Black Pumas

What is important is that it may seem black to the observer in the wild, and the observer report a "black cat". If I saw the Costa Rican example cat streak by in the wild, I would say "I saw a large black cat streak by".
Keith Foster

We do not have any photographs of a melanistic puma. The above is a reconstruction of what one might look like. A small area of the fur near the hind legs has deliberately been left as the natural colour.

There has been considerable debate whether or not black pumas (or cougars) exist. The photograph, is of a "Black Cougar" killed in Costa Rica by Miguel Ruiz Herrero in 1959. This cougar was estimated to weigh between 100 & 120 pounds. Some have pointed out that the puma looks dusky rather than black, however.

In September 2000, Loren Colman reported that "Taking the data of the 615 'eastern cougar' sightings collected by John and Linda Lutz of the Eastern Puma Research Network from 1983 to 1989, Richard Greenwell ('The Eastern Puma: Evidence Continues to Build,' The ISC Newsletter, 1989) wrote that 37 % of the total reports involved black felines (or 227 actual sightings?)"

In November 2000, there was a post to 'cryptolist' which stated: "I was at a gun show today in Fort Wayne, IN and for some reason started talking about Cryptozoology with a women from Kentucky. I had mentioned that a couple years ago people had seen a cougar near Woodburn, IN. She said that on her father's farm in Kentucky that had cougars and she said at least two of them were black. One has (as she described it) a yellow belly. This one was shot at by her father during the deer season but he missed. I told her if someone shoots, photographs or video tapes on of the black one. It would be very important to share because no one has ever proven that black cougars exist. Has anyone else reported big black cats in Kentucky? Or two tone ones anywhere?"

Ben Willis has commented "Most of the credible stories I have heard have been from our low lying swamp areas. There is a black silt in these waters and I have often seen my white Dalmatian come out looking much like a black Labrador. This might explain some of the sightings but a cougar itself is an extremely rare occurrence in my region."

The puma's scientific name is Puma concolor, with concolor meaning one colour. Pumas can vary enormously in shade from light to dark. I have seen hundreds of pictures of pumas and these is the darkest ones which I have ever found.

They are not black, but is quite dusky on the back with a much lighter underside, somewhat reminiscent of the black and tan mutation in mice.

These can be contrasted with the following photographs of very light coloured pumas. The differences in lighting conditions should be noted with the cats above in shadow and the cats below in strong sunlight.

Melanism is a simple mutation which is found in a large number of animal species. Although the evidence presented so far for melanistic pumas may not be conclusive, there is no genetic reason why black pumas should not be found.

Keith Foster writes: I also do not think the black cougar in the photo I provided is a fully melanistic cougar, but rather only a color phase. It still has light spots in all the places cougars normally show light areas. The sides are apparently a slate gray, and may also have some shade of brown involved. It would have been nice to have a color photo of the cat. Cats of this very dark color are evidently not unusual in Central America, and I will try to find a more contemporary photo of one of them. No official study of cougars in that area of the world are evidently occurring, that I can find.

My family has a ranch in Colorado where I spent much of my youth that was thick with cougars. Many of the cougars taken from that area had noses that were quite black as the photo you provided of the black nosed cougar. One Colorado hunting guide said he has taken two cougars that were essentially black in color from Colorado, but that they had the normal white areas too. Photos of them went with the customers who shot them. He thought the cats were killed in the 1950's or early 60's. It may not be that a "black" cougar is really fully black, but that is not important.

What is important is that it may seem black to the observer in the wild, and the observer report a "black cat". If I saw the Costa Rican example cat streak by in the wild, I would say "I saw a large black cat streak by".

Leo Martin has supplied the following link to a "black puma" video and comments:

"You can see a 40 second video clip of what is supposed to be a melanistic puma in the wild. However as might be expected all it actually shows is a tiny dark cat-like shape moving around at long range backlit on the brow of a hill. To give it its dues at least its in colour unlike the Puerto Rican pic in the BBC Wildlife mag article."

Video of 'black cougar' intrigues state biologists

By Steven A. Capps in the Sacabee News December 3 rd, 2000

View video

Like a four-legged version of the fabled Bigfoot, black mountain lions are the stuff of popular legend.

Scores of people claimed to have come upon the mysterious, jet-black animals in the Western Hemisphere during the last couple of hundred years. These days, people even post alleged sightings on the Internet.

Scientists, however, have yet to get a single piece of physical evidence, such as the body of a dead one or even a clear photograph, and remain skeptical that such an animal exists.

But now state biologists have looked into reports from homeowners in San Luis Obispo County who claim to have seen repeatedly what looked like a black mountain lion stalking prey in a field across from their rural housing development. And this time, they have video.

A homeowner in the area said he captured the animal on videotape several times, and provided the video to the state Department of Fish and Game, which brought in a lion expert from the University of California, Davis, to join the department's own biologists for a video viewing.

The video is shot at extremely long range, so it is hard to make out details - much like the famous footage of an alleged Bigfoot sighting 30 years ago - but it's sufficiently clear that it has biologists stroking their chins with curiosity.

"The video is very persuasive but it's not definitive," said Lee Fitzhugh, the mountain lion expert with the UC-Davis co-operative extension.

Dr. Ben Gonzales, a wildlife veterinarian with the state Department of Fish and Game, reviewed the videotape with colleagues in Sacramento and pronounced it "pretty indefinite."

"You've seen those videotapes of 'Bigfoot,' " he said. "They're blurry and distant. It's like that. You just can't tell."

But Steve Torres, a senior biologist who directs mountain lion research for the department, said that while the video was "inconclusive," he would not dismiss the notion that there may be black mountain lions, or that the film depicts one.

