I always thought panthers were a member of the big cat family like tigers or lions, but nope.

When I think of a panther, I picture a large black cat. Unless you’re Skeletor, then it’s a large purple
cat. But, they’re actually not a thing.

There’s all kinds of cats, and I commonly think of lions, tigers, cheetas and cougars… not those kind of
cougars… but when I got to looking things up there are a whole lot more than that.

What a lot of us call panthers are just Leopards or Jaguars with a melanistic color variant.
Think reverse albino. Panthers aren’t a species.

Even then, it depends on where you’re talking about. In the eastern hemisphere, panthers are Leopards.
Panthers are jaguars in the western hemisphere.

No one has ever found a black version of a cougar or mountain lion, and they say they don’t exist in
Pennsylvania…but I swear I’ve seen them.