Black Panther Spotted in Michigan?!

GUILLAUME SOUVANT. Getty Images.

For context on this cryptid, we must look at the legend of various large Black cats roaming the North American countryside. Even though we have mountain lions in North America, there have been reports of large black panthers attacking livestock and various sightings. To learn more about them, there is a Monsterquest episode about their existence in North America. 

Black Panthers are not supposed to live in North America. This is the technical definition of  Black Panther. 

Wikipedia

A black panther is the melanistic colour variant of the leopard (Panthera pardus) and the jaguar (Panthera onca). Black panthers of both species have excess black pigments, but their typical rosettes are also present. They have been documented mostly in tropical forests, with black leopards in Kenya, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia and Java, and black jaguars of the Americas in Mexico, Panama, Costa Rica and Paraguay. Melanism is caused by a recessive allele in the leopard, and by a dominant allele in the jaguar.

There are no, to science's knowledge, black Mountain lions. 

There is no authenticated case of a truly melanistic cougar. No specimen has been photographed or killed in the wild, nor has it ever been bred in captivity. Unconfirmed sightings known as the "North American black panther" are currently attributed to errors in species identification by non-experts, and by the mimetic exaggeration of size.

Two days ago, however, one was spotted in Michigan, one of many recent citings of large black cats in North America. 

The Department of Natural Resources is investigating the cat sighting. They say there are three native wildcats in Michigan, including bobcat, mountain lion and lynx.

“If it is a big cat, it would be something that’s not native to the region,” said Steve Griffth, Wildlife Biologist, DNR. “There are occasional pets that people have that are unusual, and sometimes they do get loose.”

If you encounter this animal, the DNR warns you do not run.

“You want to act as big as you can. You know, your full height, wave your arms, yell at them. If you’ve got sticks or rocks and things like that, you can throw, you know, objects at them to get them to leave,” explained Stebbins.

I like these stories because it is nice to know we really don't have all the answers. New things can be discovered every day. Everything we know is not set in stone. It could be very possible a black mountain lion has been spotted for the first time in North America. One was just recently seen in Kenya for the first time in years. 

UPDATE: I have found an exclusive trail cam photo of the black cat