Italian Black Panthers
Posted by: Loren Coleman on January 1st, 2006
An Italian press outlet is reporting that the country is experiencing a wave of Black Panther sightings. In an item entitled "Panther Panic Hits Italy Again," the old explanation that it "escaped from a zoo" or "circus train wreck" cropped up again. But the Russian zoo currently performing in Turin, Italy, the location of the recent Black Panther sightings, denied it was theirs.
"We don’t have any panthers anyway. All we have are dogs, camels and horses," a zoo spokesman said.
One eyewitness was a Turin traffic cop who managed to identify the big feline as a black panther. Authorities were looking in suburban hedges and combing underbrush north-west of the Piedmont metropolis.
The recent flap reminded the media of a 1999 report near Como, as well as sightings in the harsh landscape of central Sardinia in 2001 and the rolling countryside of central Umbria in 1993 and 1995.
After the second Umbria sighting of a Black Panther, locals said they had seen a Mystery Lion roaming in the vicinity.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Italy does have some rather large black cats. Their owners are know to feed them a lot of Pasta.