South Carolina since the 1930s. We tell you scientists where you can find them and you never even show up to investigate. Even when we shoot one and produce a body. You people say it was an escaped pet. That makes over 70 escaped pets over 80 years so far.
@@FancyScientist Well if one crosses my path and I just happen to have my smartphone on me (I normally don't when I work outside) I will try. But if want to get a picture and you don't mind traveling and camping in the woods. Come to Santee SC and ask one of the local land owners if you can camp for a few days on their property to get evidence of the cats. You might get a few photos that way.
I live in SC and had an encounter with a mt lion last summer...we've heard them calling to each other too..and a man up the road caught a black one on his trail cam..and people still want to denie that they're around...EVEN WITH PROOF!!😤
@@ariannanoelle2314 And that is the real frustrating part. I mean what do we have to do film ourselves trapping or shooting one and posting it on the internet. I think filming the shooting could get us in trouble but it would be the look here dummy proof.
I live in Louisiana but I'm currently on the road with my husband who's a trucker. We just saw a large exotic black cat in Eastern Nebraska less than 200 feet from us. It was huge! It ran from from the median hunched down and leaped when it crossed the road and disappeared into a crop field. It's something I will never forget. It was a magnificent site! No way in hell it was a large house cat. It was as long as our great dane if not longer. I imagine it probably got loose from an exotic pet trader or owner. I would never report it. My fear is it would be killed. In 2008 back in Louisiana police gunned down a mountain lion in a tree after it flinched from being shot by a dart. Genetics later showed it came from a population in New Mexico. It traveled all that distance and seeing it killed that was was disgusting! I know what I saw and don't have a need for it to be verified.
I saw one too!! I saw one in the amazon jungle at night in Peru, because my aunt and cousin and I visited the jungle and were staying there for a couple of nights. You just never forget. It was the MOST terrifying experience because we were walking in a trail when we saw it. Its eyes glowed and its face was super dark. Til this day I don't know why it didn't try to chase us. It was looking right at me and my cousin from a distance.
The very first time I saw a very large black cat here in south Mississippi was in November 1963. My mother was with me and saw it as well. It was about six feet from us right beside our back doorsteps! It was eating raw meat scraps my dad threw out for the dog. It wasn't spotted, it was solid black. It was at least 4 feet long. Tail and all probably 6-7 feet long. They may not technically be called a Black Panther but it certainly fit the description.And the older folks called them black panthers so that's what we have always called them. Several times my dad shined their eyes at night across the pasture and they were golden yellow. They screamed out a blood curdling scream that sounded like a combination of a woman and a child. We saw them three times in broad daylight and many times at night. One jumped down from the rafters of our barn onto the hood of my dad's truck while he was in the truck! They were around our property until about the early '80's that we witnessed, but others a few miles near us have spotted them even recently.
Nobody has seen one. Why are people so persistant about the existance of an American Black Panther? _Puma concolor_ has never been melanistic; no videos(that aren't blurry garbage), photographs, killed or captured specimens have ever been produced. If you don't live in Texas, Arizona or New Mexico, your American "Black Panther" anecdote is immediately invalid. The three states listed are the only places that _Panthera onca,_ the North American Jaguar, has been observed in. _Panthera onca_ can be black, as stated in the video.
The only thing I would say is there are things in the woods that you wont see from a classroom. I have seen 2 black panthers in my life and you would discredit that claim because a book says its not so. I have spent 30+ years in the middle of nowhere hunting and fishing and I have learned that we dont know as much as we think we do. I can tell you with 100% certainty that Alabama has black panthers.
I did not finish it. In no way am I meaning any disrespect, you sound very educated and I'm not doubting you being intelligent or looking to argue about anything but just had to state my experience knowing that I probably sound like a "bigfooter".
@@rustyshackelford9414 I just wanted to point out that as scientists, we don't get our information from books. We do read scientific studies that other scientists conduct, but we also conduct our own individual research. I am part of the largest camera trapping organization, Wildlife Insights: www.wildlifeinsights.org/. We have 10 million camera trap photos across the world - there is a lot of sampling in the US and I am part of projects that take place across the US. In the known range of cougars (e.g. western US, Central/South America), we get them frequently on camera traps. In the east, we get nothing. Based on this and the lack of roadkill or tracks, there is no evidence that there are cougars, let alone black ones in the east.
Thats cool and all but I have deer all over here and dont always get one on camera. Due to terrain, places out here have probably never been stepped on by man so those cameras wont help there. I have only seen one bobcat in the woods yet they are out there in fairly populated numbers. Just remember when talking about the wild, nature surprises us everyday.
@@rustyshackelford9414 Cameras capture way more animals than people see. My friend works in Belize on jaguars for decades and has seen jaguars a handful of times, but regularly captures them on camera traps. And yes you are right that they don't capture every single animal, but the fact that they capture cougars in their known range and not in the east gives a lot of power to the argument that they are not in the east. Scientists definitely go deep into the woods - especially in the US. Those areas are perhaps the most surveyed. We also accept photos from hunters.
Yes there are people have literally filmed a black leopard walking on someone's roof it was on the news definitely a leopard no jaguars, leopards are slick as raccoons
I live 25 mins from greenwich , ct where the cougar was hit by a car on I 95 , and i have seen some dead bob cats while hiking , never saw a bob c alive , so even they are very rare .👍🐈😺
Yes, I address that in the video. Genetic evidence revealed that that individual traveled from South Dakota - it was not an individual of a local population. This individual dispersed and although males disperse, it is rare they go that far.
@@FancyScientist wow I did not know that , I thought at the time on the local news here they figured out it must have been kept by someone in CT or here in Westchester co.ny and then escaped . Did not know he actually on his own from s.dakota on his own prowess made it here , that's something else , wild ! That means although rare a rogue one could pop up again here on the east coast . Very interesting 👍🥃☕😾😺🐈
Interesting. We have mountain lions and "black panthers" here in Kentucky. My oldest son runs a trap line and he's seen five mountain lions in the last four years. One was a female with two kittens. His last sighting occurred in November 2023. What people call "black panthers" are actually jaguars. I was talking to a hunter last fall and he watched one through his rifle scope for several minutes. This was less than two miles from my house. The Kentucky Department of Fish & Wildlife in Frankfort says there are no big cats in Kentucky. If you talk to the game wardens that are actually in the field they will tell you otherwise.
@@FancyScientist, He didn't, his grandfather did. One sighting was at long distance, the second one happened so fast there was no time for pics. The third sighting was on the road as he was driving, again, no time for pics. Here's something else you may find hard to believe. I don't own a phone, won't have one.
True of Pennsylvania field game wardens sometimes ,speaking confidentially.One game wardens actually was quoted in the Pennsylvania Game News ,a n official magazine,as saying they have always been here.
I’ve seen many, many photos of what people claim to be a black panther that is actually a house cat. People are not used to judging size from a distance and think it is bigger than it is.
I live in South Strafford, Vermont and I inarguably had an encounter with a black catamount; I am a nature enthusiast and knowledgeable about the Vermont wildlife; one early September morning I was out running and came around the bend of a secluded dirt road when I saw approximately .1 miles ahead of me an unfamiliar black dog until I realized it was a cat, a very large cat with the characteristic sloping back, long tail and fluid movements of a lion. I watched her saunter into a gully beside the road and kept repeating to myself "you are seeing a catamount"... I was totally relaxed as she looked back over her shoulder at me, then darted into the woods. This was approximately 28 years ago. I'm not sure why I never reported it to the Fish and Wildlife Dept. probably because at the time I was working full time with 5 kids! It doesn't matter to me if I am believed; I know what I saw! But I enjoy passing along the information.
Riding on a paved bicycle trail across the middle of Iowa one afternoon. Wooded areas on each side of a paved trail with a mowed down area approximately 3 ft on each side of the pavement. Trucking along and I see a large black animal crossing the trail very slowly ahead of me, crouched down with its nose in a scent. At first, I'm thinking someone's dog, I get closer and closer, there is a fairly strong wind blowing through the trees which i assume is the reason the animal didn't hear me coming. I get to within 20 yards and i stop in fear when i realize it is a very, very large black cat. It had just crossed the bicycle trail and stopped with its nose in a scent on the grass. I sat there and watched it for several minutes frozen in awe and a little fear. It never turned to look my way and never saw me, then slowly creped off into the wooded area beside the trail. I had my phone in my pocket and never once thought to grab it and take a picture, still kicking myself for that. It took me a few minutes to get up the courage to ride on passed the point where the cat went into the woods, I didn't do it slowly and my head was on a swivel. I estimate it was around an 80 to 100-pound animal, very lean.
Guess what? I bet you never even read any of the books written by Stephen Crane, who wrote the Red Badge of Courage after the Civil War. Crane hailed from upstate NY and along with most of his 19th Century friends was an avid hunter. In one of his autobiographical essays he describes attending a hunt organized into parties that comprised about 15 hunters per group that went out around the Delaware Gap in upstate NY specifically to hunt black panthers. They bagged well over 20. Someone is lying to us, and I don't believe it is Stephen Crane.
Thank you for your comment. No, I haven't read him. But if they were that prolific at that time, there would be museum specimens. Mountain lions would have been in NY then, but given that there is no documented evidence of a black mountain lion, it is unlikely that there were a bunch of melanistic mountain lions. Jaguars range was never that far north, and again, we have documentation from museum specimens from hundreds of years ago collected across the country. If there were any jaguars, there would have been evidence of them somewhere between the southern US and as far north as NY.
There is some in Tennesse it was bigger than my friend's pit/lab mix dog. The dog want to go at it and my friend put him on a leash. We saw it twice in my property. I own 60 acers there in the cumberland plateau.
I live in the county of Norfolk here in the UK. Apparently, Norfolk has the highest number of reported big cat sightings in the country. There are several 'black panther' sightings, but others as well including a tiger sighting that turned out to be a stuffed toy.
I didn't hear any mention of the exotic pet trade, both legal and illegal, in your video. It seems to me that any discussion of melanistic leopards and jaguars should have included this, as it is certainly possible and I think likely that a sighting of a large black member of the cat family falls into the category of an escaped pet jaguar or leopard. We hear from time to time of illegal tigers kept in various parts of the United States. Why not black "panthers"?
I thought I mentioned it in the video. Yes, it is possible for someone to see an escaped exotic pet. Yet, notice how many people here claim they've seen a black panther or mountain lion - not a tiger and there are WAY more tigers than there are black panthers in captivity. I get this video is about black panthers, but still talking to people you never hear of them saying they see a tiger, you never get them on camera traps, etc. There's not much evidence that these are all escaped black panthers.
@@FancyScientist I think another issue is that under low light conditions or even in sunlight when the sun is backlighting the subject, it's amazing how dark the subject can appear when its actual color is not dark at all. Your eye definitely gets fooled.
I have 2 photos from trailcam one is a mountain lion dragging an eight point whitetail deer-night-the other is a black panther/jaguar at a feeder-daytime. mineral block nearby gives good idea of the size have seen adult and yearling cubs -black panther- the yearlings are chocolate brown in color. make no mistake these cats are huge, larger than the mountain lion. their head is flat eyes and ears are wide apart and paws as big as my hands. their belly almost drag the ground when they cross open area and are super shy more than the mountain lions. not going to give my location other than the state of VA. these cats dont bother nothing or nobody and need to be left alone.
I would love to see the photos - send them to stephanie@fancyscientist.com. Sounds like a captive escapee if their bellies are close to dragging to the ground. I've never seen a wild animal that fat (and we get leopards, pumas, tigers, jaguars on camera traps all over the world), but I have seen obese cats at Doc Antle's zoo in the Tiger King doc.
@@FancyScientist they were not fat, they were crouching low to come across an access road. this past week i set up a trail cam with canned cat food to get a pic of a bobcat that i have been seeing in my yard and got a pic of a young mountain lion, he was in front of my woodshop so i got an accurate measurement 43" from nose to tail walking normally. face was black from ear to ear and from chin to top of head. paw prints were 2" across. tried to send you pics with no luck. send me an email and i will send them in reply. bdcmakeithappen@yahoo.com
@@FancyScientist It's always the same. I've heard of encounters with these my whole life but never any substantiated evidence. Melanistic jaguars are rare enough in their home range, but ask any bubba around and the woods are crawling with them.
I saw a big black and brown cat running across 95 in Camden GA. I read that only three mountain lions have been seen in Georgia in the past 25 years. I’ll never be able to cope with the fact that I could’ve had a video or picture.
Can you send me the video? I would love to verify it. You can contact me here: stephanieschuttler.com/contact-me/. Also, I am not saying there are not cases where black jaguars/leopards could be found, but these would be exotic animals that have escaped from private zoos. Camera traps and museum records would have picked up on any self-sustaining populations. The historic range of jaguars never went as far north as WV and there are no documented cases of melanistic mountain lions, which are in WV.
Well, according to her. I haven't seen one so they don't exist. We went through this in Missouri a few years back about Bears and mountain lions. It kind of proved them idiots. They thing, don't you dare believe those hillbillies, there just plain stupid. After all they learned it in a book. Ignore the simple folk that spend their days i the woods.
Did you watch the video? I talk about how we gather data from confirmed sightings and camera trap original research. Science is about collecting data and using that to understand the animals - we don’t read books. I lived in Missouri for 8 years during my PhD and my advisor worked on the genetics of the black bears and mountain lions there. My labmate did a population estimate of the black bears. Yes there are mountain lions, but when I left still no signs of a breeding population (e.g. moms and cubs). There were new dispersing individuals. People do believe people with credible evidence and sightings. You’ll see tons of people leave comments here but no photos. If they are there you would see them on camera traps.
