It is this poor temperament that leads to problems of maternal care in captivity as the proximity of humans stresses the mother. The poor temperament has been bred into the strain as a side-effect of inbreeding. brother/sister, father/daughter, mother/son matings) to preserve the coloration. In actuality, they are more temperamental because they have been inbred (e.g. It is a myth that their mothers often reject them at a young age because of their colour. One was recorded by Peter Turnbull-Kemp in the equatorial forest of Cameroon.Īdult black panthers (leopards) are more temperamental (nervous or vicious) than their spotted counterparts. They are less common in tropical Africa, but have been reported from Ethiopia (formerly Abyssinia), the forests of Mount Kenya and the Aberdares. A black panther (leopard) is able to hunt and kill animals outweighing them by more than 1,350 pounds but this is rare because of competition from tigers and lions.īlack leopards are reported from most densely-forested areas in south-western China, Burma, Assam and Nepal from Travancore and other parts of southern India and are said to be common in Java and the southern part of the Malay Peninsula where they may be more numerous than spotted leopards.
Skin colour is a mixture of blue black gray and purple with rosettes. The spotted pattern is still visible on black leopards, especially from certain angles where the effect is that of printed silk. They are smaller and more lightly built than leopards. These are the most common form of black panther in captivity and have been selectively bred for decades as exhibits or exotic pets (this inbreeding for the sake of appearance has adversely affected temperament). Melanism can also be linked to beneficial mutations in the immune system. It is probable that melanism is a favorable evolutionary mutation with a selective advantage under certain conditions for its possessor, since it is more commonly found in regions of dense forest, where light levels are lower.
White panthers also exist, these being albino or leucistic individuals of the same three species. In cats that hunt mainly at night the condition is not detrimental. Cats with melanism can co-exist with litter mates that do not have this condition. Close examination of one of these black cats will show that the typical markings are still there, and are simply hidden by the surplus of the black pigment melanin. Melanism is most common in jaguars ( Panthera onca) - where it is due to a dominant gene mutation - and leopards ( Panthera pardus) - where it is due to a recessive gene mutation. Elsewhere in the world it refers to the leopard (originally individual animals with longer tails were deemed panthers and others were leopards it is a common misconception that the term panther necessarily refers a melanistic individual). In North America, the term panther is commonly used for the puma in Latin America it is most often used to mean a jaguar. The genus name Panthera is a taxonomic category that contains all the species of a particular group of felids. Zoologically speaking, the term panther is synonymous with leopard. The black panther is the common name for a black specimen (a melanistic variant) of any of several species of cats.