I don’t know if any of you remember the old Animal Planet series Animal X, but I remember watching it religiously.
The Black Cat of Killakee was one of my favorite stories.
Interestingly, Storyteller Media, the production company for Animal X, has a youtube channel.
And you can watch some of the old episodes, and the newer ones that came out a few years ago.
Speaking of the new ones, you need to see this clip.
Most of your film clips do not appear on my work computer(alas), but I think I saw this episode. I find the whole big cat sighting phenomenon fascinating, even if the majority of it is misidentification or hoaxes. I do not doubt SOME sightings are legit–so many people get exotic cats for pets and can’t deal with them(and turn them loose) that it is frightening! We had two young tigers show up on the side of an isolated country road here in N. C. a few years back–luckily, they were still fairly tame, easily recaptured, and ended up in a sanctuary. No one came forward to claim them, of course!(they would have been in BIG TROUBLE!) It is amazing how many exotic cats get shot and VERIFIED both here and in Britain, that it would certainly not be impossible for a feral population to eventually get established–especially with as elusive and adaptable an animal as leopards/”black panthers”. The only problem I have with the theory that there IS an established feral population, is that people SHOULD be seeing spotted leopards at least as often as the black color phase, and you rarely or never hear of a spotted one spotted! And yes, believe it or not,(I was involved in a case like this myself just a few years ago near the N. C. Zoo) people REALLY DO mistake black house cats for “black panthers” all the time; SWEARING they are “big as labradors”–people nowadays are just really poor at identifying critters(and size perspectives) in the field! And no, alas, there ARE NO BLACK COUGARS(also colloquially called panthers)–in all the years of hunting, and captive breeding, there has NEVER been a case of a melanistic cougar, ever. Black bobcats–sometimes, especially one population in Florida. But if you REALLY see a LARGE black cat “as big as a labrador”, it would have to be an escaped black leopard, or possibly a jaguar(which is not that impossible!)