@@FancyScientist First thank you for your commitment. As a scientist you know that the lack of evidence is not the proof of absence. I think you misunderstood me. I don't even believe there is such a animal as a Black Panther, just rare color fazes of Black mountain lions and Jaguars. As proof I'm sure its out there. Living in Missouri you know some people are a little strange. I don't need a expert to validate what I saw. I saw it and I'm not prone to seeing things. There's proof out there but like most folks, they have no need to prove what they took a picture of or saw 20 ft away like I did. My property is blanketed with camera and I've never seen lots of animals I knows there.
There are panthers in the US since me and my grandma saw two of them at her house where there’s a big forest but it was too dark to take a picture but I’m sure no one will believe me
If by panther, you mean mountain lion (AKA puma, cougar), then yes, there are here in the western US and in Florida (the Florida panther). I suggest you set up a camera trap so it will take photos for you.
@@FancyScientist well there was some hunters that set up cameras a while ago but they only got one picture and it was a panther since it looked like a big black cat but I don’t know what happened to that photo they got
@@FancyScientist, I live in Clewiston, FL, I am planning to set up a trap to catch a big animal that killed 12 of my chickens as well as other neighbors chickens and ducks. One of my neighbors says he saw it yesterday morning around 9 a.m. and it was black and looks like a cougar or mountain lion. I will try to keep it alive, take photos and videos for you.
No one knows the total number of the illegal exotic animal trade ,but it is huge ,mainly drug dealers including meth heads . Get them as kittens and get out or let loose .
There have been black panther spotted in Florida I know two people who have seen them. I actually passed right by a Florida panther on the way home from our pool I called the wildlife division and they said that they usually don't bother people to not bother them.
@@rhondaunger1228 No they didn't. They saw a brown cat that was in the shadows, or had black mud on it, or had the mange. Or it wasn't a cougar at all. If they came in black someone should have a hide/skin to show off, especially if they were as common as people claim. We would have one in a zoo.
My cousin and I were almost stalked by one in the amazon jungle, but it didn't follow us. It was just staring from a distance. Terrifying still haha. Like I will never forget the glowing eyes (it was night).
My husband (from Mississippi) learned quickly to never scream back in jest as a teenager when he was camping with friends. He said the 1st scream was loud but the one after they screamed back was so close they ended up sleeping in a truck terrified 😅
We need a network of cameras here in East Texas near Quinlan, Farmersville, edgewood etc because soooo many people claim to have seen one. Also my ex wife and best friend hit one with the car. It had to be a big cat as it damaged the radiator and other parts. Idk how the panther got away after that hit. Also my brother saw one in our yard with his spot light
I just finished my TA assignments at in a large, popular university in the southeastern US and we had a few local students swear they've seen a black mountain lion when hunting and it's kind of become an urban legend. But once again, no photo/video evidence.
A friend of my dad's seen a black panther in middle TN. He came home from work and found a deer carcass at the far edge of the yard. He though it was coyotes so he drug it to the middle of the yard and drove a T-post through it, he was gonna kill the coyotes before they got his chickens or ganged up on his dog. He woke up in the middle of the night to the dog barking so he grabbed his rifle went outside and there was a massive black cat bigger than his dog. He fired a couple shots in the air to scare it off, brought the dog inside and called TWRA in the morning. They tried saying he couldn't see very well in the dark but he had a yard light. They still wrote him off as seeing things.
Why didn't he take a photo? Also, have you seen my coyote video? Killing them most likely increases their populations: ruclips.net/video/wO5dcU6rR1U/видео.html
I saw one at Camp Lejeune North Carolina in 2003. I was stationed at 2nd LAR on O street and I was at the barracks when I saw a large black cat approximately 40 pounds walk out of the woods near the football field and then it quickly went back into the woods. I grew up in Montana trapping all sorts of animals including mountain lions and I know what I saw.
I’m in Rome Ga and saw one walking a tree line in town. Long tail dragging the ground, small head, and large shoulders and body. Nobody believed me until there was an article in the newspaper about one being seen in a nice neighborhood hanging out in a kids play house.
I saw one west of Claremore Oklahoma 30 years ago, it leaped 3/4 of the way across a large highline clearing in 1 bound & was still going up when it hit the tree line on it's second jump, it's tail stuck out like a pole, some time later it followed me home & scared the 2 dogs who were with me who ran away & hid under the house i caught a couple of glimpses of it threw the brush & was always told not to run from one so I just kept walking, my dad & grandmother have both seen them in northern Alabama & central Arkansas if they are an existing known cat it's a Jaguar they aren't built like nor move like a mountain lion.
I've heard of a "black panther" in the northwest Arkansas region about 10 years ago or something. From oil surveyerors who are in the woods 10 hours a day 7 days a week
SE Kansas had at least one black mountain lion (or cat) hanging around. Biologists talking about mountain lions are full of it. Its government policy to deny they are around or if proof found, deny they are breeding, claiming they are just passing through.
Saw what I would call a black panther/cougar yesterday at Arthur Marshall wildlife/Everglades in the brush. It was huge, not a bobcat (I have seen those in the area) and it was black. It was at least 5 feet long and weighed over 100 pounds and was a BIG cat.
Yes there are black panthers in the United States I've seen one before when I used to live in Pennsylvania it was standing on top of a cliff and when the car I was in came towards where it was it jumped off the cliff jumped on top of the car and then took off into the woods and then we heard a big Bam it was shot and killed by hunters who were actually hunting it because it was going around killing animals and they did DNA testing and it turned out to be an African black panther so yes they do living in US in the United States even has their own kind of panthers too.
I’ve seen two mountain lions. One in July 2016 about 30 minutes from Hartford, Connecticut, up in the mountains where we rented a cabin. I wanted to see a bear in the wild, so I threw leftover fajita meat off the balcony and waited for hours until I heard something, and then turned my spotlight on to see a cougar staring back before I ducked back inside and slid the door shut. The second one was sometime in the fall of 2017 45ish minutes from Eureka Springs, Arkansas in sheep farm country. I was on the side of a rocky ridge with a waterfall and creek running beneath me and got a good glimpse of a huge silver/tan cat coming down from the woods for water, I’m assuming, before I hollered and it booked it out of there.
When you see one you will know they are real and exist. I almost ran over one near Cheaha mt on my motorcycle along with 2 other people that was behind me. You need to talk to some people who have seen them.
Agreed. I have seen one. I saw one while walking on a trail in the Amazon Jungle in Peru with my cousin and it was at night. Most terrifying experience ever. I still remember the glowing eyes. You never forget what they look like.
I was about 150 yards away from the 2 biggest blackest cats ive ever seen! Its near Searcy area White County Ar. Ive had alot of people say aww you didn't see no panther. I literally saw one go from a 15 foot hill/drop in one leap to the ground. At first I thought it was 2 large bags from the distance I was seeing them that's what they appeared to be until one jumped down from the hill. Long black body with long black tail no mistaking that. From that distance I figured it would be around 4 feet long and 3 feet high. The second one laid down on the top of the hill and seemed to have babies or maybe a kill that was in the grass near it. Honestly after the first one leaped down and was looking in my direction I just took off running back to the house and told my siblings to stay inside for the rest of the day. I could take you to the place today and show you where I was and where they were, but like she said they don't exist in the U.S. so I guess take her word lol. Kinda hard to mistake a huge man eating cat from a house cat or large dog though. And no I do not have a picture of them, due to one I did not have a camera and 2 I was so blown away and frightened by what I saw that even if I did have a camera I'd still wouldn't have thought to take a photo.
Saw a black Jaguar in Kentucky in 2004, casually stalking through a backyard. As far as size, it was exactly the size of a Jaguar. Whether it was an escaped exotic pet or a far ranging specimen, idk.
You need to come to the Hudson Valley and set up your traps, Ulster and Green county as well as the Catskill area, I drive nine counties in the Hudson valley and I know what I saw, unfortunately I cannot take a picture because I was driving, it was a large black cat about the size of a German shepherd with a long tail and a cat face and big paws it was only a few yards from me and I watched it cross the road and go into the woods through someone’s backyard, so you may want to double check in the United States especially the Hudson valley Adirondacks area!🐈⬛
Take it for what you want. In 1977 I was 19 years old. My uncle and I commercial fished salmon out of Yreka California. The ocean was rough, so we went up 101 with some Yurok Indians to their remote cabin on the reservation on Klamath river. My uncle took a frozen tuna out of cold storage before we went to cook. Well, I wanted to stay at the cabin, they wanted to go back in town to get drunk. I made a fire out side the cabin. Ramon, one of the Indians, left me a rifle in case. I was cooking parts of the tuna and a large cat slowly walked down the creek in front of the cabin. It turned and looked at me. About 30 feel away. I was frozen. The cat was pure black, with a white spot on its breast. I know it smelled that tuna cooking. The cat slowly walked towards me. I jumped up ran to the cabin. The loaded rifle was leaning against the front wall. I turned around and the cat ran off.
GUYS PLEASE LISTEN I LIVE IN LAKE WALES FLORIDA JUST MOVED HERE 2 weeks ago I have DEFINATELY 100% seen the black panther TWO DIFFERENT OCCASIONS My neighbor 2 houses over apparently has been living their since 2000 and is use to them and feeds them Theirs 3 young kings about 2/3 feet tall with a very long tail What do I do
>...and is use to them and feeds them" >"What do I do" Move away from your neighbor that is feeding them. No, seriously, I doubt you want to move again so soon. Also, you probably will not have much luck getting your neighbor to stop feeding them, but that is what he/she should do. Feeding the wild animals will make them less leery of humans, and that can be a danger to small pets that live with and around humans. So maybe you should set up a wildlife camera, and after capturing some photos, pass them on to the Cougar network, and casually mention that your neighbor has been feeding them. Florida introduced cougars, not panthers. If there are black panthers, they could be escaped animals from homes or zoos. Regardless of what you saw, it would be nice to have proof and where they have been seen (general area GPS coordinates). Florida did not re-introduce the cougars to be fed by the population, but instead, to be let nature take its course to reestablish the wildlife equilibrium that once existed naturally. Another possibility is that you (and the neighbor) have seen a domesticated cat that has gone "wild" (returned to a more primitive lifestyle). I grew up in the woods next to a wildlife preserve that extended for many miles. It was common to have cats but not as pets in the house. They lived and fended for themselves in surrounding areas where there was sufficient food to capture (small birds, mice, ground squirrels, etc.), for example in or around a barn. These cats were tame and could be petted, and of course, would take any food offered them, or milk, etc. Occasionally, one of these domesticated cats would disappear into the woods. Sometimes that meant that a fox might have killed it (no wolves in the area). But at other times, that cat would return after being gone for several months, but much larger than a normal house cat, like double its original adult size. They had the same distinctive markings, so there was no question that it was the same cat. They would stay at the edge of where the woods began and the clearing around the house, but they would not come closer. They would run off if we tried to coax them to come closer. I have found that most people's experience with cats is with house cats, and think this is not even remotely a possibility, but I did experience it at least six or seven times growing up there. It was not very common but not uncommon either. Sometimes it would be a point of discussion, as in, "Remember that striped cat we had out at the barn, it went wild. It comes back around every so often but you can't pet it anymore." The terms "went wild" or "gone wild" were how the cat was referred to. After some period of time, you never saw the cat again, and that was likely due to an encounter with a hungry fox or bobcat. The process of doubling in size still seems bizarre to me, as we think of an animal such as a house cat growing to its adult size and remaining at that size for the rest of its life. When you can identify a black and white cat with distinct exact identifying marks but double the size, it is a strange oddity. Most people that have not experienced this first-hand would claim that the animal may "appear" to be double in size, but merely has "bulked up" in size with the same skeleton underneath. From people that have experienced this first-hand, no one has ever questioned it or claimed it simply had bulked up. No one ever expected this to happen to a local barn cat, so I doubt there is much "before and after" photographic or home movie evidence as this was before those conveniences were popular (the late 60s was the last time I saw it happen before moving away). Regardless, imagine that a black housecat was to "go wild" the same way; I suspect a lot of people would be convinced that it was a black cougar.
I think you are wrong. I saw one this morning chasing a deer while visiting my sisters lake house at Lake Hartwell Georgia. This is why I came across your video. I have been shocked that I even saw one! I am researching now because it’s so unbelievable and awesome at the same time! I heard it make a big cat noise when it took off chasing the small deer. We had been feeding the many deer that roam around but this morning they weren’t moving at all which we thought was odd. We were sitting on her porch when a small deer took off out of the woods with this black panther chasing it.
Really great video, just one problem,.. the black panther does exist in Massachusetts.. I seen one in the town of Easton while working on large equipment in an undeveloped condo complex.. from its nose to tail it was about 7 feet in length with a rather long tail.. it's height was around 3 feet or better.. I kept silent about it for 10 years until I just noticed on the news a woman spotted one in her yard and took pictures and now authorities are actively hunting it to exterminate it.... This creature will absolutely positively take out small children and pets... I firmly believe this species of cat was introduced by someone that collected exotic cats and then released it into the wild... Do not take this Dr video seriously because now it's proven the cat does exist.... I hope it's destroyed before anyone is hurt
Im from Minnesota, I was on Vacation in Pensacola Fl in Sept of 2022, we were driving from Pensacola to New Orleans one day. Right after we crossed into Mississippi on Highway 10 I noticed something very black out in a field off to the right side of the road, it was 100% a very big black cat, I would compare the size to a mountain lion, I had never seen anything like it in the wild. I 100% saw a black panther in Mississippi
I cant speek for black panthers but no one can say with confidence that there are no mnt lions in the east. I am sure of this because I seen one, in 2014 I was hunting from a tree stand in south western wva and it walked right under me less than 30ft away. I have seen bobcats and this was not a little cat. I had a clear line of sight and I watched it for 3 minutes, it was the size of a large German Shepard and ever bit of 80lbs. it was the most terrifying thing I have ever seen in the woods and I am 100% sure it was a mountain lion.
