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Back in early October 2023, reports of a “black panther” in Louisiana made national news.

The story at that link was accompanied by a photo of a melanistic leopard or jaguar, neither of which is native to post-Pleistocene North America. (Back in ice-age times, you did have to watch out for jaguars from what’s now Oregon all the way to modern-day Pennsylvania — big ones, too, up to twenty percent larger than today’s jaguar — but not for the past 10,000-plus years.)

This was not the first time people had claimed to have seen a “black panther.”

Ten years earlier, news AND photographs of a big black cat in Louisiana got folks shaken up, but reportedly it was likely a hoax.

News stories on the October 2023 sightings in Rapides Parish lack photographs of the strange beast, but the claims are intriguing.

I know what it probably isn’t:

• Black leopard — Old World cat.
• Black jaguar — melanism appears fairly often in these big cats, but as mentioned, they won’t be found in Louisiana these days. Even in southern Texas and Arizona, it’s big news when a solitary wanderer is seen.

  News — and a nickname.

• Black panther — yes,”panther” is one of the many names for Puma concolor, a/k/a mountain lion, cougar, or puma. The problem is that there are no verified reports of a melanistic mountain lion — ever.
  Settlers have known this cat for centuries, too, so it does seem as though a true black panther would have been credibly reported by now.

Was it an unusually large black house cat that somebody saw in October?

Could be, but I have my doubts. Someone described it as something you would see in a zoo, and they probably didn’t have this in mind:

Also, I know of another small cat that does fit that description — an Old World native but imported here to build the Chausie fancy cat breed; and it is often melanistic.

This small wild feline:

Not Fluffy’s ancestor, the African wildcat, but sometimes tamed and portrayed in Ancient Egyptian artwork, too.

That was filmed in India’s Velavadar National Park, but some scenes in it resemble Louisiana’s open wetlands.

What better place to find a cattery escapee known as a reed cat, swamp cat, jungle cat, or Felis chaus?

We met Chaus last year.

I can’t prove that the newly sighted Louisiana “black panther” is a jungle cat, but that’s much more likely than a leopard, jaguar, or mountain lion.

So keep a camera ready and be on the lookout for an unidentifiable something that looks like it should be in a zoo!

Safety alert: Little Chaus is no more dangerous than the serval, but again, a tamed (not domesticated) wild cat that has escaped from captivity is unpredictable — get photodocumentation, but also please do call in professionals rather than trying to handle it on your own.

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Lagniappe:

Meanwhile, in Arizona…

My guess is jaguarundi, although as far as I know, these have not been documented in the US for a long time.

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Featured image: asani.Bhaduri via Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

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