Black panthers - cats, not superheroes - have been reported repeatedly for decades in Pennsylvania, although even more rarely than have mountain lions.
Many of those making the reports generally assume they have encountered some black phase of a mountain lion, but some ascribe to a theory that the black cats are some different, unknown species.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently declared extinct the eastern cougar, one of 11 subspecies of mountain lions native to North America, but reports of black panthers generally are viewed as closer to reports of Bigfoot than to out-of-place cougars.
However, like reports of mountain lions in Pennsylvania, no reports of black panthers have been confirmed in Pennsylvania.
In addition, no black mountain lions have ever been recorded anywhere, even in the American West where cougars are known to occur.
The spots are difficult to discern on a melanistic leopard in India's Nagarhole National Park.
The few black panthers that have been confirmed have been melanistic jaguars in Central or South American or melanistic leopards in Africa or Asia. Under close inspection the black spots characteristic of those species have been present, but obscured by the unusual black pigment in the rest of their fur.
Melanism - a genetic variation that results in excess pigmentation turning the fur entirely black - isn't part of the cougar's genetic make-up, according to Michelle LaRue, executive director of the Cougar Network, a research organization founded in 2002 that since then has compiled more than 700 confirmations of cougars outside their established range in the West, none of them black panthers.
Even in bobcats - the cougar's much more common and widespread cousin, which occurs across much of Pennsylvania - melanism is so far that only a dozen sightings have been confirmed anywhere in North America.
In his book, "Cougar: The American Lion," Kevin Hansen offered 40 English names, 25 native North American names and 18 native South American names for the mountain lion - everything from catamount to painter - and black panther did not make the list.
Biologicially feasible or not, the reports of black panthers continue.
The most recent came in just last night, coincidentally, as I was writing this. A resident of Sweet Valley in Luzerne County reported that her family has seen a black mountain lion 4 times since August 2017. She described it as "about 2-3 feet tall, long body with long tail. And a slow stride of a gait when it walks. Rounded ears. Just sits to watch for a while, then goes into the woods."
In November 2015, the YouTube outdoor show Leatherwood Outdoors captured what looked like a black mountain lion during a Clarion County archery hunt for deer. However, the automatic focus of their camera equipment never caught a really sharp image of the animal and the participants seemed more excited about shooting a doe than having captured some potentially ground-breaking video.
And, 3 years before that, in 2012, a driver reported seeing a "black panther" with "a real long body, real long tail, shiny black, rippling muscles" that crossed Route 61 near Locust Gap in Northumberland County and hopped up onto roadside guardrail" in the middle of a sunny day at close range.
- Eastern mountain lion officially declared extinct
- Are mountain lions on their way to Pennsylvania?
- Bigfoot, mystery mountain lions, UFOs all 'out there' in Pennsylvania, according to some: Monsters of Pennsylvania