I know it sounds crazy but I KNOW that I and my family were awaken one night by a HUGE, solid black, wild cat (and we'd have called it a black panther if it had made ANY sense, but it didn't). It was screaming like a panther at our front door, and I (having two cats and just being a kid) opened the door to the shock of the size and my mom's scream as she grabbed me while my dad rushed to slam the door. It was in winter of 1979 IN SOUTH DAKOTA. I can't explain it. I never considered it paranormal, but it is still a mystery to us! I was just wondering if anyone else had ever seen something like that so far north.
If it "screamed" then what you saw or heard was a mountain lion. Jaguars growl and roar, they don't make that screeching sound that is typical of mountain lions.
@@JustAGrrrrl There are only two animals that can be called "black panthers" or big black cats, Jaguars and Leopards. Out of those two, only the jaguar is native to the americas but non-existent in the US with extremely rare cases in arizona in the last 20 years and these were spotted jaguars not melanistic (black). So if you saw a "black panther" then it had to had been a Jaguar (scientifically speaking) but there is absolutely no way there could have been jaguars in south dakota. Secondly, black panthers (jaguars or leopards) don't screech or scream, they have a very deep roar or growl. The only big cat that does scream or screech is a mountain lion which is actually native or common to south dakota yet they are not black but if you saw it at night, it can easily be confused as being "black" with low light.
@@JustAGrrrrl it is a very interesting story and quite scary to be honest. I am not trying to say what you saw or discredit, I am simply giving my opinion as to what it was more than likely. There are plenty of videos here on youtube with mountain lion "screams". You should check them out, maybe they will confirm what you heard. They can be quite disturbing and scary and I sure being a little kid it was frightening.
I'm on the late tip. But I had to chime in. I grew up in a small California town. As a child my mothers drying machine broke, so at 10 pm she decided to go to the local laudromate to dry clothes taking myself and my sister. While playing around in the laudromate a black panther huge jumped onto the middle tall island table. We froze. My mother placed us slowly into the large wall dryer and locked the dryer door and then she took off running out the back closing the door behind her. The police dept. Was two buildings away. My sister and I watched his/her eyes glow yellow and walk in circles. When the police arrived they walked in and ran out followed by the cat. It was not recovered. We were taken from the large wall dryer and taken back to the police dept. Where our mother was waiting. Years later 2 black panthers terrified the entire gym of students and parents at a basketball game, I was there. Only to escape again. Now we live in the valley at the foothills where mountain lions, deer, black bears were the norm. But a black panther kept the community on guard. This was the last time I saw it, but have heard of sighting for more than 2 decades. I have cousins that also saw them.
My grandfather always told stories of Black Panthers on our large property in North Louisiana and as a kid I believed but as a adult I didn't but I started changing my mind when my son and I started seeing a mountain lion on our land when they obviously don't live here and wildlife and fisheries didn't believe me until I got multiple photos and videos. Now they believe but say it's just moving through but we have seen them for five years. If Mountain Lions can be here maybe something else could.
I saw one in the amazon jungle in Peru and it was crouched down. It was night and we had flashlights and were walking towards the main building for a tour of tarantulas and other night animals. I was walking back from my cabana with my cousin and I looked at it's glowing eyes from a distance and said "is that a puma?" My cousin and I both ran to the building as fast as we could, but I still remember those glowing eyes till this day and the black face. It didn't chase us. We really shouldn't have run too. Would highly not recommend that. Didn't even move from it's spot. But if you ever encounter one, you'll know it by its eyes and black face. Til this day, it was the scariest encounter ever. It was a black puma and why it didn't chase us? Couldn't tell you. We did everything you weren't supposed to. So, yeah. Don't do what we did. 😂
Saw a Black Mountain Lion in Tejon Ranch (Lebec) CA in 2011. It was against dry grass at dusk. I saw its two cubs that were fawn in color. Saw them before their mother which had black fur. She blended in exceedingly well especially when the cubs natural coat is well designed for camo in that environment. 1) They are elusive, and it’s harder to get a camera. 2) Biologists are doubters by design, and do not listen to hunters who are well trained at identifying these animals. 3) if all other medium/large cats are melanistic, why would mountain lions be different?
That's a great question! I am not sure that we know the answer to it, but what I do know is that melanistic big cats are not more elusive than others when it comes to camera traps. Where we get leopards and jaguars on cameras, we do get melanistic ones too and some areas have higher concentrations of them. Also think about all of the hunting that goes on and has gone on for centuries - and there's never been a case of one or one in a museum. Scientists need proof - and this is not just for hunters and that we don't trust them. For example, some scientists claim they got the thylacine on video (an extinct species), but other scientists don't think it is definitive enough to say it is one. It's nothing personal - we just need evidence because although you may be good at telling animals apart, the vast majority of the public isn't and we can't differentiate between who knows what.
I grew up in a small town where nearly everyone knows my maternal family- mostly through small businesses & owning restaurants (my grandmother had 10 siblings). As a kid, I was always told by family & older generations there was a "black panther" in areas between the streets at the tops in the "untouched treeline". I never believed them until my step-father came into our lives & taught me all about my love for outdoors/nature. We actually ended up living on one of the streets that people talk about and he decided to take me with him hiking that day. I don't have pictures because this was back in the late 1990s, but I can swear to you we were within 20yds of whatever kind of black, large wildcat it was. Bigger than any mountain lion/wild feline species native to north Alabama. If my stepdad had not grabbed me & covered my mouth before I screamed- I probably would not be alive today. We aren't the only ones around here who have been so close to it. There are stories still floating around from my mom's generation of townies being around it too. P.S. I never told my mom because I was afraid she would have a slight stroke & wouldn't let him take me anywhere outdoors ever again. 😂
Driving one day past a freshly plowed field & looked to my left & saw a black cat running across the filed & i immediately thought it was a large house cat. I looked away didn't really think much of it till i looked back over at the cat & it was still running & actually moving across the field at a very high rate of speed, that is when i slowed down & the cat continued running across the field. I have never seen a house cat run that fast or even for that length of time, every house cat i have ever seen either cannot or has not run that far they usually are petered out and stop.
There have been pictures of Mountain lions in several Eastern states, not just Connecticut. There have been Cougar sightings in broad daylight as far East as the Adirondacks of Upstate New York. [[ including sightings of a mother with kittens ]] There have also been Cougar tracks and hair found in Eastern States that were confirmed by testing and by Wildlife Biologists. The historical range of the Jaguar was as far north as Southern Colorado. Also, I remember in the 60's and 70's when people in New England and New York reported seeing coyotes,,,, and these sightings were literally dismissed out - of - hand by wildlife professionals. Now Coyotes are in virtually every State East of the Mississippi and in all 52 Counties of New York State, including all parts of N.Y.C. { with the probable exception of Long Island } Could this be a repeat performance by Biologist from Eastern States about Mountain Lions, deny, deny, and deny again until you can no longer deny the existence ??
Thanks for the comment Britton. I do not deny there are verified reports of mountain lions in the east - in fact, I go into detail in it in this podcast episode, which I need to post to RUclips. stephanieschuttler.com/eastern-cougars/ But there is no breeding population. If you look at the map on the Cougar Network there are only a handful of verified sightings over the past 30 years. You need regular occurrences of females and kittens to be considered a real population: www.cougarnet.org/. We get cougars on camera traps all the time in their range. It is not a matter of detection. This video is about the current range of species, not the past. I'm not sure about the 60s and the 70s, but we didn't have camera traps back then. I work on large-scale camera trap projects and with literally thousands of camera trap sites across the east. I'm part of national and international camera trap networks. This is not denying anything - it is inferring species presence from the data.
@@FancyScientist Just saying there is no breeding population doesn't make it so. The biology professor emeritus of a Middle TN university had a female with cubs on his property in the 80's. There have been consistent sightings of mountain lions in that area for decades. Three adult cats were shot in that part of the state in the late 60's and early 70's. I've seen a picture of one of them, and I know who shot another. If mountain lions are moving in from the West, they've been doing it for a very long time. Finally, skeptical officials are acknowledging the presence of them because of trail cam pictures, but what has changed is the prevalence of the cameras, not the presence of the cats.
@@chrismyers2047 Trail cam data is exactly where this information comes from. I am on the board of Wildlife Insights and we have the largest camera trap database in the world www.wildlifeinsights.org/ including databases from WWF, WCS, Smithsonian, etc. We have tons of current cameras data from all over the US. We get mountain lion photos frequently where they are, but none in the east, outside of the Florida panther population.
I don't doubt there is a population of mountain lions in the eastern states. Not as abundant as in Western states but very possible. Mountain lions have the broadest range of any wild cat in the world. From alaska to patagonia.
I was working in Millstadt IL today which is surrounded by farm land and I went to go pee behind a barn and 50ft up a hill in a clearing a enormous large black cat that I can only explain looked like a damn black panther noticed me and froze and we stared at each other for a good 20 seconds It looked to be about 60 to 80lbs it was solid black with flat fur and It sure as hell was no house cat and I've seen mountain lions in Missouri it was no mountain lion the only explanation of what it looked like was a black panther which i thought don't exist here. As soon as it took off I ran to front of the job site to get my phone out of my toolbox to try and get a pic but it was no where to be found by time I got back. Also I did some research after seeing this and if you Google black panther in Illinois there was multiple past sightings of what looked like a black panther in that exact area I was in.
I saw the back end of either a completely black jaguarundi or a black panther in my back yard at 6am a few months ago. North of Babocomari Ranch, AZ; near the US/Mexico border. I opened my back door and it leaped up onto my privacy fence with one graceful jump. It’s hunch and it’s very long, thick tail was visible for a lengthy pause before it jumped down to the ground on the other side of my fence and ran away. I froze. AZ born and raised and I’ve never seen THAT kind of cat before. Larger than a bobcat, about the size of a Mtn lion. Wasn’t a Mtn lion, wasn’t a coatimundi. I know the difference. Setting up trail cams, but now we have dogs so I doubt I’ll see it again.
I have lived on the coast in Northern California for a long time. I have seen black mountain lions a few times here. I didn't know it was rare. I will get a picture the next time.
Use thermal camera drones in the areas where the most sightings have been claimed. They are expensive but not unattainable. The best versions of them slice through the brush and highlight anything warmblooded with ease
The problem is not detection though - in ares where there are cougars, you get them on camera traps - they are not avoiding them. Same with jaguars and leopards in the ranges that they live in. There have been jaguars caught on camera in Arizona. The point of the video is that people say that they are seeing them, but there's no evidence on cameras outside from those few individuals and they are not black. And there have not been any cases of black cougars.
@FancyScientist agree I'm simply saying it's a less passive method than stationary trail cameras if someone was serious about finding wildlife in a more active methodology it seems to be a good option. Given enough time and money of course but that goes without saying
I'm from Michigan, we have cougars here! Late 80s early 90s we had a lot of black panther sightings, and I only know that because I seen one estimated about 200 lbs myself! I was about 15 at the time, and no I don't have any photos to verify this to you. But I know what I saw!
In 1984 i almost hit a black jaguar in Rockley Nova Scotia on my dirt bike. It was night time and the trail was very tight and dense. But it ran right into the trail forcing me to drag my back tire stopping 2 feet from hitting it so maybe someones big cat escaped? It was before camera traps but i want to go back with some now and see if its reproduced with another.
Had one cross the road in front of me. Not more that 25 feet. He had one thing on his mind. I could tell by the way he was walking. I knew there was a female and after clearing my head I grabbed my phone for pictures. Then as he got to the tall grass and another big cat more a cougar color was there. The the cougar saw me and took off up the hill. The Panther took off after her. I am not the only one that has seen this. This was in late August and severe drought conditions. I am in the north central part of Eastern Washington. This Black cat was quite skinny. Rounder head and wears more round. Big gorgeous long tail. I told the home owner to put up a camera. This area was a small creek with surrounding Aspen and poplar trees with tall tan grass. I was shocked at what I was seeing. Other people have seen them. There are more than this young Panther i saw. I know photos. The time it took me to comes to a stop and grab my camera after an unbelievable sighting was to long and I did t even snap a photo cause they were gone. I believe the female was in heat the way the Panther was part walk part run with his head strait up staring at the creek area. Never even looked at me in my truck
OK I'm from Florida north east Florida spanning from Yulee to Middleburg Florida and I've personally saw large black cats twice, my sister has seen them more than once and my mother has had at least one sighting, so what exactly are these large black panther looking cats we've seen? These cats are the size of leopards, one of the sightings I had this cat was digging in my garbage can outside. I do not have video of this because this happened in 2001 when camera phones werent the norm.
I guarantee you they exist. I had one walk straight down a tree right next to me just south of Springfield Mo. I was frozen with fear and could not move my body until it moved away from me. It acted as if it didn't see me and calmly walked away into the darkness. This happened near the end on my friends driveway right next to a pole light in his yard. It was definitely all black and your opinion can't take my experience away from me.
