Black panther
melanistic colour variant of any of several species of larger cat
A black panther is the melanistic colour variant of the leopard (Panthera pardus) and the jaguar (Panthera onca). Black panthers of both species have excess black pigments, but their typical rosettes are also present. They have been documented mostly in tropical forests, with black leopards in Africa and Asia, and black jaguars in Central and South America. Melanism is caused by a recessive allele in the leopard, and by a dominant allele in the jaguar.
Leopard
In 1788, Jean-Claude Delamétherie described a black leopard that was kept in the Tower of London and had been brought from Bengal. In 1794, Friedrich Albrecht Anton Meyer proposed the scientific name Felis fusca for this cat, the Indian leopard (P. p. fusca).
In 1809, Georges Cuvier described a black leopard kept in the Ménagerie du Jardin des plantes that had been brought from Java. Cuvier proposed the name Felis melas, the Javan leopard (P. p. melas).
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Black panther” is melanistic colour variant of any of several species of larger cat. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Black, panther and melanistic, not as a finished interpretation.
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The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q207963. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1788, 1794 and 1809.
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This entry incorporates text from “Black panther” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.