Black Panther Sightings In Oklahoma
Posted by: Loren Coleman on April 29th, 2011
Black or melanistic large felids do not exist in North America, other than the rare encounter with a black jaguar (Panthera onca). Nevertheless, people see them, report them, and ponder about them. Melanistic panthers are a known animal for Asia and Africa, technically going by the more correct common name black leopard (Panthera pardus). Despite one report of a “black cougar” in 1843 in Brazil, there is no proof this was a cougar/puma/mountain lion (Puma concolor) and not merely a melanistic jaguar (Panthera onca).
Black jaguars
Black leopard
The alleged black cougar
Do breeding populations of “black panthers,” an unknown species, or pockets of escaped melanistic leopards exist in the USA and Canada?
Here is another series coming out of the lower tier of the USA. Could a “half grown” black panther merely be a domestic cat? How do they know it is “half grown”? Whatever it is, for now, it is a cryptid.
POCASSET, Okla. — Some Oklahomans are on the hunt for what they are calling a black panther or mountain lion that has been spotted near several homes.
The creature has been reportedly seen near Pocasset in rural Grady County.
“It was about half grown, had a tail about 4 feet long and it was solid black,” witness Russell Dahl said.
It has become quite the talk of the town after a few recent run-ins with people, including Dahl’s neighbor who had an encounter while on an evening jog.
“It liked to scare her to death,” he said.
The animal is said to have been roaming the area for decades.
Dahl said he questioned the creature’s existence when his son described his sighting, but he quickly became a believer.
“I said, ‘You saw a coyote.’ Well, the next day I saw it and it wasn’t no coyote,” he said.
Officials at the Oklahoma State Department of Wildlife say they’ve had a definite increase in the number of calls they’ve gotten from people who say they’ve seen big cats after a mountain lion was captured in Tulsa over the weekend.
“Sometimes I think they might be seeing a bobcat, maybe even coyotes, once in a while dogs,” Game Warden Ron Comer said. “You can’t always believe what your eyes are telling you.”
The latest sightings in this rural little town haven’t only given the locals a bit of a scare, but some say the cats have gone after their cattle and pets.
Whatever it is, experts say it could be one of a number of different animals.
“I never try to tell anybody that they didn’t see what they thought they saw, but the melanistic gene does not exist in the mountain lion or the pumas or panthers or whatever you want to call the north American big cat,” Comer said.
The melanistic gene increases an animals dark pigmentation, turning the animal black.
Within the past few years, new laws have allowed people to kill mountain lions or big cats if they feel threatened.
However, now there is no open season to hunt the animals and it is illegal to do so.
As for the cat caught in Tulsa, wildlife officials believe it was a caged pet that somehow escaped from someone who was not licensed to have it.
Source: Joleen Chaney Reporting for KFOR, April 26, 2011
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.
I’ve always heard of sightings of black panthers throughout my life here in North Texas. My father and brother reported hearing one screaming on their deer lease in Copperas Cove, Texas on several occasions, as well. I just assumed they existed here in North America.
Half grown?
With a four-foot tail, it’s not only a new species, but it’s bigger than the cougar by quite a bit. When it’s grown up, I mean (even though a full-grown cougar’s tail is only three feet long).
Four feet?
Now I’m not a geneticist. But we’re saying here that a melanistic cougar is IMPOSSIBLE? Really? What backs that up? Not an absence of reports; we are reporting never-before-seen things all the time.