Your unreliable, frightful nightime sighting doesn't consitute scientific evidence to prove the existance of a melanistic cougar _(Puma concolor)_ They are absolutely a myth, until someone photographs, records, captures or kills one.
I can tell you I’ve seen what I think to be a black panther. I live in Oklahoma. We were hired to set traps because something was killing Texas Walker thoroughbreds. We also used rabbit squealing tapes and tried to lure whatever was doing it. I saw what I believe was a panther about 250 yards away. It was beautiful. Slick and shiny short black hair. As far as I know, it’s still out there.
There's been sighting of "Black Panthers" in the UK and Australia. So Geographical Location Doesn't always tell you which species of cat it is. We dont have Mountain Lions in Ontario Canada but there has been a few sightings over the years. Animals can make there way hundreds or even thousands of miles outside their known territory. We had a black bear make his way very close to downtown Toronto. We have a massive ravine system referred as the green belt. They just follow the rivers and streams from up north and work their ways south.
Sightings or confirmed sightings? Sightings in general are not reliable, they have to be confirmed by experts. If they are confirmed, it would for sure be an escaped captive animal as there are definitely no large cats in either of those locations.
@@FancyScientist There's multiple Thylacine videos. We have the ability to confirm these things ourselves. Don't wait for "Mainstream science" to confirm it. They won't until we actually catch one. Same goes for Sasquatch.
@@FancyScientist Even though Sasquatch aka Bigfoot was proven to exist in 2013. Melba Ketchum Genome Project. Peer reviewed and Classified. Homo Sapiens Cognatus. Zoobank People still don't believe it.
I don’t have any pictures but I came face to face with a mountain lion in Red Wing , Minnesota. I went to town and asked the bartender and he said yeah , I’m not the first person to say that
When I was a little kid, I saw a huge black cat, and I was so scared I ran back in the house and told my mom, and every time that she came out the cat was gone, I kept calling it a black tiger because I thought lions had a main, it was huge about the size of a tiger or lion and it was pure black like a crow but the last time I saw it my mom died the same day, I swear on a stack of bibles every word I say is true
I saw a large black cat in rural (really about as rural as North Alabama gets. We even saw Black bear one day cross the road..a mother and 2 cubs all kinda thin) Morgan County, Alabama, just outside of The Wheeler Wildlife Refuge with a long thick tail, a long low body, a large head, 10000% black, and in stealth mode unlike any predator I've ever seen in person. I saw the tracks in the sand, and if this was a large house cat, its feet were bigger than a coke can. A few years after I saw this cat a man was attacked by a big black cat 10 miles away from my sighting and the cuts and scratches to go with it. I wanna say he had security camera footage but I can't promise that. They ran his story all over the local news.
I am a wildlife biologist also and I can assure you that you are wrong. When I was in grad school at the University of Arkansas, I was part of the Arkansas Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit and one of the professors told me of his personal experience of being stalked by a large black cat while hunting. Jump forward a few years and I am in Texas and I personally see a large cat maybe 30 yards away on our farm and my wife's uncle twice sees one up close deer hunting about 40 miles away. All of these were clearly black. No cats at our farm for 20 years and then my son shoots a young male (100 lbs) as it stalked our baby horses. This was the first recorded in the county. They are very secretive. Also, many game and fish are super lazy. I tried contacting the Mountain Lion specialist for Texas Parks and Wildlife over and over and they never called me back. It was finally certified by a game warden through photos.
Cool! What's your name and where do you work? How do you explain the lack of black panthers on camera traps all around the country? Tons of scientists would be jumping at the chance to be able to showcase a verified photo.
I was driving and yes it was dark, a large cat ran a cross the road about 15 feet in front of my truck, it was running probably touch the road 2 times it was low it was running fast what really got me was the tail was really long. was it a black panther i dont know, i do know it was a lot bigger then a bobcat by a lot it was black and it ran like lightning.
I've noticed that a lot of people who claim to have seen "black panthers" in the US don't seem to be aware that Jaguars, which are the only species of panther in the Americas, have only been documented in the wild in the US 8 times since 1996. But somehow every other drunk guy in the South has seen a black one, which are are almost 10 times rarer in their natural habitats than the regular looking spotted kind. They also coincidentally never have a phone or camera or hunting rifle on them at the time.
Yes, exactly. The cats aren’t afraid of the cameras so if they were here we would get them on camera traps! The jaguars are so rare in the US but we get them on camera traps.
You do know Jaguars even in there natural range are almost never seen by humans and are known to be even more so skittish to humanity than Cougars are, just look at all the of the written examples of the American Tyger from the 1700 and 1800s as well as Sebastian Cabot’s map from 1545 showing Jaguars in the Ohio valley
@@JamesB-mi9uu Yes of course. One of my colleagues is an expert on jaguars in Belize and has only seen them a handful of times in real life despite studying them for decades. But jaguars and other big cats do not avoid camera traps and when camera traps are set within their range, they get photos of them. That's how we know they are there :) As the video discusses, I talk about how there are jaguar sightings in the US on camera traps, but it's only a few individuals.
@@FancyScientist All my argument is is that they were once native to the southeast United States in the last 600 years with accounts having them here till 1850, so in theory they could survive in the deep mountains and swamps that are untouched even if it were escaped, one example is in 1965 a jaguar escaped in Florida and was undetected and thriving in the wild for 2 years.
@@JamesB-mi9uu I understand what you are saying, but now we live in a time with camera traps. They are ALL over the place - run by scientists, hunters, and private landowners. Jaguars are wide-ranging animals so it would be incredibly unlikely that they wouldn't be detected. And given all of the people who say here on the comments that they have seen a black big cat - it especially doesn't make sense. If they are being detected by people, they would be seen on the camera traps.
My dad was in the camp watching tv and saw a cat with a long tail and green eyes it was maybe a black panther but maybe a Cougar but I don’t know my dad was so scared that he couldn’t even record
So has anyone sent you photos or video of their black PA ther/jaguar sightings? If so, have you compiled those photos and videos together on a website or a video? I'd like to see for myself. Thanks!
Only one person sent me photos. One was a domestic cat and the other one was clearly a fake. But yes, you are right I should add them to my blog post of this! I think I still have them.
@@cblakemusic This is the link: stephanieschuttler.com/what-is-a-black-panther/ I can't add the photos though because I don't have permission and I don't remember who sent them to me so I can't add them. One of them though was in a link in the comments. It is here: imgur.com/bO6eHgJ
I had heard of mountain lions in both Wisconsin andTennessee. East of the Mississippi. And I had also heard that black jaguars have been sighted, maybe not recently, in southernmost Mexico.
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If you have seen a large black cat and have photo evidence, I would love to see it and verify it along with other experts. You can send them to hello@fancyscientist.com
When I see this big cat again I will film it. This cat was huge shiny black and thick. The long u shaped tail had a darker bushy end on it. The cat left the field and hid it’s eyes from my headlights. I went by it right beside the road and the cat wasn’t afraid of me whatsoever. I was amazed and just don’t think to take a photo or film it. Area was kettle Island Ky Hwy 221 around March 17, 2020. Again if I see it again I’ll send some pics.
@@lakelover37824 you are right all you need is hunters and farmers and you will get the stories here in fl we do have them all black however some have spots you can barely see it's funny how they claim Panthers are only in south fl😅🤣 I lived here since 2000 and we have them in central fl Kissimmee,St Cloud,Melbourne and polk county.I seen a regular fl panther Dead on 192 going to Melbourne years ago it looked like it was hit by car sad beautiful animals.
I`ve seen three in Louisiana up close since the 1960s. The last one I saw was about 6 miles below Logansport Louisiana on the Sabine River in 1990. There`s no mistaking a huge black cat larger than a big dog from under 20 feet away in broad daylight. The locals told me they were there when I moved there. Three others saw it in the same area. The local high school football team is called the Stanley Panthers. Huge cat tracks were everywhere in the area. There was a large bounty on these huge black cats at one time because they were attacking supply wagons between Houston and Shreveport. I`ve been a hunter, trapper, fisherman and outdoorsman since I was very young. I know what I`ve seen.
In southern Va there was a mountain lion that was caught a game camera. And mountain lions have been spotted in West Virginia so much that game officials put up flyers telling people to be ware and to call a number. This is around the dolly sods area
Well I would but I didn’t have a go-pro or anything but my phone and I never drive while I’m driving
So, if wildlife biologists don't sign off on a sighting, then it never happened? There are far more hunters and hikers than wildlife biologists, and these are the same people who doubted the mountain gorilla and the Coelacanth. I admire people who invest in their intellect, but to think they are the final arbiters of truth is just wrong.
Stopped watching as soon as she dismissed all evidence as “house cats”
Saw a big black cat about a week ago. Looked like a juvenile that weighed around 45lbs but its body was longer than a 90lb german shepherd and its tail was as long or longer than its body. There are definitely mountain lions in southwest Virginia and southern west Virginia, and hundreds of folks im my area claim theyve seen a "black panther"- Marion Va.
I grew up in the middle of nowhere central Georgia in the 70's. We had many hunting dogs and a cat much larger than the standard bobcat became treed by some of our dogs. Up a pine tree on our property there was a very large feline animal. It was there all day but managed to escape after dark. It was black and it damned sure was not a housecat.
I just had one in my back field yesterday morning. Black, much larger than a bobcat. Was too far away to see details well. But I have an 88lb dog who spends a lot of time back in that field, and the cat was probably 20 lbs larger than my dog! Home security footage did catch it, but it’s about 120 yards from the house so it’s hard to see clearly.
I saw a panther here in central georgia without a doubt. This was a giant black cat about the size of a full grown Labrador. I saw him in the foothills near Thomaston. As kids, we spent most of our time in these woods and hills and I came face to face with this enormous black cat. It had those golden eyes and everything. I've never seen one again, but I have absolutely no doubt in my mind as to what I saw.
@@desertweasel6965does it rain a lot there
@@GideonHawk-j8i There are sightings of black panthers in the freakin UK
This lady is just playing smart.
We already know that the US or the UK is not exactly the natural habitat of a jaguar. But some people own exotic animals. They can't take care of them so they set them free.
It does happen often and it's a tragedy.
Saw the same thing all the way up in the pine barrens NJ
My daughter and I saw 2 of them together north of the lovewell lake in north central ks in January of 2019. 100yards off the road. We watched them for about 10min in a open pasture. I have hunted for years so I know the difference between big cat and little cats. These animals are around . I don't doubt anyone who says they have seen them
Translation: I read books in a building that say no. I choose to ignore the word of 100’s of eyewitnesses and authors for over 100 years by people who actually go into the wild.
Did you watch the video? I talk about how we have camera traps set up all over the country and no evidence. It's not books - it's data from cameras, roadkill, prints - of which there are none.
Joe Rogan says he has one on film in Texas.
@@FancyScientist delusional
Yea 100s of people have seen Bigfoot too
@@FancyScientist
As a young child, I personally witnessed a black panther crossing a road near a creerk just down the road from me. My uncle, and a cousin were there, and we set hounds on it. They chased it, but it eluded them. That was in the sixties.
In the early 2000s, a friend of my, whom I know to be truthful, saw a black panther on the same creek, but a few miles upstream. Perhaps you should set cameras out on Black Creek, near where hwy 46 crosses the creek, or on Arcola Rd, where it crosses Black Creek. Thus, you do have eye witnesses, though no photos. In a courtroom, multiple eye witnesses have sent people to prison, or worse.
In the spring of 2019 I encountered a large black cat. Its tail was every bit of 3 feet long. Not only did I see it, with in a week my friend saw it in a field and he thought it was the black goat he had. But when it got up from sitting he saw it tail too. By the way the goat was about 50 to 60 pounds, and was stood about 2 1/2 to 3 feet tall. This cat was only about 20 from me when I saw it. I not saying it was a panther, but it was not a house cat. I realize that there a large breeds of house cats i.e. Maine Coon etc., but this thing had a slick black coat. I only got to see its body and tail, I wish I could have seen its head.
I saw a black panther plain as day in the daylight in someone’s front yard. I was walking quietly and it heard me from about 65 yards out. It froze in place and ran around the corner of the house in the blink of an eye. It was like it was never there
Everyone has. Except they just never have their darn phone around. Next time though!!! 🤣
I done seent a yeti also and the loch Ness monster.
@@faretheewell3711ahole
So lady what are people seeing in the Florida Everglades ? Large black cats 200 , 225 lbs
@@garyny4073 they are seeing figments of their imagination or florida panthers in poor lighting. Not hard to figure out
There is one beautiful panther in Siberia: Luna the panthera.
A lovely black leopard girl who lives with her Rottweiler sister and human parents... ♥️♥️♥️
Come to wisconsin, the panthers here beg to differ.
My grandfather was born in a tiny town in the foot hills of the Catskill mountains in New york state in 1914 he always talked about black mountain lions / panthers when he was growing up they happened to be very real and very abundant he's not the only one in my family that has mentioned this and loggers around the area see them too in the present day
Lmao! Man you people done seent it all huh? Interesting that we can get the 3 jaguars in the US on trail cams but there isn't one shred of evidence of a black panther in the US. You a giant moron claims they are all over the place yet there is more evidence of Bigfoot being real.
Saw one at Fort Benning Georgia during basic training in 2013. Me and another guy were standing guard by an ammo truck underneath a very well lit awning. It ran right in between us, like within 10 ft. I thought to myself there was no way, I was tired, it must have been a dog or something, but the other guy conformed with me he saw the panther too. Craziness!
