What's a Black Panther, Really?

When I was a kid in the 1970's everybody and his brother had this black panther black light poster on their wall. Sleek, gorgeous...there's every reason to make them your spirit animal. But they're not really black and they're typically either leopard or jaguars.



I had no idea about that until a National Geographic reader wrote in asking about these beautiful cats and I had the opportunity to write What's a Black Panther, Really? for my Weird Animal Question of the Week column in NatGeo's Weird & Wild section. Check it out in the link and look at the picture below and you can see that the black is actually just a pigment over  leopard or jaguar spots. (Images from Etsy, left and below, HD Wallpapers Cool)

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