'Panther' sighting in Blue Mountains, with video

[jdeks]

Report here: https://www.news.com.au/technology/scie ... 429#.ma09e

Full video here: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/video/ ... -mountains

And a fairly hearty discussion below to follow, I'd imagine?

I'm sure someone will rightly point out that there are means and incentives to produce fake viral videos, and once again the footage is taken from a distance and not the clearest...

But at face value, to me at least, it does seem rather genuine (indeed better than I was able to get with my own wild dog encounters).

Let the speculation begin.

[Lindsay]

Look at the size of the animal compared to the fence...it's a feral cat.

[jdeks]

Tradie in Hi-Vis up near the house at around 1:10 gives a good scale marker too...but video can often distort as distance as well.

[michael_p]

Cat.

[wayno]

some people loose perception of scale... thats a large domestic cat, they have no idea how big a panther is... they are a lot larger than that
you'll be surprised how big some cats can grow especially when they are feral and well fed.
ge similar tales in NZ, and the photos are usually pretty sketchy, no hard evidence it is a larger member of the cat species...

[Singe]

some people loose perception of scale... thats a large domestic cat, they have no idea how big a panther is... they are a lot larger than that
you'll be surprised how big some cats can grow especially when they are feral and well fed.
ge similar tales in NZ, and the photos are usually pretty sketchy, no hard evidence it is a larger member of the cat species...

[Lamont]

I swear Elvis is working in the roadhouse in Norlane. He is always just out of full eye shot tho', but you can't mistake that pompadour.

[johnw]

I'd like to think I have an open mind, but that's a large-ish feral cat. Pretty sure big cats like panthers etc don't move like that.

I swear Elvis is working in the roadhouse in Norlane. He is always just out of full eye shot tho', but you can't mistake that pompadour.

So that's where he went after he finished up packing shelves at my local Woolies supermarket

[north-north-west]

What a load of hoo-haa over a feral cat. they should have been shooting with a rifle rather than a video and none of this fuss would have resulted.

[GPSGuided]

Without these hoo haa, how will they entertain their readers? Pathetic of course.

[Biggles]

LOL! A well-fed pussycat mistaken for a black panther in them yonder Blue Mountains. Again. And reported by the esteemed codswalloper, The Australian, of course! Seems more like a headline in search of a decent story.

Next we'll see a report (regurgitated, no doubt) about the infamously secretive, blurry, slow-moving, big black and bad Otways Big Cat.

[GPSGuided]

Add one more possibility, it's all CG animation by whoever... LOL

[Strider]

I swear Elvis is working in the roadhouse in Norlane. He is always just out of full eye shot tho', but you can't mistake that pompadour.

Norlane, you say? MD might have some explaining to do!


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[Happy Pirate]

A cat, and not even a particularly big one. I didn't see anything the first time I watched it and then saw it and thought 'seriously?'
Look at it against the fence - looks about 30cm high.

[slparker]

I 'saw' a panther when walking near Pioneer in NE Tasmania.
That’s right, a highly sceptical person who now teaches critical thinking saw a panther where panthers do not exist. What’s more, it was with two other men who were similarly astonished.
I had my medium sized dog with me and we all agreed that the cat in question was about that size.

Now clearly there are no panthers in NE Tasmania but there are optical illusions where the brain is capable of misinterpreting stimuli. To this day I am subjectively convinced that I saw a cat that wasn’t a Felix sivestrus, my brain won’t let me think otherwise, but I do know objectively that it was actually a big feral domestic cat seen in a way that my brain misinterpreted.

[Franco]

well , i don't know...
if that is one of Trump's 15 m high fences, it is a panther

and I should know because I have an almost identical panther visiting my place too.

maybe hard to tell but that offering is a fully grown male kangaroo, so not a small panther at all.
I was afraid to go outside for days after that.

[Lamont]

Elvis is now working at the Portarlington fish and chip shop.
Must have had a 'suspicious mind' about all those people coming in trying to sight him.

[Franco]

Over the years I have upset many people debunking their pet way-out-there beliefs.
Here is one recent example :

images 1.jpg (10.43 KiB) Viewed 23507 times

the story is that a family was out having a picnic, father takes some shots and when printed a spaceman appears at the back of the girl.
That could almost be believable till you see this other shot taken within minutes :

S_F_Mother.jpg (27.17 KiB) Viewed 23507 times

now, let's see if anyone can guess who the spaceman is ?
(still, many do want to believe that it is a photo of an extraterrestrial, making himself invisible, visiting and that is why the father had not seen it at the time...)

[Lamont]

Meandering Apiarist?

[Franco]

How did you know ?
(It was in fact the mother, looking the other way.Very faint but the bra strap can be seen on both photos as the end of sleeve and start of the arm can be seen in the first, corresponding to the dress the mother was wearing)

[GPSGuided]

You saw bra straps?!?

[neilmny]

I'd like to think I have an open mind, but that's a large-ish feral cat. Pretty sure big cats like panthers etc don't move like that...........

I'm with you John, it doesn't look big cat like in it's movements to me.

[Franco]

You saw bra straps?!?

A mate used to see dead people.
He then quit working at the morgue.

There is a faint line on both shots where the bra strap sort of stand out from underneath the dress.

[Avatar]

The 14 year old cat's name is Toby.

[johnw]

Yes, as suspected:
Blue Mountains 'black panther' is actually a woman's domestic pet cat

[Franco]

Going back to the getting the size wrong bit, I was up in the bush ( our place) just a few minutes ago when I thought I had spotted a swamp wallaby that I see every so often but haven't been able to photograph. It moved away as he heard me, as that wallaby does (he is very shy), so I went around where he was and after a while spotted the animal again.
Turns out that it was Bob, a large male kangaroo, very familiar to me.
Bob is at least twice the size of that wallaby...
(this is at a short distance, at my place and knowing the animal in question very well...)

[Lamont]

And just behind Bob-if you look closely-Elvis.

[Moondog55]

I'd like there to be Panthers [ and Thylacenes and Thylacoleos too] but the sad truth is that the bush is full of feral cats getting bigger and bigger with each generation, but never that big

[Lamont]

Saw a monster feral cat in the Brisbane ranges this morning. It looked well fed.

[Pteropus]

Feral/domestic cat. Remember, panther is another name for black leopard, and leopards are chunky muscular big cats that often drag their kills up trees. Field ecologists who’ve conducted surveys across Australia will tell you they’ve never found large animal remains high up trees, let alone unusual big cat scats (one of the easiest ways to determine presence/absence of any given species).