My son did his basic training in 2013 at Fort Benning too and swore he saw one there.
The one I saw was in Thomaston Ga which isn't too far from Benning.
Certain animals don't realize that they are not supposed to exist. What they need is for a university educated expert to explain to them that they don't exist.
This caught my eye, I few years ago I was fishing at Penny creek in Quilcene Washington. My friend and her really tough Belgian malinois were standing and watching me fish, her eyes got the size of plates and said turn around quick and behind me was a black panther about 50 lbs was just walking up to the creek about 30 feet from us. We all just stood there in trance while he slowly walked across the water and this whole time my eyes were locked with it , after about 10 to 15 seconds the dog who is fearless finally barked and started moving at that same instant the cat jumped up a 25 ft stone face with a huge snare laying upward on the mountain. He got to the snare in a blink, as he did he looked me straight in the eyes then turned up facing up the mountain as he did this his tail swung around and it was the length of his body like a cougar tail then shredded up a 100ft tree in a blur like he was showing off his speed and power it was very awesome sighting...his eyes were brilliant yellow gold a beautiful specimen...
YES!!! THE GLOWING EYES. That's what I remember most about it. I saw one too in the amazon jungle with my cousin.
I think theses are other worldly black cats and that’s why science can’t discover them, I don’t dis believe ur story one bit cuz 100’s of people claim to have seen them all over the u.s.
@@gastly123Pls. Stop this garbage.
With all due respect ma'am people have been seeing Panthers in South Carolina since the 1930s. We tell you scientists where you can find them and you never even show up to investigate. Even when we shoot one and produce a body. You people say it was an escaped pet. That makes over 70 escaped pets over 80 years so far.
Send me the photos. Stephanie@fancyscientist.com. I've asked lots of people on these comments for photos and most never send.
@@FancyScientist Well if one crosses my path and I just happen to have my smartphone on me (I normally don't when I work outside) I will try. But if want to get a picture and you don't mind traveling and camping in the woods. Come to Santee SC and ask one of the local land owners if you can camp for a few days on their property to get evidence of the cats. You might get a few photos that way.
I live in SC and had an encounter with a mt lion last summer...we've heard them calling to each other too..and a man up the road caught a black one on his trail cam..and people still want to denie that they're around...EVEN WITH PROOF!!😤
@@ariannanoelle2314 And that is the real frustrating part. I mean what do we have to do film ourselves trapping or shooting one and posting it on the internet. I think filming the shooting could get us in trouble but it would be the look here dummy proof.
Two of us basic training soldiers cat
😊
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I live in Louisiana but I'm currently on the road with my husband who's a trucker. We just saw a large exotic black cat in Eastern Nebraska less than 200 feet from us. It was huge! It ran from from the median hunched down and leaped when it crossed the road and disappeared into a crop field. It's something I will never forget. It was a magnificent site! No way in hell it was a large house cat. It was as long as our great dane if not longer.
I imagine it probably got loose from an exotic pet trader or owner. I would never report it. My fear is it would be killed. In 2008 back in Louisiana police gunned down a mountain lion in a tree after it flinched from being shot by a dart. Genetics later showed it came from a population in New Mexico. It traveled all that distance and seeing it killed that was was disgusting! I know what I saw and don't have a need for it to be verified.
Yes, I mention in the video escapees from private ownership are a possibility.
I saw one too!! I saw one in the amazon jungle at night in Peru, because my aunt and cousin and I visited the jungle and were staying there for a couple of nights. You just never forget. It was the MOST terrifying experience because we were walking in a trail when we saw it. Its eyes glowed and its face was super dark. Til this day I don't know why it didn't try to chase us. It was looking right at me and my cousin from a distance.
Nah I’m telling you there’s something different out there I’ve see it too
I`ve seen three huge coal black cats in Louisiana at close range. Apparently I`m an idiot who knows nothing.
They are 100% there we're just apparently all stupid lol. @@baneverything5580
The very first time I saw a very large black cat here in south Mississippi was in November 1963. My mother was with me and saw it as well. It was about six feet from us right beside our back doorsteps! It was eating raw meat scraps my dad threw out for the dog. It wasn't spotted, it was solid black. It was at least 4 feet long. Tail and all probably 6-7 feet long. They may not technically be called a Black Panther but it certainly fit the description.And the older folks called them black panthers so that's what we have always called them. Several times my dad shined their eyes at night across the pasture and they were golden yellow. They screamed out a blood curdling scream that sounded like a combination of a woman and a child. We saw them three times in broad daylight and many times at night. One jumped down from the rafters of our barn onto the hood of my dad's truck while he was in the truck! They were around our property until about the early '80's that we witnessed, but others a few miles near us have spotted them even recently.
That you know of just because you haven’t seen one doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist
Nobody has seen one. Why are people so persistant about the existance of an American Black Panther? _Puma concolor_ has never been melanistic; no videos(that aren't blurry garbage), photographs, killed or captured specimens have ever been produced.
If you don't live in Texas, Arizona or New Mexico, your American "Black Panther" anecdote is immediately invalid. The three states listed are the only places that _Panthera onca,_ the North American Jaguar, has been observed in. _Panthera onca_ can be black, as stated in the video.
The only thing I would say is there are things in the woods that you wont see from a classroom. I have seen 2 black panthers in my life and you would discredit that claim because a book says its not so. I have spent 30+ years in the middle of nowhere hunting and fishing and I have learned that we dont know as much as we think we do. I can tell you with 100% certainty that Alabama has black panthers.
Thanks for the comment Joe. Did you watch the video?
I did not finish it. In no way am I meaning any disrespect, you sound very educated and I'm not doubting you being intelligent or looking to argue about anything but just had to state my experience knowing that I probably sound like a "bigfooter".
@@rustyshackelford9414 I just wanted to point out that as scientists, we don't get our information from books. We do read scientific studies that other scientists conduct, but we also conduct our own individual research. I am part of the largest camera trapping organization, Wildlife Insights: www.wildlifeinsights.org/. We have 10 million camera trap photos across the world - there is a lot of sampling in the US and I am part of projects that take place across the US. In the known range of cougars (e.g. western US, Central/South America), we get them frequently on camera traps. In the east, we get nothing. Based on this and the lack of roadkill or tracks, there is no evidence that there are cougars, let alone black ones in the east.
Thats cool and all but I have deer all over here and dont always get one on camera. Due to terrain, places out here have probably never been stepped on by man so those cameras wont help there. I have only seen one bobcat in the woods yet they are out there in fairly populated numbers. Just remember when talking about the wild, nature surprises us everyday.
@@rustyshackelford9414 Cameras capture way more animals than people see. My friend works in Belize on jaguars for decades and has seen jaguars a handful of times, but regularly captures them on camera traps. And yes you are right that they don't capture every single animal, but the fact that they capture cougars in their known range and not in the east gives a lot of power to the argument that they are not in the east. Scientists definitely go deep into the woods - especially in the US. Those areas are perhaps the most surveyed. We also accept photos from hunters.
I swear to god I seen one in SC. No doubt, completely sober. If not I seen a five foot long snout to tail, 3 foot tall black cat.
Where in SC ? I’m in Greenwood we have some proof
@@lanceputnam523 In kershaw county! Near 601.
@@lanceputnam523 nobody in SC has any proof.
Yes there are people have literally filmed a black leopard walking on someone's roof it was on the news definitely a leopard no jaguars, leopards are slick as raccoons
I live 25 mins from greenwich , ct where the cougar was hit by a car on I 95 , and i have seen some dead bob cats while hiking , never saw a bob c alive , so even they are very rare .👍🐈😺
Yes, I address that in the video. Genetic evidence revealed that that individual traveled from South Dakota - it was not an individual of a local population. This individual dispersed and although males disperse, it is rare they go that far.
@@FancyScientist wow I did not know that , I thought at the time on the local news here they figured out it must have been kept by someone in CT or here in Westchester co.ny and then escaped . Did not know he actually on his own from s.dakota on his own prowess made it here , that's something else , wild ! That means although rare a rogue one could pop up again here on the east coast . Very interesting 👍🥃☕😾😺🐈
Interesting. We have mountain lions and "black panthers" here in Kentucky. My oldest son runs a trap line and he's seen five mountain lions in the last four years. One was a female with two kittens. His last sighting occurred in November 2023. What people call "black panthers" are actually jaguars.
I was talking to a hunter last fall and he watched one through his rifle scope for several minutes. This was less than two miles from my house.
The Kentucky Department of Fish & Wildlife in Frankfort says there are no big cats in Kentucky. If you talk to the game wardens that are actually in the field they will tell you otherwise.
He doesn't have any photos?
@@FancyScientist, Nope. He doesn't carry a camera on his trap line. On two occasions he had another person with him that verified it.
@@martyyoung3611 He doesn't have a phone? Neither of them had a phone? That's pretty hard to believe...
@@FancyScientist, He didn't, his grandfather did. One sighting was at long distance, the second one happened so fast there was no time for pics. The third sighting was on the road as he was driving, again, no time for pics.
Here's something else you may find hard to believe. I don't own a phone, won't have one.
True of Pennsylvania field game wardens sometimes ,speaking confidentially.One game wardens actually was quoted in the Pennsylvania Game News ,a n official magazine,as saying they have always been here.
Plenty of photos of mountain lions have been produced In northern Michigan in the upper peninsula in Michigan
A big house cat? 🤣🤣 That's like comparing a marble to a bowling ball.
I’ve seen many, many photos of what people claim to be a black panther that is actually a house cat. People are not used to judging size from a distance and think it is bigger than it is.
I live in South Strafford, Vermont and I inarguably had an encounter with a black catamount; I am a nature enthusiast and knowledgeable about the Vermont wildlife; one early September morning I was out running and came around the bend of a secluded dirt road when I saw approximately .1 miles ahead of me an unfamiliar black dog until I realized it was a cat, a very large cat with the characteristic sloping back, long tail and fluid movements of a lion. I watched her saunter into a gully beside the road and kept repeating to myself "you are seeing a catamount"... I was totally relaxed as she looked back over her shoulder at me, then darted into the woods. This was approximately 28 years ago. I'm not sure why I never reported it to the Fish and Wildlife Dept. probably because at the time I was working full time with 5 kids! It doesn't matter to me if I am believed; I know what I saw! But I enjoy passing along the information.
Riding on a paved bicycle trail across the middle of Iowa one afternoon. Wooded areas on each side of a paved trail with a mowed down area approximately 3 ft on each side of the pavement. Trucking along and I see a large black animal crossing the trail very slowly ahead of me, crouched down with its nose in a scent. At first, I'm thinking someone's dog, I get closer and closer, there is a fairly strong wind blowing through the trees which i assume is the reason the animal didn't hear me coming. I get to within 20 yards and i stop in fear when i realize it is a very, very large black cat. It had just crossed the bicycle trail and stopped with its nose in a scent on the grass. I sat there and watched it for several minutes frozen in awe and a little fear. It never turned to look my way and never saw me, then slowly creped off into the wooded area beside the trail. I had my phone in my pocket and never once thought to grab it and take a picture, still kicking myself for that. It took me a few minutes to get up the courage to ride on passed the point where the cat went into the woods, I didn't do it slowly and my head was on a swivel. I estimate it was around an 80 to 100-pound animal, very lean.
I seen a Black Panther in Washington State Yakama Reservation. Okay but what about Cougars? They are prominent in North America
Guess what? I bet you never even read any of the books written by Stephen Crane, who wrote the Red Badge of Courage after the Civil War. Crane hailed from upstate NY and along with most of his 19th Century friends was an avid hunter. In one of his autobiographical essays he describes attending a hunt organized into parties that comprised about 15 hunters per group that went out around the Delaware Gap in upstate NY specifically to hunt black panthers. They bagged well over 20. Someone is lying to us, and I don't believe it is Stephen Crane.
Thank you for your comment. No, I haven't read him. But if they were that prolific at that time, there would be museum specimens. Mountain lions would have been in NY then, but given that there is no documented evidence of a black mountain lion, it is unlikely that there were a bunch of melanistic mountain lions. Jaguars range was never that far north, and again, we have documentation from museum specimens from hundreds of years ago collected across the country. If there were any jaguars, there would have been evidence of them somewhere between the southern US and as far north as NY.
@@FancyScientistaw yeah, because if it's not in museums it can't be real.
There is some in Tennesse it was bigger than my friend's pit/lab mix dog. The dog want to go at it and my friend put him on a leash. We saw it twice in my property. I own 60 acers there in the cumberland plateau.
I live in the county of Norfolk here in the UK. Apparently, Norfolk has the highest number of reported big cat sightings in the country. There are several 'black panther' sightings, but others as well including a tiger sighting that turned out to be a stuffed toy.
I didn't hear any mention of the exotic pet trade, both legal and illegal, in your video. It seems to me that any discussion of melanistic leopards and jaguars should have included this, as it is certainly possible and I think likely that a sighting of a large black member of the cat family falls into the category of an escaped pet jaguar or leopard. We hear from time to time of illegal tigers kept in various parts of the United States. Why not black "panthers"?
I thought I mentioned it in the video. Yes, it is possible for someone to see an escaped exotic pet. Yet, notice how many people here claim they've seen a black panther or mountain lion - not a tiger and there are WAY more tigers than there are black panthers in captivity. I get this video is about black panthers, but still talking to people you never hear of them saying they see a tiger, you never get them on camera traps, etc. There's not much evidence that these are all escaped black panthers.
