“Panthers”
- This topic has 81 replies, 23 voices, and was last updated Feb 22, 2007 at 3:45 pm by
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I don’t think this is the confirmation newsletter the AGFC guy was talking about but it has some great information.
Zach
I guess when the cat bites him on the (insert any posterior word here) it will then be time to verify they are there. haha
“Sorry, but if someone says they saw a “black panther,” it should be given the same credibility as someone who says they saw Bigfoot or a monster in the White River.” As stated by Brian Dunigan.
Brian, there have been unconfirmed sightings of giant man eating squids in the Taneycomo Tailwater in Missouri. hahahaI am located in the very NE corner, in the state of Oklahoma.
There are plenty of these types of cats in Atlanta and the surrounding area. Close encounters can sometimes be very disturbing.
I agree that most folks don’t fully appreciate the scale of wild lands in the southeastern Appalachians.
Even that relatively large area could support only 8-16 cats. For comparison, the park has 1600-1800 black bears.
Excellent point. A couple things to keep in mind:
First, nearly every time one of these cougar sightings is “confirmed,” it means that either: (a) some moron has shot one; or (b) one got run over by a car. If you’ve only got 16 in the Park, how long do you think it would take for the local brain trust to kill off a significant number? With that few, every individual’s death is a huge loss. Big cats don’t breed quickly enough to offset that.
Second, eight to 16 animals is hardly enough for a sustainable population over a long period of time: inbreeding will become a huge problem genetically. Read about some of the genetic problems that have sprung up among the isolated cheetah populations in Africa. The Florida panther population is down to less than 70 breeding individuals, and wildlife management officials recently transplanted some Texas cougars there for the same reason – to help dilute the gene pool.
Anyway, since we’re getting into cryptozoology today, how many of you Arkansas guys worry about getting eaten by the White River Monster when you’re wading for trout?
http://littlerock.about.com/cs/urbanlegends/a/aaghosts.htm
Lots of people swear they’ve seen Whitey, so it must be true. 😉
bd
Okay Zach, you officially owe me an apology for almost giving me a coronary.
When I put up my last post about an hour ago, I was still at the office.
Just to clarify things, I don’t believe in big foot and the white river monster or whatever but I do know what I heard over here.
Unlike big foot or the white river monster wild black panthers were being shot and killed in Arkansas up until the 70’s, I think there’s a big difference.
I don’t think a wild “black” panther has ever been killed in Arkansas. Ever. There is no separate species of big cat called a “black panther” – it is an extremely rare mutation usually found in jungle cats such as jaguars and leopards. Most of the black panthers in existence today are leopards that have been selectively bred in captivity for the melanistic gene.
The big cats that may (or may not) still survive in Arkansas are mountain lions. “Panther” is just an alternative name, like cougar, puma, or catamount. They are tan, not black. I did a little Google searching and found one documented case of a mountain lion killed in 1969, but few other documented reports until back in the 1920s.
I’m open to the remote possibility that there are a few wild mountain lions in remote areas of the state. If there are a few there, I’d think it’s more likely they are wide-ranging individuals that have traveled in from contiguous states, rather than a sustainably large breeding population.
However, there clearly aren’t enough to account for even a fraction of the sightings. Every third person in the South has a story about hearing a “black panther scream just like a woman” out in the woods somewhere. Sorry, but it’s horse puckey. You’d have to have more mountain lions in the South than anywhere else in the world to account for all the sightings. You get more people with fantastic mountain lion stories in Arkansas, Tennessee, and Georgia, where there are few or none, than you get out West, where we actually know they exist.
bd
Brian,
I feel bad for laughing at your expense, for it could just as easily have been me running from the Yellow Lab Cougar!
When you say White River Monster are you referring to the giant catfish or John Wilson’s 70 lb brown trout?
Here is a Missouri Department of Conservation fact sheet on mountain lions.
http://mdc4.mdc.mo.gov/Documents/10649.pdfMy prior comment about Arkansas applies equally to Missouri. It’s possible there are a few wild mountain lions in Missouri. It’s also most likely that these are a few wide-ranging individuals that have wandered in from contiguous states (Oklahoma, most likely). It doesn’t mean there is an established population of sufficient size to breed and sustain itself.
It doesn’t even mean that these cats have established a constant presence in the state. We’re talking about cats that will wander over hundreds of miles.
And it certainly doesn’t mean that there are enough to lend credence to even a fraction of the sightings that are reported each year, unless these are the least secretive and most active mountain lions in history.
bd
The pdf file is a reprinted article from Missouri Wildlife that appeared last summer. Interesting that Missouri has a team to investigate reports and sightings. It’s a little more recent than the 2004 file in your post.
I’m skeptical of a breeding population. If the biologists aren’t willing to say so, I don’t see how we can say it is the case. The newsletter article your AGFC contact mentioned may have been:
http://www.mdc.mo.gov/cgi-bin/news/arc11-2006.html. It is the regular weekly media newsletter.Interesting to speculate, but I still choose to make a distinction between confirmed scientific evidence and rumors and stories. I don’t know that 10 confirmed sightings in ten years is significant of anything. Apparently the scientists aren’t sure either.
Just to be clear to prevent misunderstanding, I’m not at all disputing anybody’s account. Growing up on Crowley’s Ridge in the 50s, my dad scared me numerous times with panther stories and I’ve heard a bucket full since. Some may be true, some probably bunk. That’s beside the point.
It is a very large mountain lion leap to go from stories of sightings or even a confirmed sighting a year to assume we have established breeding populations [speaking of the Missouri facts and figures]. Yeah? Nay? Poppycock?
I’ve not said one word about a breeding population, I’m just saying I think that they are, somehow, here.
BUT, even if they did stop they still bred here in the past and I see no reason why they couldn’t do it again if the conditions, once again, favored them.
I’ve never said I’ve seen one but I still stand by what I’ve heard. Your correct though, I assumed the Florida Panthers are black for some reason, probably got confused with the “Florida Jaguar” thing like Zach
You shouldn’t need to google search too hard, Cameron has already posted the agfc link outlining the kills, the last confirmed one being in 1975.
Look I’m not some moron and I’m not saying this happened right on the banks of the Little Red or something, I’m talking deep back i the sticks in northern Johnson County miles and miles away from even the smallest paved road.
I don’t know about the color of what I heard but I know it sounded just like the panther screaming at the zoo and every sound clip I’ve pulled up so I don’t know what the hell else it could have been besides a large cat of some sort.
It wouldn’t be the first time something people thought was gone showed up again and so I’m not really concerned if you think I’m full of horse pucky or not. When you look at whats happening in Missouri and Iowa right now I’d say it looks like there’s a good chance something is moving around over here.
Florida panthers are yellow, and for the most part, hang out in and around the Everglades. Highway 29 is loaded with “Panther Crossing” signs when nearing their habitat. Also, a lot of money has been spent building overpasses that allow our cats to cross underneath the highways to avoid being killed by traffic. I’ve only seen one many years ago as it walked out on a log in the Kissimmee River to drink, however, before his/her arrival, the scream it let out sounded like a woman being murdered. Scared the hell out of me and I’ll never forget it.
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