"There's often color morphs that are anomalies in wildlife populations, such as albinism or melanism, which is an extremely dark animal, like you'll see in a squirrel once in a while and other animals," he said.

"With respect to cougars, it's something that could happen in a natural context, but I'm sure it would be extremely rare. You can't rule it out," he said.

Dale Woodson is the man who first saw the creature and shot the video. He said he was forced to shoot it at long range because he's afraid.

"The grass is high," Woodson said. "You can barely see (the animal's) head through the grass. The thought occurred to me that it's probably not the wisest place to be."

His 9-year-old daughter, who used to play with her friend on the grassy hillside near the Woodson home, is now under orders to stay away.

Woodson said he has seen the animal seven times, the first time last summer, the morning after he had noticed a small herd of deer bedding down on the hillside. Deer are a main food source for cougars, which are a protected species in California. "I was making a phone call," Woodson recalled. "It was early in the morning, about 7 o'clock, and I saw the silhouette of a cat as it was moving up the ridgeline.

"I looked at it and instantly knew that it was something I'd never seen before. So I ran inside and got my wife and daughter up and dragged them to the window so they could confirm it.

"I looked at it and thought, 'My gosh, a mountain lion.' I gave the binoculars to my wife and it was she that first called out and said, 'That's not a mountain lion. Mountain lions are kind of a gold color. This one is pitch-black.' And I grabbed the binoculars and said, 'Yeah, you're right.' "

He ran and got his video camera, but said he was only able to shoot about four seconds before the camera's battery went dead. The next time he saw the animal -- about two days later -- he said he was prepared with a new battery.

"On the second time, I captured about 15 seconds' worth of video," Woodson said. He alerted his neighbors, two of whom also have told him that they have seen the animal, one just about a month ago.

"It's no little kitty," said Mitch King, who lives across the street from Woodson and said he saw the animal once.

"It's some kind of cat. It's got that flat face. And it's got a big, long tail," King said.

Fitzhugh said Woodson's videotape appeared to have been enhanced to make the cat easier to see.

"To my mind, there was a little bit of a question there with the quality of the original footage and what he had been able to do afterwards," Fitzhugh said. "But I can't say that there's really evidence that he doctored the picture or anything."

Woodson said he did not enhance the video. "I don't have the tools to do that - and if I did, I wouldn't even know how," he said. After he made the second video, Woodson contacted authorities, including the local Department of Fish and Game biologist, Bob Stafford, who was the first to see the video.

The video shows "what certainly seems like a very large black cat," Stafford said.

The animal is shown on the dry, grassy hillside walking between two oak trees. By comparing the animal to the oak trees, it is clear the animal is quite large, at least 120 pounds, Woodson said.

Stafford and Woodson discussed several explanations, including that the animal might be a rare form of black mountain lion not previously known. They also discussed another possibility: The area is about 30 miles east of Hearst Castle, where newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst was known to have kept exotic animals.

"It's very plausible that old man Hearst, with his three-ring circus over there, had an escapee over the years," Woodson said.

Fitzhugh said it's possible, although unlikely, that such an animal could breed with a mountain lion to create a darker hybrid. Hearst maintained a large zoo on his vast property from the late 1920s to the mid-1930s. "I seem to recall that he had a black panther," said John Horn, a historian with the Hearst Castle park.

A lot of the animals were allowed to roam free on part of the property. Some escaped into the wild and have established populations that continue to thrive, including zebra, he said. But carnivores weren't allowed outside, Horn said, and "there's no documentation that (the black panther) ever escaped."

The Department of Fish and Game has no plans to further investigate the sighting - unless the animal acts in a threatening manner, such as moving into a neighborhood close to people or acting in a menacing manner toward humans or livestock. "Then we would go back and try and find it," said Stafford.

Much like the intrigue surrounding Bigfoot, the elusive man-ape creature that some claim roams the wilds of Northern California, there is a mystique about black mountain lions that has caught the attention of people.

So you would think there would be proof, said Fitzhugh.

"When you look at the number of lions that were bountied in the bounty years and the number killed by sportsmen in other states over all the years," Fitzhugh said, "we're talking about tens of thousands of mountain lions that have been killed, and brought in and looked at -- and not a single black one."

Sacabee News, December 3 rd, 2000

The following article is of interest as it states that "black pumas" were kept in the UK. This is clearly a confusion with black leopards (often called black panthers) and shows how certain ideas can enter into popular thought "Play it again, Sam!"

Puma cub spotted at Dartmoor quarry

From the Press & Journal 3 rd September 1999

A Dartmoor National Park guide has seen what he believes could be a puma cub wandering around a quarry.

Roger Hutchings was walking around Yennerdon Quarry at Dousland, near Yelverton when he saw the cat-like creature circling a dead sheep.

"It was a uniform yellow colour above going to pale white beneath," said Mr Hutchings.

"It was slightly larger than a domestic cat but did not look like a domestic cat and was quite a long way from the nearest house."

Mr Hutchings said the creature was the right colour for a puma.

"I am not an expert on pumas but I looked them up in a book and the details seem to fit that of a young puma.

"As soon as it saw me it disappeared whereas a domestic cat would probably not take too much notice of an approaching human," he added.

He said other reports had been received of sightings of black puma at nearby Mill Hill quarry.

Most of the pumas kept as pets in this country were black but yellow-white pumas also exist in the wild in their natural habitat in North America.

The Dartmoor National Park Authority has received numerous calls of sightings of big cats in the area over the years and similar sightings have also been reported on Bodmin Moor and Exmoor.

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