@@FancyScientist I think another issue is that under low light conditions or even in sunlight when the sun is backlighting the subject, it's amazing how dark the subject can appear when its actual color is not dark at all. Your eye definitely gets fooled.
I have 2 photos from trailcam one is a mountain lion dragging an eight point whitetail deer-night-the other is a black panther/jaguar at a feeder-daytime. mineral block nearby gives good idea of the size have seen adult and yearling cubs -black panther- the yearlings are chocolate brown in color. make no mistake these cats are huge, larger than the mountain lion. their head is flat eyes and ears are wide apart and paws as big as my hands. their belly almost drag the ground when they cross open area and are super shy more than the mountain lions. not going to give my location other than the state of VA. these cats dont bother nothing or nobody and need to be left alone.
I would love to see the photos - send them to stephanie@fancyscientist.com. Sounds like a captive escapee if their bellies are close to dragging to the ground. I've never seen a wild animal that fat (and we get leopards, pumas, tigers, jaguars on camera traps all over the world), but I have seen obese cats at Doc Antle's zoo in the Tiger King doc.
@@FancyScientist they were not fat, they were crouching low to come across an access road. this past week i set up a trail cam with canned cat food to get a pic of a bobcat that i have been seeing in my yard and got a pic of a young mountain lion, he was in front of my woodshop so i got an accurate measurement 43" from nose to tail walking normally. face was black from ear to ear and from chin to top of head. paw prints were 2" across. tried to send you pics with no luck. send me an email and i will send them in reply. bdcmakeithappen@yahoo.com
@@FancyScientist did this person show you the picture?
@@zacharyadams6277 nope
@@FancyScientist It's always the same. I've heard of encounters with these my whole life but never any substantiated evidence. Melanistic jaguars are rare enough in their home range, but ask any bubba around and the woods are crawling with them.
There's mountain lions in Illinois. I've seen one. I found tracks as well.
I saw a big black and brown cat running across 95 in Camden GA. I read that only three mountain lions have been seen in Georgia in the past 25 years. I’ll never be able to cope with the fact that I could’ve had a video or picture.
there are black panthers in US i live in west virginia and my friends dad got a video of one stalking him and his friends up in the woods
Can you send me the video? I would love to verify it. You can contact me here: stephanieschuttler.com/contact-me/. Also, I am not saying there are not cases where black jaguars/leopards could be found, but these would be exotic animals that have escaped from private zoos. Camera traps and museum records would have picked up on any self-sustaining populations. The historic range of jaguars never went as far north as WV and there are no documented cases of melanistic mountain lions, which are in WV.
I also live in WV and I seen one in my parents yard when I was about 13 years old back in 2000. This was in Wood County WV. Full sized black panther.
I saw one near Jacksonville Florida in the mid to late 90s
Well, according to her. I haven't seen one so they don't exist. We went through this in Missouri a few years back about Bears and mountain lions. It kind of proved them idiots. They thing, don't you dare believe those hillbillies, there just plain stupid. After all they learned it in a book. Ignore the simple folk that spend their days i the woods.
Did you watch the video? I talk about how we gather data from confirmed sightings and camera trap original research. Science is about collecting data and using that to understand the animals - we don’t read books. I lived in Missouri for 8 years during my PhD and my advisor worked on the genetics of the black bears and mountain lions there. My labmate did a population estimate of the black bears. Yes there are mountain lions, but when I left still no signs of a breeding population (e.g. moms and cubs). There were new dispersing individuals. People do believe people with credible evidence and sightings. You’ll see tons of people leave comments here but no photos. If they are there you would see them on camera traps.
@@FancyScientist First thank you for your commitment. As a scientist you know that the lack of evidence is not the proof of absence. I think you misunderstood me. I don't even believe there is such a animal as a Black Panther, just rare color fazes of Black mountain lions and Jaguars. As proof I'm sure its out there. Living in Missouri you know some people are a little strange. I don't need a expert to validate what I saw. I saw it and I'm not prone to seeing things. There's proof out there but like most folks, they have no need to prove what they took a picture of or saw 20 ft away like I did. My property is blanketed with camera and I've never seen lots of animals I knows there.
There are panthers in the US since me and my grandma saw two of them at her house where there’s a big forest but it was too dark to take a picture but I’m sure no one will believe me
If by panther, you mean mountain lion (AKA puma, cougar), then yes, there are here in the western US and in Florida (the Florida panther). I suggest you set up a camera trap so it will take photos for you.
@@FancyScientist well there was some hunters that set up cameras a while ago but they only got one picture and it was a panther since it looked like a big black cat but I don’t know what happened to that photo they got
I believe you. I have seen one too and it was also at night. Their eyes glow.
@@FancyScientist, I live in Clewiston, FL, I am planning to set up a trap to catch a big animal that killed 12 of my chickens as well as other neighbors chickens and ducks. One of my neighbors says he saw it yesterday morning around 9 a.m. and it was black and looks like a cougar or mountain lion. I will try to keep it alive, take photos and videos for you.
No one knows the total number of the illegal exotic animal trade ,but it is huge ,mainly drug dealers including meth heads . Get them as kittens and get out or let loose .
True, but they would still be seen on camera traps, on ring cams, or by people.
There have been black panther spotted in Florida I know two people who have seen them. I actually passed right by a Florida panther on the way home from our pool I called the wildlife division and they said that they usually don't bother people to not bother them.
Florida panthers are brown.
@@Steve-ev6vx The one I saw was brown but two people I know saw black ones
@@rhondaunger1228 No they didn't. They saw a brown cat that was in the shadows, or had black mud on it, or had the mange. Or it wasn't a cougar at all. If they came in black someone should have a hide/skin to show off, especially if they were as common as people claim. We would have one in a zoo.
I have seen a couple of my lifetime and been stalked by one. When one of them is in Heat, it sounds like someone is being murdered in the woods LOL
My cousin and I were almost stalked by one in the amazon jungle, but it didn't follow us. It was just staring from a distance. Terrifying still haha. Like I will never forget the glowing eyes (it was night).
@@juliakopacz1177 This was in Georgia in the states.
My husband (from Mississippi) learned quickly to never scream back in jest as a teenager when he was camping with friends. He said the 1st scream was loud but the one after they screamed back was so close they ended up sleeping in a truck terrified 😅
@@JustAGrrrrl yeah, you don't mess with a panther in heat. LOL
We need a network of cameras here in East Texas near Quinlan, Farmersville, edgewood etc because soooo many people claim to have seen one. Also my ex wife and best friend hit one with the car. It had to be a big cat as it damaged the radiator and other parts. Idk how the panther got away after that hit. Also my brother saw one in our yard with his spot light
I have a game camera photo of one near Miller Grove ,Hopkins County. At least 60 pounds not a Bob Cat
I just finished my TA assignments at in a large, popular university in the southeastern US and we had a few local students swear they've seen a black mountain lion when hunting and it's kind of become an urban legend. But once again, no photo/video evidence.
A friend of my dad's seen a black panther in middle TN.
He came home from work and found a deer carcass at the far edge of the yard. He though it was coyotes so he drug it to the middle of the yard and drove a T-post through it, he was gonna kill the coyotes before they got his chickens or ganged up on his dog. He woke up in the middle of the night to the dog barking so he grabbed his rifle went outside and there was a massive black cat bigger than his dog. He fired a couple shots in the air to scare it off, brought the dog inside and called TWRA in the morning. They tried saying he couldn't see very well in the dark but he had a yard light. They still wrote him off as seeing things.
Why didn't he take a photo? Also, have you seen my coyote video? Killing them most likely increases their populations: ruclips.net/video/wO5dcU6rR1U/видео.html
I saw one at Camp Lejeune North Carolina in 2003. I was stationed at 2nd LAR on O street and I was at the barracks when I saw a large black cat approximately 40 pounds walk out of the woods near the football field and then it quickly went back into the woods. I grew up in Montana trapping all sorts of animals including mountain lions and I know what I saw.
If you grew up trapping you would know that 40 pounds is a ridiculous weight to give for a mountain lion
@@jameslafontaine5557 Do you just assume that every animal in the woods is full grown? How do you skin a Mountain Lion?
Back in the mid -late 80's in St.Charles County Mo there was a few spottings of a black panther in the field behind our house.
I just saw one today in Millstadt Illinois
I’m in Rome Ga and saw one walking a tree line in town. Long tail dragging the ground, small head, and large shoulders and body. Nobody believed me until there was an article in the newspaper about one being seen in a nice neighborhood hanging out in a kids play house.
You're describing a mountain lion.
@@armandorodriguez5120 yeah looked just like a mountain lion except it was jet black.
I saw one west of Claremore Oklahoma 30 years ago, it leaped 3/4 of the way across a large highline clearing in 1 bound & was still going up when it hit the tree line on it's second jump, it's tail stuck out like a pole, some time later it followed me home & scared the 2 dogs who were with me who ran away & hid under the house i caught a couple of glimpses of it threw the brush & was always told not to run from one so I just kept walking, my dad & grandmother have both seen them in northern Alabama & central Arkansas if they are an existing known cat it's a Jaguar they aren't built like nor move like a mountain lion.
I've heard of a "black panther" in the northwest Arkansas region about 10 years ago or something. From oil surveyerors who are in the woods 10 hours a day 7 days a week
Yes sir Arkansas has had them for 48 years that I know of and they didn't have black exotic cats here then
SE Kansas had at least one black mountain lion (or cat) hanging around.
Biologists talking about mountain lions are full of it. Its government policy to deny they are around or if proof found, deny they are breeding, claiming they are just passing through.
Saw what I would call a black panther/cougar yesterday at Arthur Marshall wildlife/Everglades in the brush. It was huge, not a bobcat (I have seen those in the area) and it was black. It was at least 5 feet long and weighed over 100 pounds and was a BIG cat.
You THINK you did.
Yes there are black panthers in the United States I've seen one before when I used to live in Pennsylvania it was standing on top of a cliff and when the car I was in came towards where it was it jumped off the cliff jumped on top of the car and then took off into the woods and then we heard a big Bam it was shot and killed by hunters who were actually hunting it because it was going around killing animals and they did DNA testing and it turned out to be an African black panther so yes they do living in US in the United States even has their own kind of panthers too.
where in pa
I’ve seen two mountain lions. One in July 2016 about 30 minutes from Hartford, Connecticut, up in the mountains where we rented a cabin. I wanted to see a bear in the wild, so I threw leftover fajita meat off the balcony and waited for hours until I heard something, and then turned my spotlight on to see a cougar staring back before I ducked back inside and slid the door shut. The second one was sometime in the fall of 2017 45ish minutes from Eureka Springs, Arkansas in sheep farm country. I was on the side of a rocky ridge with a waterfall and creek running beneath me and got a good glimpse of a huge silver/tan cat coming down from the woods for water, I’m assuming, before I hollered and it booked it out of there.
When you see one you will know they are real and exist. I almost ran over one near Cheaha mt on my motorcycle along with 2 other people that was behind me. You need to talk to some people who have seen them.
Agreed. I have seen one. I saw one while walking on a trail in the Amazon Jungle in Peru with my cousin and it was at night. Most terrifying experience ever. I still remember the glowing eyes. You never forget what they look like.
I was about 150 yards away from the 2 biggest blackest cats ive ever seen! Its near Searcy area White County Ar. Ive had alot of people say aww you didn't see no panther. I literally saw one go from a 15 foot hill/drop in one leap to the ground. At first I thought it was 2 large bags from the distance I was seeing them that's what they appeared to be until one jumped down from the hill. Long black body with long black tail no mistaking that. From that distance I figured it would be around 4 feet long and 3 feet high. The second one laid down on the top of the hill and seemed to have babies or maybe a kill that was in the grass near it. Honestly after the first one leaped down and was looking in my direction I just took off running back to the house and told my siblings to stay inside for the rest of the day. I could take you to the place today and show you where I was and where they were, but like she said they don't exist in the U.S. so I guess take her word lol. Kinda hard to mistake a huge man eating cat from a house cat or large dog though. And no I do not have a picture of them, due to one I did not have a camera and 2 I was so blown away and frightened by what I saw that even if I did have a camera I'd still wouldn't have thought to take a photo.
Saw a black Jaguar in Kentucky in 2004, casually stalking through a backyard. As far as size, it was exactly the size of a Jaguar. Whether it was an escaped exotic pet or a far ranging specimen, idk.
You need to come to the Hudson Valley and set up your traps, Ulster and Green county as well as the Catskill area, I drive nine counties in the Hudson valley and I know what I saw, unfortunately I cannot take a picture because I was driving, it was a large black cat about the size of a German shepherd with a long tail and a cat face and big paws it was only a few yards from me and I watched it cross the road and go into the woods through someone’s backyard, so you may want to double check in the United States especially the Hudson valley Adirondacks area!🐈⬛
Take it for what you want.
In 1977 I was 19 years old.
My uncle and I commercial fished salmon out of Yreka California.
The ocean was rough, so we went up 101 with some Yurok Indians to their remote cabin on the reservation on Klamath river.
My uncle took a frozen tuna out of cold storage before we went to cook.
Well, I wanted to stay at the cabin, they wanted to go back in town to get drunk.
I made a fire out side the cabin. Ramon, one of the Indians, left me a rifle in case.
I was cooking parts of the tuna and a large cat slowly walked down the creek in front of the cabin. It turned and looked at me. About 30 feel away.
