Panthers in Australia

dragon(ele)nerd

Well-Known Member
Just came back from school camp,

Two days before I arrived at the place supposedly the gippsland phantom cat was spotted crossing the highway that we passed to get to the camp site!

I would really like to find out more about these Panthers of the australian bush, does anyone here have any info?
 
One point. There is no such thing as a panther! This is a myth started by Disney in the film 'Jungle Book'. Mowgli is actually a black jaguar. Panther is often used as a term to cover a number of big cats such as jaguars.
 
Sorry Simon, just to point out - Mowgli is human (a man-cub) and Bagheera is the black leopard (I say leopard because its a bit more geographically likely than having jaguars in India. Having said that, you don't normally get orangutans, like King Louie, there.)
Great film.
I think panther is term to describe any member of the genus 'Panthera', or sometimes different species of big cat (e.g. the cougar.) Black panther is widely used to refer to a melanistic big cat, such as a black leopard or black jaguar. I'm not too sure about how widely accepted these terms are though.
 
One point. There is no such thing as a panther! This is a myth started by Disney in the film 'Jungle Book'. Mowgli is actually a black jaguar. Panther is often used as a term to cover a number of big cats such as jaguars.

Sorry Simon, just to point out - Mowgli is human (a man-cub) and Bagheera is the black leopard (I say leopard because its a bit more geographically likely than having jaguars in India. Having said that, you don't normally get orangutans, like King Louie, there.)
Great film.

Just one little pedantic point on both of those posts, Bagheera was a black leopard and was created by Kipling in the original book, but King Louie the Orang was a Disney additon to the Jungle Book story.
 
Sorry Simon, just to point out - Mowgli is human (a man-cub)

Thanks for the correction! Shows the last time I watched Jungle Book. Being a former cub scout I should have known that anyway. I stand corrected!
 
so is it something like the mountain lion/ cougar/puma? I actually thought jaguars and panthers were seperate species, though are panthers and jaguars different from each other? I know a jaguar can have a black apperance so I'm assuming it's just another common name.

Sorry if the language isn't good.
 
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