The black panthers in their ‘native’ areas are said to sound just like a woman screaming. The panthers in my area are said to sound exactly the same. Many people have thought the sounds to be made by an actual woman. I’ve never had a face to face experience myself, thankfully, nor have I heard their screams myself. Friends of mine have, and I trust them, because they see this creature as a factual inhabitant as I do, and not as a fanciful one such as the sasquatch or our own Fouke Monster myths.

I am not a scientist, nor do I hold an influential rank of any kind. I haven’t even graduated High School yet, so it is up to you if you find my accounts credible or not. I am simply putting what I know for others to see. It is up to them to interpret it how they wish.

Plus you have alligators moving westward like finding one in a pond or something in southern Oklahoma a few years back. Killer bees and also piranhas have also been seen in the US.

So, anything can be possible on what people see anywhere.

Panther is sometimes used as a short form of Black Panther. Which, as far as I know, are the melanistic form of only jaguars and leopards.

Watkins still needs to hone his research skills as jaguars did roam some southwest states.

PumaCougar

Felines of the same species can interbreed.

On that basis, they would be all one species.

If what you were implying was true, yes.

There is a lot of irregularity in what is labeled a species and what is not.

Where? I thought there was a lot of irregularity in what is a true subspecies.

If melanistic pumas exist, why is there not one zoo/museum specimen/photo/video.

Something is odd.

A few facts is what we need to see the true ways this could go. It is better to know nature’s rules to build possibilities on.

Puma is the preferred name for Puma concolor (still referred to as Felis concolor by some). The reasoning is that puma is a Native American word, whereas “cougar” is from the French and “mountain lion” is really a misnomer. Whatever you call them they are definitely not tiger-sized black animals. And they are most definitely native to both North and South America.

Although I have seen a few references to melanistic pumas, I have never been able to find the original source of such references, and have never seen a photo of one. White pumas with ordinary black puma markings have been reported from time to time from British Columbia. Pumas’ fur is of such a dense nature, and their underfur and skin of such a dark color, that in the shade of rocks or forest, or backlit, someone could easily mistake a normal tawny-colored puma for black, especially if they caught just a glimpse of it.

That’s not to say that I don’t believe that melanistic pumas exist. I believe that they do, although they are perhaps in small localized populations. Melanistic forms occur in almost every species of cat, except for lions, snow leopards, lynxes, and tigers. (There are a few anecdotal reports of melanistic lions and tigers, but such individuals are anomalies, and those species do not have a recognized melanistic phase.) In leopards the melanism is a recessive trait but in jaguars it is a dominant one, and in jaguars especially, melanism has a very wide range of variation. The inheritance of melanism in other species has not been as thoroughly studied, because the smaller and medium-sized cats are not common enough in captivity, for the most part, for large-scale breeding experiments to have been done.

Pumas and leopards are much the same size, and have been bred in captivity. The resulting animals are among the most beautiful cats I have seen. Here is a link with photos.

As far as I know, no attempt was made to breed the offspring from such crosses, so I do not know if they were fertile. If they follow the pattern of most cat species, the females in the F1 generation would be fertile but the F1 males would be sterile. Males from about the F3 or later generations are usually fertile.

I have seen references to puma-jaguar crosses, but I do not know if they really took place. Jaguars have been crossed with lions and leopards, and the offspring from that cross can be gorgeous animals. (In the past, jaglions have been exhibited by unscrupulous shysters as “rare spotted lions”.) This is a link to pictures of jaglions which were born from an accidental breeding at a Canadian sanctuary. Pumas have also been crossed with ocelots, and the resulting kittens were apparently viable, living for several days, although none survived to adulthood.

So ARE there big black cats in Arkansas, and if so, what kind of cats? I believe that there are pumas there. Whether they are black or tawny I believe that they exist. I believe that melanistic puma/leopard hybrids could have occurred in the wild, If an escaped or abandoned leopard mated with a wild puma. I can conceive of that happening. The puma population probably being very low, if a black leopard, or a leopard carrying a black recessive, was in heat, it could very well attract a male puma, (or vice versa). If any kittens (cubs?) survived to breed, then melanism could have been introduced into the eastern pumas population that way.

Anyone who does not think that there are a lot of escaped exotic cats should go here and look at the list of big cat “incidents” and escapes. And these are just the ones that have been reported.

I do not believe that escapes account for all the big cats sightings, however. There are pumas in the East, and their numbers are increasing. And I would not be too surprised to learn of other big cats, living and possibly even breeding in the wild in the US.