I was frozen. The cat was pure black, with a white spot on its breast.
I know it smelled that tuna cooking. The cat slowly walked towards me.
I jumped up ran to the cabin. The loaded rifle was leaning against the front wall.
I turned around and the cat ran off.
In 1977 is when two black panthers roamed into my high school gym. I too live in California.
GUYS PLEASE LISTEN
I LIVE IN LAKE WALES FLORIDA
JUST MOVED HERE 2 weeks ago
I have DEFINATELY 100% seen the black panther TWO DIFFERENT OCCASIONS
My neighbor 2 houses over apparently has been living their since 2000 and is use to them and feeds them
Theirs 3 young kings about 2/3 feet tall with a very long tail
What do I do
>...and is use to them and feeds them"
>"What do I do"
Move away from your neighbor that is feeding them.
No, seriously, I doubt you want to move again so soon. Also, you probably will not have much luck getting your neighbor to stop feeding them, but that is what he/she should do. Feeding the wild animals will make them less leery of humans, and that can be a danger to small pets that live with and around humans.
So maybe you should set up a wildlife camera, and after capturing some photos, pass them on to the Cougar network, and casually mention that your neighbor has been feeding them. Florida introduced cougars, not panthers. If there are black panthers, they could be escaped animals from homes or zoos. Regardless of what you saw, it would be nice to have proof and where they have been seen (general area GPS coordinates).
Florida did not re-introduce the cougars to be fed by the population, but instead, to be let nature take its course to reestablish the wildlife equilibrium that once existed naturally.
Another possibility is that you (and the neighbor) have seen a domesticated cat that has gone "wild" (returned to a more primitive lifestyle). I grew up in the woods next to a wildlife preserve that extended for many miles. It was common to have cats but not as pets in the house. They lived and fended for themselves in surrounding areas where there was sufficient food to capture (small birds, mice, ground squirrels, etc.), for example in or around a barn. These cats were tame and could be petted, and of course, would take any food offered them, or milk, etc. Occasionally, one of these domesticated cats would disappear into the woods. Sometimes that meant that a fox might have killed it (no wolves in the area). But at other times, that cat would return after being gone for several months, but much larger than a normal house cat, like double its original adult size. They had the same distinctive markings, so there was no question that it was the same cat. They would stay at the edge of where the woods began and the clearing around the house, but they would not come closer. They would run off if we tried to coax them to come closer. I have found that most people's experience with cats is with house cats, and think this is not even remotely a possibility, but I did experience it at least six or seven times growing up there. It was not very common but not uncommon either. Sometimes it would be a point of discussion, as in, "Remember that striped cat we had out at the barn, it went wild. It comes back around every so often but you can't pet it anymore." The terms "went wild" or "gone wild" were how the cat was referred to. After some period of time, you never saw the cat again, and that was likely due to an encounter with a hungry fox or bobcat.
The process of doubling in size still seems bizarre to me, as we think of an animal such as a house cat growing to its adult size and remaining at that size for the rest of its life. When you can identify a black and white cat with distinct exact identifying marks but double the size, it is a strange oddity. Most people that have not experienced this first-hand would claim that the animal may "appear" to be double in size, but merely has "bulked up" in size with the same skeleton underneath. From people that have experienced this first-hand, no one has ever questioned it or claimed it simply had bulked up. No one ever expected this to happen to a local barn cat, so I doubt there is much "before and after" photographic or home movie evidence as this was before those conveniences were popular (the late 60s was the last time I saw it happen before moving away).
Regardless, imagine that a black housecat was to "go wild" the same way; I suspect a lot of people would be convinced that it was a black cougar.
I’m truck driver and today I was heading back from liberty Missouri on I-72 and I saw huge big black cat that’s why I’m here searching about it
I think you are wrong. I saw one this morning chasing a deer while visiting my sisters lake house at Lake Hartwell Georgia. This is why I came across your video. I have been shocked that I even saw one! I am researching now because it’s so unbelievable and awesome at the same time! I heard it make a big cat noise when it took off chasing the small deer. We had been feeding the many deer that roam around but this morning they weren’t moving at all which we thought was odd. We were sitting on her porch when a small deer took off out of the woods with this black panther chasing it.
Really great video, just one problem,.. the black panther does exist in Massachusetts.. I seen one in the town of Easton while working on large equipment in an undeveloped condo complex.. from its nose to tail it was about 7 feet in length with a rather long tail.. it's height was around 3 feet or better.. I kept silent about it for 10 years until I just noticed on the news a woman spotted one in her yard and took pictures and now authorities are actively hunting it to exterminate it.... This creature will absolutely positively take out small children and pets... I firmly believe this species of cat was introduced by someone that collected exotic cats and then released it into the wild... Do not take this Dr video seriously because now it's proven the cat does exist.... I hope it's destroyed before anyone is hurt
You're describing a mountain lion. They are not black but can be confused in low light.
Im from Minnesota, I was on Vacation in Pensacola Fl in Sept of 2022, we were driving from Pensacola to New Orleans one day. Right after we crossed into Mississippi on Highway 10 I noticed something very black out in a field off to the right side of the road, it was 100% a very big black cat, I would compare the size to a mountain lion, I had never seen anything like it in the wild. I 100% saw a black panther in Mississippi
I cant speek for black panthers but no one can say with confidence that there are no mnt lions in the east. I am sure of this because I seen one, in 2014 I was hunting from a tree stand in south western wva and it walked right under me less than 30ft away. I have seen bobcats and this was not a little cat. I had a clear line of sight and I watched it for 3 minutes, it was the size of a large German Shepard and ever bit of 80lbs. it was the most terrifying thing I have ever seen in the woods and I am 100% sure it was a mountain lion.
we have plenty of mountain lions in alabama especially around cheha
Exactly I have one in my woods behind the house here in woodland
I have seen their prints
I've seen one on the east coast, in an area called panther valley. The state even denies mountain lions though they appear on many trail cams.
5:08 i think i got the wrong site. Not exactly what i was looking for
Here you go: www.cougarnet.org/sites/original/bigpicture.html
I know it sounds crazy but I KNOW that I and my family were awaken one night by a HUGE, solid black, wild cat (and we'd have called it a black panther if it had made ANY sense, but it didn't). It was screaming like a panther at our front door, and I (having two cats and just being a kid) opened the door to the shock of the size and my mom's scream as she grabbed me while my dad rushed to slam the door.
It was in winter of 1979 IN SOUTH DAKOTA. I can't explain it. I never considered it paranormal, but it is still a mystery to us! I was just wondering if anyone else had ever seen something like that so far north.
If it "screamed" then what you saw or heard was a mountain lion. Jaguars growl and roar, they don't make that screeching sound that is typical of mountain lions.
@armandorodriguez5120 okay when has a mountain lion/panther ever been solid black, though? It was definitely bigger than the ones I've seen.
@@JustAGrrrrl There are only two animals that can be called "black panthers" or big black cats, Jaguars and Leopards. Out of those two, only the jaguar is native to the americas but non-existent in the US with extremely rare cases in arizona in the last 20 years and these were spotted jaguars not melanistic (black). So if you saw a "black panther" then it had to had been a Jaguar (scientifically speaking) but there is absolutely no way there could have been jaguars in south dakota. Secondly, black panthers (jaguars or leopards) don't screech or scream, they have a very deep roar or growl. The only big cat that does scream or screech is a mountain lion which is actually native or common to south dakota yet they are not black but if you saw it at night, it can easily be confused as being "black" with low light.
@@armandorodriguez5120 I didn't say what it was, only what we experienced. It doesn't make sense to me, but it is what happened 🤷♀️
@@JustAGrrrrl it is a very interesting story and quite scary to be honest. I am not trying to say what you saw or discredit, I am simply giving my opinion as to what it was more than likely. There are plenty of videos here on youtube with mountain lion "screams". You should check them out, maybe they will confirm what you heard. They can be quite disturbing and scary and I sure being a little kid it was frightening.
I'm on the late tip. But I had to chime in. I grew up in a small California town. As a child my mothers drying machine broke, so at 10 pm she decided to go to the local laudromate to dry clothes taking myself and my sister. While playing around in the laudromate a black panther huge jumped onto the middle tall island table. We froze. My mother placed us slowly into the large wall dryer and locked the dryer door and then she took off running out the back closing the door behind her. The police dept. Was two buildings away. My sister and I watched his/her eyes glow yellow and walk in circles. When the police arrived they walked in and ran out followed by the cat. It was not recovered. We were taken from the large wall dryer and taken back to the police dept. Where our mother was waiting. Years later 2 black panthers terrified the entire gym of students and parents at a basketball game, I was there. Only to escape again. Now we live in the valley at the foothills where mountain lions, deer, black bears were the norm. But a black panther kept the community on guard. This was the last time I saw it, but have heard of sighting for more than 2 decades. I have cousins that also saw them.
My grandfather always told stories of Black Panthers on our large property in North Louisiana and as a kid I believed but as a adult I didn't but I started changing my mind when my son and I started seeing a mountain lion on our land when they obviously don't live here and wildlife and fisheries didn't believe me until I got multiple photos and videos. Now they believe but say it's just moving through but we have seen them for five years. If Mountain Lions can be here maybe something else could.
I saw one in the amazon jungle in Peru and it was crouched down. It was night and we had flashlights and were walking towards the main building for a tour of tarantulas and other night animals. I was walking back from my cabana with my cousin and I looked at it's glowing eyes from a distance and said "is that a puma?" My cousin and I both ran to the building as fast as we could, but I still remember those glowing eyes till this day and the black face. It didn't chase us. We really shouldn't have run too. Would highly not recommend that. Didn't even move from it's spot. But if you ever encounter one, you'll know it by its eyes and black face. Til this day, it was the scariest encounter ever. It was a black puma and why it didn't chase us? Couldn't tell you. We did everything you weren't supposed to. So, yeah. Don't do what we did. 😂
There are no "black" pumas. If it was indeed black then it was a jaguar. Amazing story regardless.
Saw a Black Mountain Lion in Tejon Ranch (Lebec) CA in 2011. It was against dry grass at dusk. I saw its two cubs that were fawn in color. Saw them before their mother which had black fur. She blended in exceedingly well especially when the cubs natural coat is well designed for camo in that environment.
1) They are elusive, and it’s harder to get a camera. 2) Biologists are doubters by design, and do not listen to hunters who are well trained at identifying these animals. 3) if all other medium/large cats are melanistic, why would mountain lions be different?
That's a great question! I am not sure that we know the answer to it, but what I do know is that melanistic big cats are not more elusive than others when it comes to camera traps. Where we get leopards and jaguars on cameras, we do get melanistic ones too and some areas have higher concentrations of them. Also think about all of the hunting that goes on and has gone on for centuries - and there's never been a case of one or one in a museum. Scientists need proof - and this is not just for hunters and that we don't trust them. For example, some scientists claim they got the thylacine on video (an extinct species), but other scientists don't think it is definitive enough to say it is one. It's nothing personal - we just need evidence because although you may be good at telling animals apart, the vast majority of the public isn't and we can't differentiate between who knows what.
I grew up in a small town where nearly everyone knows my maternal family- mostly through small businesses & owning restaurants (my grandmother had 10 siblings). As a kid, I was always told by family & older generations there was a "black panther" in areas between the streets at the tops in the "untouched treeline". I never believed them until my step-father came into our lives & taught me all about my love for outdoors/nature. We actually ended up living on one of the streets that people talk about and he decided to take me with him hiking that day. I don't have pictures because this was back in the late 1990s, but I can swear to you we were within 20yds of whatever kind of black, large wildcat it was. Bigger than any mountain lion/wild feline species native to north Alabama. If my stepdad had not grabbed me & covered my mouth before I screamed- I probably would not be alive today. We aren't the only ones around here who have been so close to it. There are stories still floating around from my mom's generation of townies being around it too.
P.S.
I never told my mom because I was afraid she would have a slight stroke & wouldn't let him take me anywhere outdoors ever again. 😂
Ironically, Tigers for Tomorrow (a sanctuary) was opened the following year for big cats just 35 mins away!
Driving one day past a freshly plowed field & looked to my left & saw a black cat running across the filed & i immediately thought it was a large house cat. I looked away didn't really think much of it till i looked back over at the cat & it was still running & actually moving across the field at a very high rate of speed, that is when i slowed down & the cat continued running across the field. I have never seen a house cat run that fast or even for that length of time, every house cat i have ever seen either cannot or has not run that far they usually are petered out and stop.
There have been pictures of Mountain lions in several Eastern states, not just Connecticut. There have been Cougar sightings in broad daylight as far East as the Adirondacks of Upstate New York. [[ including sightings of a mother with kittens ]] There have also been Cougar tracks and hair found in Eastern States that were confirmed by testing and by Wildlife Biologists. The historical range of the Jaguar was as far north as Southern Colorado. Also, I remember in the 60's and 70's when people in New England and New York reported seeing coyotes,,,, and these sightings were literally dismissed out - of - hand by wildlife professionals. Now Coyotes are in virtually every State East of the Mississippi and in all 52 Counties of New York State, including all parts of N.Y.C. { with the probable exception of Long Island } Could this be a repeat performance by Biologist from Eastern States about Mountain Lions, deny, deny, and deny again until you can no longer deny the existence ??
