reply to post by BlitzKrieger
The mountain lions that we ran into, on the road, were not black. This is not to clear because I cut my post out of the middle of a story I wrote
about this incident. I figured I could fill in details if anyone was interested.
What I am assuming is that the larger cat that they were following was black. We did not get a good look at it. Mainly what we could make out of the
cat was the movement of the brush, as it ran through it. We were pretty close to the action, when it first caught our attention.
From where we were standing, if you looked straight towards the bottom of the mountain, you would find a valley about half way down. The people who
live at the ranch in that valley told me there was a black panther that lived above them. So, I assumed that was what we saw.
What I would like to emphasize is the size of the animal. I have seen plenty of mountain lion foot prints, but what this thing left was about 50%
larger than a normal mountain lion print.
My guess is that this panther is some sort of hybrid with a jaguar, that can mate with normal mountain lion, and have normal looking off-spring.
Like I said in my previous post, up untill now, I did not think it was so rare. So I have never researched it. I will, now. I know exactly how big
the print was because I put my hand in it and it was the same size as my hand, with my fingers spread out. Of course I realize that when it left these
marks, it was running at full speed. So, it would have spread its paws out and made it bigger than if it was just walking.
[edit on 9-1-2008 by jmdewey60]
[edit on 9-1-2008 by jmdewey60]