CLARION CO., Pa. (EYT) — Mountain lions, cougars, pumas, even black panthers, despite statements from state wildlife officials, have been rumored to exist in Pennsylvania to this very day.
The Pa. Game Commission said the last Pennsylvania mountain lion was killed more than a century ago and the northeastern United States population is thought to have disappeared in the 1930s.
But that doesn’t stop the rumors and stories from popping up from time to time.
Less than three years ago, a youtube.com video from Leatherwood Outdoors in Clarion County apparently showed a large black cat prowling the edge of a food plot near where two deer hunters were posted.
Many commenters were amazed at the sight of the black cat while others passed it off as a house cat.
The eastern mountain lion was recently declared extinct by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It is one of 11 subspecies of mountain lion that are native to North America.
As for black mountain lions or panthers, none have even been confirmed in western states, where mountain lions actually do live.
Many of those making the reports believe they have seen a black-phase mountain lion, but others think the black cats are a different animal that has yet to be discovered.
According to a story on pennlive.com, the few black panthers that have been confirmed have been melanistic jaguars in Central or South American or melanistic leopards in Africa or Asia.
Melanism is a genetic variation that results in excess pigmentation that turns the fur entirely black, but it’s not part of the cougar’s genetic make-up, according to Michelle LaRue, executive director of the Cougar Network. The group is a research organization founded in 2002 that since then has compiled more than 700 confirmations of cougars outside their established range in the West, none of them black panthers.
Some believe that bobcats – the cougar’s much more common and widespread cousin, which occurs across much of Pennsylvania – are mainly responsible for the sightings of mountain lions in Pa.
Cliff Cessna, who operates Cessna Taxidermy in Clearfield County, and has hunted bobcats across the region, said many people mistake bobcats for mountain lions.
“I’ve had people in my shop who swore they saw a mountain lion, but when I asked them what it looked like, they would point to a bobcat mount and say that’s what they had seen, believing it was a mountain lion.”
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