Thanks for the comment Britton. I do not deny there are verified reports of mountain lions in the east - in fact, I go into detail in it in this podcast episode, which I need to post to RUclips. stephanieschuttler.com/eastern-cougars/ But there is no breeding population. If you look at the map on the Cougar Network there are only a handful of verified sightings over the past 30 years. You need regular occurrences of females and kittens to be considered a real population: www.cougarnet.org/. We get cougars on camera traps all the time in their range. It is not a matter of detection. This video is about the current range of species, not the past. I'm not sure about the 60s and the 70s, but we didn't have camera traps back then. I work on large-scale camera trap projects and with literally thousands of camera trap sites across the east. I'm part of national and international camera trap networks. This is not denying anything - it is inferring species presence from the data.
@@FancyScientist Just saying there is no breeding population doesn't make it so. The biology professor emeritus of a Middle TN university had a female with cubs on his property in the 80's. There have been consistent sightings of mountain lions in that area for decades. Three adult cats were shot in that part of the state in the late 60's and early 70's. I've seen a picture of one of them, and I know who shot another. If mountain lions are moving in from the West, they've been doing it for a very long time. Finally, skeptical officials are acknowledging the presence of them because of trail cam pictures, but what has changed is the prevalence of the cameras, not the presence of the cats.
@@chrismyers2047 Trail cam data is exactly where this information comes from. I am on the board of Wildlife Insights and we have the largest camera trap database in the world www.wildlifeinsights.org/ including databases from WWF, WCS, Smithsonian, etc. We have tons of current cameras data from all over the US. We get mountain lion photos frequently where they are, but none in the east, outside of the Florida panther population.
I don't doubt there is a population of mountain lions in the eastern states. Not as abundant as in Western states but very possible. Mountain lions have the broadest range of any wild cat in the world. From alaska to patagonia.
I was working in Millstadt IL today which is surrounded by farm land and I went to go pee behind a barn and 50ft up a hill in a clearing a enormous large black cat that I can only explain looked like a damn black panther noticed me and froze and we stared at each other for a good 20 seconds It looked to be about 60 to 80lbs it was solid black with flat fur and It sure as hell was no house cat and I've seen mountain lions in Missouri it was no mountain lion the only explanation of what it looked like was a black panther which i thought don't exist here. As soon as it took off I ran to front of the job site to get my phone out of my toolbox to try and get a pic but it was no where to be found by time I got back. Also I did some research after seeing this and if you Google black panther in Illinois there was multiple past sightings of what looked like a black panther in that exact area I was in.
Valona Arkansas. 100% black panther today 5/14/24. I'm sorry but you are wrong.
Photos?
I saw the back end of either a completely black jaguarundi or a black panther in my back yard at 6am a few months ago. North of Babocomari Ranch, AZ; near the US/Mexico border. I opened my back door and it leaped up onto my privacy fence with one graceful jump. It’s hunch and it’s very long, thick tail was visible for a lengthy pause before it jumped down to the ground on the other side of my fence and ran away. I froze. AZ born and raised and I’ve never seen THAT kind of cat before. Larger than a bobcat, about the size of a Mtn lion. Wasn’t a Mtn lion, wasn’t a coatimundi. I know the difference. Setting up trail cams, but now we have dogs so I doubt I’ll see it again.
I have lived on the coast in Northern California for a long time. I have seen black mountain lions a few times here. I didn't know it was rare. I will get a picture the next time.
I live in NorCal. In 1977 I saw one on Yurok Indian reservation.
Use thermal camera drones in the areas where the most sightings have been claimed. They are expensive but not unattainable. The best versions of them slice through the brush and highlight anything warmblooded with ease
The problem is not detection though - in ares where there are cougars, you get them on camera traps - they are not avoiding them. Same with jaguars and leopards in the ranges that they live in. There have been jaguars caught on camera in Arizona. The point of the video is that people say that they are seeing them, but there's no evidence on cameras outside from those few individuals and they are not black. And there have not been any cases of black cougars.
@FancyScientist agree I'm simply saying it's a less passive method than stationary trail cameras if someone was serious about finding wildlife in a more active methodology it seems to be a good option. Given enough time and money of course but that goes without saying
I'm from Michigan, we have cougars here! Late 80s early 90s we had a lot of black panther sightings, and I only know that because I seen one estimated about 200 lbs myself! I was about 15 at the time, and no I don't have any photos to verify this to you. But I know what I saw!
They are in Michigan: www.wxyz.com/news/there-were-13-confirmed-cougar-sightings-in-michigan-in-2020-here-are-the-pictures
In 1984 i almost hit a black jaguar in Rockley Nova Scotia on my dirt bike. It was night time and the trail was very tight and dense. But it ran right into the trail forcing me to drag my back tire stopping 2 feet from hitting it so maybe someones big cat escaped? It was before camera traps but i want to go back with some now and see if its reproduced with another.
Had one cross the road in front of me. Not more that 25 feet. He had one thing on his mind. I could tell by the way he was walking. I knew there was a female and after clearing my head I grabbed my phone for pictures. Then as he got to the tall grass and another big cat more a cougar color was there. The the cougar saw me and took off up the hill. The Panther took off after her. I am not the only one that has seen this. This was in late August and severe drought conditions. I am in the north central part of Eastern Washington. This Black cat was quite skinny. Rounder head and wears more round. Big gorgeous long tail. I told the home owner to put up a camera. This area was a small creek with surrounding Aspen and poplar trees with tall tan grass. I was shocked at what I was seeing. Other people have seen them. There are more than this young Panther i saw. I know photos. The time it took me to comes to a stop and grab my camera after an unbelievable sighting was to long and I did t even snap a photo cause they were gone. I believe the female was in heat the way the Panther was part walk part run with his head strait up staring at the creek area. Never even looked at me in my truck
OK I'm from Florida north east Florida spanning from Yulee to Middleburg Florida and I've personally saw large black cats twice, my sister has seen them more than once and my mother has had at least one sighting, so what exactly are these large black panther looking cats we've seen? These cats are the size of leopards, one of the sightings I had this cat was digging in my garbage can outside. I do not have video of this because this happened in 2001 when camera phones werent the norm.
I’m not arguing with you, but what I saw was not a black jaguar here in San Antonio Texas. It was a black mountain about 200 pounds.
Can’t see god either but I know he is very real
I guarantee you they exist. I had one walk straight down a tree right next to me just south of Springfield Mo. I was frozen with fear and could not move my body until it moved away from me. It acted as if it didn't see me and calmly walked away into the darkness. This happened near the end on my friends driveway right next to a pole light in his yard. It was definitely all black and your opinion can't take my experience away from me.
When I saw one in 1977 on Klamath river on Indian reservation, I froze in fear too.
Your unreliable, frightful nightime sighting doesn't consitute scientific evidence to prove the existance of a melanistic cougar _(Puma concolor)_ They are absolutely a myth, until someone photographs, records, captures or kills one.
I can tell you I’ve seen what I think to be a black panther. I live in Oklahoma. We were hired to set traps because something was killing Texas Walker thoroughbreds. We also used rabbit squealing tapes and tried to lure whatever was doing it. I saw what I believe was a panther about 250 yards away. It was beautiful. Slick and shiny short black hair. As far as I know, it’s still out there.
There's been sighting of "Black Panthers" in the UK and Australia.
So Geographical Location Doesn't always tell you which species of cat it is. We dont have Mountain Lions in Ontario Canada but there has been a few sightings over the years. Animals can make there way hundreds or even thousands of miles outside their known territory. We had a black bear make his way very close to downtown Toronto. We have a massive ravine system referred as the green belt. They just follow the rivers and streams from up north and work their ways south.
Sightings or confirmed sightings? Sightings in general are not reliable, they have to be confirmed by experts. If they are confirmed, it would for sure be an escaped captive animal as there are definitely no large cats in either of those locations.
@@FancyScientist Video on RUclips of Panthers and Thylacines.
Very recent.
@@rabbithole8592 The thylacine video is definitely not confirmed by scientists - it's not enough to ID.
@@FancyScientist There's multiple Thylacine videos.
We have the ability to confirm these things ourselves.
Don't wait for "Mainstream science" to confirm it.
They won't until we actually catch one.
Same goes for Sasquatch.
@@FancyScientist Even though Sasquatch aka Bigfoot was proven to exist in 2013. Melba Ketchum Genome Project. Peer reviewed and Classified. Homo Sapiens Cognatus. Zoobank
People still don't believe it.
I don’t have any pictures but I came face to face with a mountain lion in Red Wing , Minnesota. I went to town and asked the bartender and he said yeah , I’m not the first person to say that
When I was a little kid, I saw a huge black cat, and I was so scared I ran back in the house and told my mom, and every time that she came out the cat was gone, I kept calling it a black tiger because I thought lions had a main, it was huge about the size of a tiger or lion and it was pure black like a crow but the last time I saw it my mom died the same day, I swear on a stack of bibles every word I say is true
When I was a little kid, I saw a black tiger in real life and I was scared to death but no body ever believed me
I saw a large black cat in rural (really about as rural as North Alabama gets. We even saw Black bear one day cross the road..a mother and 2 cubs all kinda thin) Morgan County, Alabama, just outside of The Wheeler Wildlife Refuge with a long thick tail, a long low body, a large head, 10000% black, and in stealth mode unlike any predator I've ever seen in person. I saw the tracks in the sand, and if this was a large house cat, its feet were bigger than a coke can. A few years after I saw this cat a man was attacked by a big black cat 10 miles away from my sighting and the cuts and scratches to go with it. I wanna say he had security camera footage but I can't promise that. They ran his story all over the local news.
I am a wildlife biologist also
and I can assure you that you are wrong. When I was in grad school at the University of Arkansas, I was part of the Arkansas Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit and one of the professors told me of his personal experience of being stalked by a large black cat while hunting. Jump forward a few years and I am in Texas and I personally see a large cat maybe 30 yards away on our farm and my wife's uncle twice sees one up close deer hunting about 40 miles away. All of these were clearly black. No cats at our farm for 20 years and then my son shoots a young male (100 lbs) as it stalked our baby horses. This was the first recorded in the county. They are very secretive. Also, many game and fish are super lazy. I tried contacting the Mountain Lion specialist for Texas Parks and Wildlife over and over and they never called me back. It was finally certified by a game warden through photos.
Cool! What's your name and where do you work? How do you explain the lack of black panthers on camera traps all around the country? Tons of scientists would be jumping at the chance to be able to showcase a verified photo.
I was driving and yes it was dark, a large cat ran a cross the road about 15 feet in front of my truck, it was running probably touch the road 2 times it was low it was running fast what really got me was the tail was really long. was it a black panther i dont know, i do know it was a lot bigger then a bobcat by a lot it was black and it ran like lightning.
I've noticed that a lot of people who claim to have seen "black panthers" in the US don't seem to be aware that Jaguars, which are the only species of panther in the Americas, have only been documented in the wild in the US 8 times since 1996. But somehow every other drunk guy in the South has seen a black one, which are are almost 10 times rarer in their natural habitats than the regular looking spotted kind. They also coincidentally never have a phone or camera or hunting rifle on them at the time.
Yes, exactly. The cats aren’t afraid of the cameras so if they were here we would get them on camera traps! The jaguars are so rare in the US but we get them on camera traps.
You do know Jaguars even in there natural range are almost never seen by humans and are known to be even more so skittish to humanity than Cougars are, just look at all the of the written examples of the American Tyger from the 1700 and 1800s as well as Sebastian Cabot’s map from 1545 showing Jaguars in the Ohio valley
@@JamesB-mi9uu Yes of course. One of my colleagues is an expert on jaguars in Belize and has only seen them a handful of times in real life despite studying them for decades. But jaguars and other big cats do not avoid camera traps and when camera traps are set within their range, they get photos of them. That's how we know they are there :) As the video discusses, I talk about how there are jaguar sightings in the US on camera traps, but it's only a few individuals.
@@FancyScientist All my argument is is that they were once native to the southeast United States in the last 600 years with accounts having them here till 1850, so in theory they could survive in the deep mountains and swamps that are untouched even if it were escaped, one example is in 1965 a jaguar escaped in Florida and was undetected and thriving in the wild for 2 years.
@@JamesB-mi9uu I understand what you are saying, but now we live in a time with camera traps. They are ALL over the place - run by scientists, hunters, and private landowners. Jaguars are wide-ranging animals so it would be incredibly unlikely that they wouldn't be detected. And given all of the people who say here on the comments that they have seen a black big cat - it especially doesn't make sense. If they are being detected by people, they would be seen on the camera traps.
There is black panthers in North America you're you're just a storyteller
My dad was in the camp watching tv and saw a cat with a long tail and green eyes it was maybe a black panther but maybe a Cougar but I don’t know my dad was so scared that he couldn’t even record
So has anyone sent you photos or video of their black PA ther/jaguar sightings? If so, have you compiled those photos and videos together on a website or a video? I'd like to see for myself. Thanks!
Only one person sent me photos. One was a domestic cat and the other one was clearly a fake. But yes, you are right I should add them to my blog post of this! I think I still have them.
I have yet to see anything convincing also. but yes, definitely add them to your blog. where can I find the link? thanks
@@cblakemusic This is the link: stephanieschuttler.com/what-is-a-black-panther/ I can't add the photos though because I don't have permission and I don't remember who sent them to me so I can't add them. One of them though was in a link in the comments. It is here: imgur.com/bO6eHgJ
Joe Rogan has shown footage. Hard to judge scale but no housecat! Stephanie could find it. If not she is dishonest.
I had heard of mountain lions in both Wisconsin andTennessee. East of the Mississippi. And I had also heard that black jaguars have been sighted, maybe not recently, in southernmost Mexico.