By Jon Downes and Jessica Dardeen
There is an old French proverb which says that at night all cats are grey. The (probably) fictional Lazarus Long - star of a series of novels by the late `Dean of Science Fiction` Robert Heinlein - is reported to have disagreed with this statement, claiming that cats of all shapes and sizes could be found in an "endless variety" of colours. This is basically true. There are several dozen species of cat in the world, and nearly all of them can be found in a variety of colour morphs, most notably melanistic or black! However, there is one exception: the cougar (or Mountain Lion, or Puma) has never been proved to have exhibited a black form.
pic by Jon Downes
This is weird because the puma is the only sizeable member of the cat family to be found in most of North America, and there have been reports of big black cats from many parts of the United States - most notably the Mid-West - for decades, and possibly even centuries. This morning I attended a kid's soccer game arranged by parents in the small town of Marshall, Illinois. There I spoke to local residents, and I found that many people knew about the `panthers, but they are like a game of Chinese Whispers. So far I haven't found anyone who has seen them for theirselves - but everyone knew of someone who had.
So, what are they?
The first thing that they cannot be is `panthers`. The panther is the black form of the leopard (Panthera pardus), and although these magnificent beasts are found across much of the world - Africa, Asia, and in historic times even parts of Europe - they are not found in North America.
We have already seen that the puma does not have a black colour morph. It is also supposedly extinct in Illinois and Indiana. The last Illinois specimen was officially killed in the late 19th Century, but they have been seen regularly ever since.
pic by Jon Downes
Panthers, pumas and even tigers and lions are regularly kept as pets. Today we visited the `Exotic Feline Rescue Center` in Center Point, Indiana. They told us that many species of big cat are kept - both illegally and legally - as pets in the state, and showed us unfortunate creatures that had been rescued from the most appaling conditions. After hearing some of the horror stories about big cats kept under the most horrific and inadequate circumstances it was not at all difficult to suppose that a large number of these poor creratures escape and repopulate the wild places from which they were supposedly extirpated over a century ago.
But at the moment we are in the central part of the State. The longest running accounts of 'black panthers' come from the southern part of Illinois - and it is there that we must go next, in search of the truth behind this gloriously enigmatic mystery.
Watch this space.
