New Black Panther Video
Posted by: Loren Coleman on July 17th, 2008
Published July 16, 2008 08:59 pm – Galena, Kansas — Galena police are seeking the help of the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks to determine if the animal caught on a video surveillance camera at a local business is a cougar or some other large cat, or a common house cat.
Bulletin: Surveillance video captures cougar or large house cat w/ surveillance video taken at Allied Waste Services.
The video was taken at Allied Waste Services at 2:32 a.m. on Saturday, July 5. The company is located on old Route 66, east of Galena, but still in Kansas.
The video shows a dark, feline figure walking with a fence in the background and a trash container in the foreground. The cat stops briefly to sniff or lick something on the pavement before continuing out of the camera view.
Police officer Jerry Dannels was among those viewing the video Wednesday at the Galena Police Station who thought it was a cougar or other large cat, pointing out the muscle tone visible in the video and the cat’s neck.
What are needed are some videos of domestic cats at this same location, showing the rather apparent shoulder musculature compared to off-site puma footage, now don’t we?
For more details, see here.
Thanks to the alert from Cryptomundian Michael Dunn.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Note that this is maybe 10 miles from where the “Neosho panther” was shot (the declawed one that showed up after the tornado). Perhaps the unknown person who lost the one cat actually had a pair?
What? To me it looks like an ordinary house cat!
the fence in the background has a bar that goes across it. the bar cant be any higher than 3 feet. the cat looks kinda small to me.
To: StinkFoot… actually I’ve seen chain-link fences go at high as 10 feet or more. Especially around businesses, usually with barbwire coils at the top. Personally, I have a six-foot high chain link dog run.
@BlueTinkerbell: yeah the fence is about that high, but i was addressing the support bar lower to the ground.
I’m not very good at figuring out size through perspective, etc., but I just watched the same silhouette going across my living room–my rather large black housecat. What someone mentioned as the muscles around the neck appears to me as just the shoulders of a cat holding his head down in a traditional wary forward motion. It also might mean that the cat is an older one, like mine, as the younger ones tend to hold their necks more erect. Still, if anyone can calculate the size accurately, it would make all the difference. The small size of the head also looks more housecat to me rather than leopard or puma.
It would be easier to tell if, like people always seem to suggest here, they gave something to compare the size with. Most I can tell, it sort of looks like a big cat, based on the size of the grass – then again, it’s rather difficult to tell individual blades apart in that grainy footage. Are a lot of people just releasing big cats this year, or could big cat reports simply be spreading a bit in response to other reports? Or most likely some combo? Whatever this instance turns out, let’s just hope we don’t end up with a full-blast monster flap on our hands.
I vote cat.
Compare the bottom bar/tube of the chain link fence in the BG with the cat.
If it were a panther, I’d be shocked.
I’m guessing house cat.
At first glance, and going by on-the-spot, don’t-think first impressions, I also said cat.
Looking back at it, and after looking at the footage more closely, I’m willing to reconsider and theorize that it could indeed be a “panther.” Knowing that to be a “broad” term in itself.
I so think we need to compare the musculature of this specimen with the musculature of common cats. You’re right, Loren. Did not occur to me.
I must say the way the shoulder goes up and down sort of reminds me of a bigger feline than a common house cat. I guess it depends on the distance between the camera and the creature and (as stated before) the size of the creature in relation to other objects. This is a cool guessing game. I like this one.
it is just a plain old housecat, by the way it moves, and the shape of the body
This is a tough one. It’s difficult to see much detail in the fence, and to gauge the distance of the animal from it, in order to estimate the size in relation to it. The cat does look fairly muscular. The shoulders of my own pet cats rise up above their backs in a similar, obvious way when they are stalking. But in that mode they tend to slink along in a decidedly crouched way, with their hips lower to the ground, and their heads held lower, but stretched forward and parallel to the ground. When they are walking in a normal fashion, their shoulders don’t seem to stick up as obviously as those of this cat seem to do. I hope we learn more about this one.
The ears and the tail shout domestic cat to me.
I wouldn’t have compared this video to my black cat unless I had noticed the way my cat holds his head and the way his shoulder blades go up when he walks. It is the same as this cat on the video. Also my cat is some kind of a mixed breed that is rather long and big-boned but sleek of fur, so he gives this look of a panther or leopard in his proportions. He is getting elderly and has arthritis, so that might explain why he holds his head low like this and raises his shoulder blades–could be he has a chronic sore neck.
I don’t suppose we are ever going to find out if this is the common housecat, or even someone’s pet?
That is a house cat. Panthers lumber and most scuff their huge feet. Not to mention most pictures I’ve seen of most large cats that black panthers are a part of, their legs are even in height. Most house cats that get mistaken for panthers, the front legs seem lower/smaller than the back.
Panther or house cat.. one of those two.. or unknown species
I actually live in Galena Kansas and have know about “cougars” in our area for my entire life. In the summer time you can hear several big cats howl. I will get video of someone walking the same path that the big cat took and post it here soon. I obviously wont be able to get my camera at the angle that their security cam is but ill do my best. Ill scout around for tracks.
The length of the cat is what makes it look like something bigger than an ordinary house cat as far as comparing it to the background. Still, there needs to be other pictures taken to compare and get a better idea. There are big cats there, I’ve come acrosss them quite a few times. I’ve seen them with slickhair, and I’ve seen them with big bushy hair. I got to get close to one road kill that was of the bushy hair type. It was about 2 1/2-3 feet long. I have seen them on the round hay stacks atleast 3 times. I imagine they use them to get above the grass to get a better view for prey. Every single big cat I have seen was black. They are there!
and yes I’m talking about Kansas and in Oklahoma as well.
Domestic “house cats” can be pretty large; even bigger than 2 1/2 – 3 feet. Apparently, in 2006, the record length for a domestic cat was held by a 48″ long Main Coon.
Given the quality of the footage, I would say it could possibly be one of the “newer” mixed breeds of exotic and domestic cats, widely referred to as “Bengals”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_(cat)
More than likely, given the looks of it though, I would say it had been crossed with the Serval:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serval
And the hazards of these larger mixed breed cats:
http://www.theage.com.au/national/what-do-you-get-when-you-mix-an-african-serval-with-a-tabby-20080614-2qnv.html
The servals do have a melanistic gene, adding to the possibility of the “black panther” sightings. I’ve seen some of these cats first hand (not the melanistic) and they do have a very large, long-legged, muscular appearance. The long legs really add to the “apparent” size of the animal, making it difficult to gauge weight accurately (the original article had one person guessing it was 120lbs or more).