black cougar

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ratherbefishin

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My neighbour, who isn't known for halucinating or drinking swears he saw a black cougar on his farm property here on Vancouver Island.I have never heard of a cougar with such a colour phase-has anyone else?He was quite certain it was a cougar,by the size and also tail.Vancouver Isand has one of the highest densities of cougars in North America,yet are rarely seen[I've only seen 2 in 40 years hunting ,a lot of guys have hunted all their lives and never seen one]
 
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My dad said he had seen a huge black cougar fighting with a smaller tan one when he was driving the road to Trout Lake up in the Kootenays. A couple of the cat hunters confirmed that they'd heard about it, so I wouldn't be surprised to hear they exist...
 
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It's true they are there, I saw one myself. Could not believe my eyes at first, but watching cross a field for a short minute, there was no doubt what it was. And I had a spotting scope on it, too.
 
Would a striped lion be a tiger? :p I don't know that much but I'd suspect that it's probably just a different colored coat. You see the same thing with blackbears, right? - they come in black, brown, and even white sometimes.

Who knows though, mebbe a black panther got loose from a zoo or private collection somewhere along the line and bred with a mountain lion.
 
Supposedly there are big black cats running around somewhere over in Britain. Caught a section of it on the tube the other night. Quite a few sightings they say...
 
ratherbefishin said:
My neighbour, who isn't known for halucinating or drinking swears he saw a black cougar on his farm property here on Vancouver Island.I have never heard of a cougar with such a colour phase-has anyone else?He was quite certain it was a cougar,by the size and also tail.Vancouver Isand has one of the highest densities of cougars in North America,yet are rarely seen[I've only seen 2 in 40 years hunting ,a lot of guys have hunted all their lives and never seen one]
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A panther is a black phased cougar, from what I read in a wildlife book mqany years ago, but I have never seen either!
Cat
 
I was talking with one of the guys in the Puma foundation and he tells me that in Ontario most of the cougars are jet black because of some genetic flaw I forget right now just what caused it but he tells me that a black cougar is not uncommon. Personally I have only ever seen one cougar in Ontario and it was tan.
 
the thing is, that even in areas of high density[like here on Vancouver Island]they are so secretive,very few people have actually seen one,so it is possable an individual animal could easily escape detection,unless hounds were put on its trail
 
oh-yah,I'm sure they have-and there's nothing to put the hair up on the back of your neck to backtrack in the snow-and see big round cat prints right along side yours.....
 
Puma, mountain lion, panther, cougar are they not all the same??

Cheers!!
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Not exactly. They're all cougars, but there are numerous subspecies of cougars such as the vancouver island cougar, the yuma puma, the texan cougar, the florida panther etc. They're all generally refered to as 'mountain lions' too. All pretty close to the same thing.

There have been numerous reports of 'black' cougars and panthers, but they are generally not considered 'official'. They could be escaped pets of similarly large cats (jaguars for example) and sometimes in the right light the coat of a mountain lion can look pretty 'black' without actually being. My bet is that it's a rare colour phase, like a kermode bear.
 
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