German Black Panther Photo
Posted by: Loren Coleman on October 22nd, 2010
Mushroom collector Jean-Claude Gabriel (49): “At first I thought it was a great dog. But then I realized it was the big cat. It is about 90 centimeters high, 30 cm long tail.”
Gabriel remained calm, whipped out his cell phone and filmed it.
The photo of the German black panther is being published in the country’s newspapers this week. (Source auf Deustch.)
Due to concern and worry, officials in the western German state of Rhineland-Palatinate on October 20, 2010, gave hunters permission to shoot the black panther that has been sighted near the Belgian border for almost a year.
“We’re looking into if and how we can find the animal,” said Nicole Scherer, spokesperson for the license agency.
Reportedly, the government officials believe the animal is a black panther that escaped from a French animal park some time ago. No specific source, incident, or background is given for this theory.
A “large black creature” has been sighted along the Belgian border near Trier four times just since August 2010. Tranquilizing the animal is reported to not be a good option, officials said, because “it could flee in the seven minutes it takes for the drugs to take hold.”
The black creature was first seen in the Belgian Ardennes region, just on the other side of the German border, about one year ago. Later similar sightings were reported in other parts of Belgium, Luxemburg, and Germany’s Eifel region near Trier.
“According to the number of sightings we must take the situation seriously,” said Thomas Müller, spokesperson for the Trier-Saarburg county administration, told The Local, an English-language German newspaper.
There is a long history of sightings of melanistic mystery cats in Germany, and, in context, this report fits well into those accounts without the need to “explain” it as an escapee. The excuse motif is worldwide, for in America, “black panther” reports have been “explained away” as circus train wreck and traveling zoo escapees for almost two centuries.
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.
Am intrigued. Would be nice to view the video and come to our own conclusion than a translated news story and very blurry mobile phone image. Must be one hell of an old mobile phone. Mine does pretty good video and images.
I have lived in Germany for over thirty years now and for over ten years I have been interested with cryptozoology. There have been reports of various big cats during these years but not in such a high frequency that someone could think there is actually a breeding population. No dead big cats in all these years (except of the “biggest” cat in our woods: the Lynx). If there was really a big cat it was indeed an escapee what is highly unusual and always fast known because logically the first thing to do for police is calling all private persons, zoos or circuses in the region who keep big cats (not much at all in view of our laws regarding this; btw we had no DWAA and there’s surely no (or no high) rate of illegal keeping as space in Germany is not that big to keep a big cat for a long time unseen).
I agree – as I’ve also spoken once with my collegue who reasearched such cases of “black cats” in Germany – yes there’s a long history of such reports but these are more mythical creatures of folklore than living animals.
Is there a better photo? That could be anything. I could take that with my phone, play with the background and everyone would think the same thing, only it was of a house cat. At least the authorities over there aren’t ruling the possibility out.
The reason cryptos stay cryptos is because they share the remarkable ability to disable even the most up-to-date photographic technology – a bit like Thunderbird 1. I mean, it’s just a blob – from one right angle it could be Micky Mouse barfing!