The mystery of black leopards in Kansas!? (Arkansas City, Cherokee: home, college)

[rnc76]

Originally Posted by kanhawk

It is also possible a few are black in color. We know black panthers exist in Southern Mexico and it isn't impossible a few them could also wonder this far north.

Again, cougars don't come in black. The black panthers that are in Southern Mexico are jaguars, an entirely different species. Black jaguars are rare in nature, the ones in ciruses have been inbred repeatedly to get the black coloring. I highly doubt that wild jaguars have migrated from southern Mexico to Kansas without having been seen somewhere in between.

The black leopard had to be a exotic pet. Leopards are indigenous to Africa and Asia. There are so many exotic animals kept legally and illegally in this country, it is really a shame. Those animals aren't "pets". There are numerous sanctuaries around the country that adopt these animals once they are too big and aggressive to care for. The complete lack of judgement and common sense displayed by someone who would attempt to keep a 150lb wild cat as a pet is astounding. I would not be suprised if a person with that mindset wouldn't just drive out into the woods and release the animal once it was too big and dangerous.

[hoopjumper]

I laughed! "Legitimate" sighting! I know, I know! Like "trained" tornado spotters---but I guarantee you one thing---even if a "trained" spotter doesn't see the tornado and there is no "legitimate" sighting---it will still blow your s**t away!

Same with the black cats! No "legitimate" sighting doesn't mean that there are not black cats here and that they are not BIG! Just means the "legitimate" sighters are slow to see them!

These cats are here. They are real. They are BIG, black, sleek and lanky. There are also big tan cougars. I don't really care what they are called--they are still here and they can still eat your animals and possibly someday a "non-legitimate" cat will attack a small child or even a full grown person! It is only a matter of time till a small child will be in the wrong place at the wrong time. That is all it will take.

[rnc76]

Originally Posted by hoopjumper

I laughed! "Legitimate" sighting! I know, I know! Like "trained" tornado spotters---but I guarantee you one thing---even if a "trained" spotter doesn't see the tornado and there is no "legitimate" sighting---it will still blow your s**t away!

Same with the black cats! No "legitimate" sighting doesn't mean that there are not black cats here and that they are not BIG! Just means the "legitimate" sighters are slow to see them!

These cats are here. They are real. They are BIG, black, sleek and lanky. There are also big tan cougars. I don't really care what they are called--they are still here and they can still eat your animals and possibly someday a "non-legitimate" cat will attack a small child or even a full grown person! It is only a matter of time till a small child will be in the wrong place at the wrong time. That is all it will take.

I think it is pretty obvious that cougars are migrating east. People in the western US live with these animals everyday and attacks are extremely rare. I'm not saying a child couldn't get hurt or killed but how many cases have you heard of from California, Washington, Arizona, Montana... of cougars attacking children in their backyard? Cougars were all over this country before Europeans came, I think they have right to migrate back into their natural habitat.

[kanhawk]

I will add one last comment to this thread. Suppose that woman in Neosho, MO had called the sheriff after seeing a large black cat scratching at her back door and when the deputies arrived the cat was gone. Many people would not have believed a story like that. Her neighbors might have thought she was nuts. Her friends might have thought she just imagined it.
But the cat was there, and the deputies did kill it. Sometimes strange events really do happen, even when scientists themselves aren't lucky enough to see them.

[Jim West]

I worked for the Kansas Extension Service from 1974 to 1996. There were always big cats out and about. You have to realize that these "legitimate" sightings have to be done by a tree hugging, bunny hugging, dirt worshiping environmentalist, or it will be necessary to rewrite history as we now accept it.

The big cats were always native to Kansas and Nebraska and they couldnt care less about political subdivisions such as state lines. Landowners and taxpayers have always been forced to tolerate the "officials" and "biologists". Usually that was done by ignoring them as it usually isnt possible to work with them. Farmers and Ranchers have a term that they prefer. It is called the 3-S's. It is Shoot, Shovel, and Shhhhhhhh. Because Fish and Game persists in denying that the animals exist, and because they make legal trouble for taxpayers who take care of the problem and try to report it, it has always been necessary to just kill them and bury them, and then keep your mouth shut.

The neighbor boys killed a big cougar a half a mile from my house last winter. I didnt see it, therefore it did not happen.

[hoopjumper]

And so goes "humans"!

Wonder what the people who have scars from attacks would say about the rarity of such things?

[quesera]

One of my brothers and his wife have lived in a home on 40+ acres NW of Chanute. They rent out the pasture to a rancher. For many years, the rancher has reported the loss of cattle to a "big cat predator", believed to be a cougar. The fish and game warden, of course, has denied the existence of the animals in the area, so offers no assistance.

[Dionna Kay]

we live near ft riley and I was told by city offical that no more then 25 miles from ogden ks they let loose black panthers to repopulate them its scary because I am sorry I have pets and friends have outside dogs that they have been forced to put in kennels with tops on it to keep them out from killing their pets
its scary what people will do for money for the state

[Ogopogo]

Wow! I knew cougars were around the Midwest, but I didn't know black leopards were...

Cougars are definitely around Kansas and Missouri to an extent. It is one of those things that some people will always deny -- even if there is one laying dead in the middle of the road in front of them. In the Midwest, they have been captured on camera, as well as sightings, and paw prints reported. If you do net research, you will see cougars have been even killed by cars in the Kansas City area. Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Iowa all have sightings. One was spotted on a survelliance camera, crossing a Target parking lot in Minneapolis, in the middle of the night (I guess it supposedly lived in the river area). A cougar was shot and killed in North Chicago not long ago, and they verified the animal was wild (not an escaped pet). They believed it came from Wisconsin.

For years, if you looked at a "cougar range" map, it always covered most of the West, but left-out the Midwest and East. However, I've seen maps now that acknowledge their undeniable spotty presence in the Midwest.

P.S. I recently got into a conversation about this with a woman from SE Missouri. As a young person, she was hanging around a river (or creek) with another person, and was around caves. The person she was with found dog bones, with a dog collar laying there. They got out of the area quickly. I'm sorry, what eats a dog in Missouri? It has to be a cougar...

[navman]

In 1982 I was a crane operator/truck driver for Rooks County, Stockton, KS (north of Hays). One fall morning, another man and I were in a county pickup headed east on Hwy 24 (towards Nicodemus and Hill City) when out of some trees on the north side of the highway came a black cougar (puma) with two kittens following her. We slowed down and just sat there mesmerized as they trotted across the road to the trees on the other side. I know what I saw as I've handled bobcats and coyotes when I was growing up in southern Kansas (Edwards and Comanche County). My Dad was a county engineer and we went through all the backroads and I got to know alot about animals. So it's not a myth. Animals adapt to man's enroachment but we have to remember this too - rural Kansas has been slowly losing human population for some years now. There's lots of empty farmhouses out there now too. Think about how some animals would move into a place that no one ever enters anymore.