German Black Panther Photo
Posted by: Loren Coleman on October 22nd, 2010
Mushroom collector Jean-Claude Gabriel (49): “At first I thought it was a great dog. But then I realized it was the big cat. It is about 90 centimeters high, 30 cm long tail.”
Gabriel remained calm, whipped out his cell phone and filmed it.
The photo of the German black panther is being published in the country’s newspapers this week. (Source auf Deustch.)
Due to concern and worry, officials in the western German state of Rhineland-Palatinate on October 20, 2010, gave hunters permission to shoot the black panther that has been sighted near the Belgian border for almost a year.
“We’re looking into if and how we can find the animal,” said Nicole Scherer, spokesperson for the license agency.
Reportedly, the government officials believe the animal is a black panther that escaped from a French animal park some time ago. No specific source, incident, or background is given for this theory.
A “large black creature” has been sighted along the Belgian border near Trier four times just since August 2010. Tranquilizing the animal is reported to not be a good option, officials said, because “it could flee in the seven minutes it takes for the drugs to take hold.”
The black creature was first seen in the Belgian Ardennes region, just on the other side of the German border, about one year ago. Later similar sightings were reported in other parts of Belgium, Luxemburg, and Germany’s Eifel region near Trier.
“According to the number of sightings we must take the situation seriously,” said Thomas Müller, spokesperson for the Trier-Saarburg county administration, told The Local, an English-language German newspaper.
There is a long history of sightings of melanistic mystery cats in Germany, and, in context, this report fits well into those accounts without the need to “explain” it as an escapee. The excuse motif is worldwide, for in America, “black panther” reports have been “explained away” as circus train wreck and traveling zoo escapees for almost two centuries.
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Loren Coleman no longer writes for Cryptomundo. His archived posts remain here at Cryptomundo.
Am intrigued. Would be nice to view the video and come to our own conclusion than a translated news story and very blurry mobile phone image. Must be one hell of an old mobile phone. Mine does pretty good video and images.
I have lived in Germany for over thirty years now and for over ten years I have been interested with cryptozoology. There have been reports of various big cats during these years but not in such a high frequency that someone could think there is actually a breeding population. No dead big cats in all these years (except of the “biggest” cat in our woods: the Lynx). If there was really a big cat it was indeed an escapee what is highly unusual and always fast known because logically the first thing to do for police is calling all private persons, zoos or circuses in the region who keep big cats (not much at all in view of our laws regarding this; btw we had no DWAA and there’s surely no (or no high) rate of illegal keeping as space in Germany is not that big to keep a big cat for a long time unseen).
I agree – as I’ve also spoken once with my collegue who reasearched such cases of “black cats” in Germany – yes there’s a long history of such reports but these are more mythical creatures of folklore than living animals.
Is there a better photo? That could be anything. I could take that with my phone, play with the background and everyone would think the same thing, only it was of a house cat. At least the authorities over there aren’t ruling the possibility out.
The reason cryptos stay cryptos is because they share the remarkable ability to disable even the most up-to-date photographic technology – a bit like Thunderbird 1. I mean, it’s just a blob – from one right angle it could be Micky Mouse barfing!