We are all obviously talking about the famous puma, cougar, mountain lion, painter, catamount and panther.
I had a friend in the central part of Wisconsin, who owned a small zoo. He had the most impressive large black cat I've ever seen. I always went up there when the zoo was closed to the public. Then you could actually get close enough to the animals to touch them. (and I suppose, get bit, if you're not careful)
For those of you old enough to remember when Ford came out with the Cougar, they had a blue and white Ford sign with a cougar jumping off of it in their commercials. That was my friends pet cougar. He made quite a few commercials with his cats. He really had a great little zoo.

I have seen melanistic (black) leopards and jaguars- in zoos. No (zero) melanistic cougars have ever been verified. While not the best reference; take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_panther

Ron, you're exactly correct. No melanistic cougar has EVER been documented. Plenty of pictures that are out of focus or taken from a long distance, lots of folks saying they have seen one, etc. But....thousands of lions have been taken by hunters over at least the last 150 years and no black one. No road kills, nothing. If someone were to actually come up with a true black cougar not only would it be almost priceless to science but it would be worth a ton of money to the guy that had it, dead or alive.

Bob

What county are you in?

Thanks Ron.... seems a lot of folks aren't aware that every CAT is not a cougar/panther. Black leopards exist, and if in this country they are an escapee which was once a pet or zoo animal, or still in a zoo.

Using a bit of scientific and deductive reasoning.... even though there has never been a black PANTHER/COUGAR/MOUNTAIN LION/PUMA found, let's say the chance of a melanistic one is a million to 1. Just in Illinois, the DNR gets well over 300 calls a year from people claiming to see a black panther. (The "black" claim instantly causes the caller to lose all credibility with any of the biologists.)

Now.... take those 300 calls and reduce them to one-tenth, just for fun, giving us 30 black panther calls. Using the million:1 ratio, that would suggest we have 30 million normal (tan) panthers running around our state. No need to take this any farther.... we would be tripping over them when we opened our door to go outside.

I usually get 3 or 4 "black panther" calls each year. I hear about them much more often than that!

I think God's country (Alabama) is the native range of the black panthers. There sure are an awful lot seen there. LOL

Hi, I'm new to the board and got interested in this thread. I lived in British Columbia (South) for quite a few years and worked with Fish and Wildlife as a Predator Control Officer. When we had problems with Cougar we would most often use dogs, but they are also easy to snare. They will go for a Cubby set the same as any Lynx.
As for the black cougar, I have seen one crossing the road south of Revelstoke B.C. (maybe) With the amount of people who run them with dogs or trappers who snare them it is possible that they could remain uncaught. The wilds of B.C. is vast, and it is a hope that some where they do exist.
Good luck on you cat.

The Florida panther once covered great territory east of the Mississippi here in the southeast.Each year their numbers become smaller and smaller. Many get run over by cars or lose their lives to a territorial fight between two males.



We don't have any big black or melanistic cats.The only big black cats would be the Jaguar or leopards (as Ron Scheller mentioned) which would of emigrated from South America and if they do exist were probably released into the wild intentionally or after some disaster.

There have been photos taken of black bobcats here in Florida though. But the photo is yet not in perfect focus.

I once read that if you put a lamb in a cage and hang the cage in a tree the lamb will call the mountain lion in. When the lamb gets nervous turn the hounds out and climb up on your horse. It's on. lol

Melanistic color phases can occur in any species, some more frequent than others

black panthers are real up here in da U.P. eh we had two less than a mile from our camp we found 2 huge scratch poles with their prints around and about a mile from our camp is a little tavern with a wood pile acrost the street these two cats witch were huge and black sat ontop the pile long enough for pictures i will try get a pic the owner of the tavern and owner of the pic is my friends aunt

this is kinda what it was like when some one saw the first albino racoon or deer

its only a matter of time until i kill one in ks, hence the name.
couple of yrs ago i had an encounter with one. face to face. no joke.

they are around, granted people think they see them more often than they do, i have seen what i believe to be cougar tracks on my farm (but i havent ever seen what i know are lion tracks), where someone i trust has had an encounter with one while walking the family dachshund, and i would venture to guess ive tried harder than anyone else in the area to catch/hunt them, day and night with several different methods, all unsucessfuly, the biggest problem seems to be i get a call a day or 2 after somebody saw it, by then if it was there its long gone, but its still kinda fun to hunt

on the black panther subject, while i am fully aware that there is no breeding population of black cats outside a very limited range in the amazon, i have seen what i thought was a black panther, of all the time i spend in the woods in illinois it was actually right along the hiway in missouri about dusk, i told my mom who was driving at the time that i would swear it was a cat if i didnt know better, and it was about a month or so later i learned that a "large" juvinile cat was killed a few miles from where i saw what ever i saw by a sherrif, that cat had been declawed, ie it was an escaped pet, but that dosent mean i didnt see it "in the wild" and even if these illinois cougars are transplants or escaped pets that dosent mean they arent here