Nature & Environment

Prospector films possible black panther in Victoria, Australia

By T.K. Randall
May 6, 2024

Image: Black Panther (illustrative)
Credit: Davidvraju / CC BY-SA 4.0 (adapted) Over the years we've seen plenty of videos purporting to show evidence of large felines in the UK, but relatively few from Australia - a country that would certainly be more capable than the British Isles of providing a home to a population of large, exotic, predatory cats.

This latest evidence that such animals might exist in the country comes courtesy of prospector Angus James who had been searching for gold near the historic mining town of Ballarat in Victoria when he spotted an unusual animal in a nearby field.

He started recording footage as the creature bounded through the long grass.

"I was metal detecting when I saw the blackness in the paddock," he told Yahoo! News."Whatever it was, was quite a big cat of some sort, maybe it had just been eating lots of farmyard mice. But it was moving in a straight line and it had a very heavy run."

After uploading his footage to social media, it quickly racked up over one million views and prompted others in the local area to come forward and report similar sightings.

Whether or not the video actually does show a black panther remains unclear, but it's certainly an interesting clip and one that's likely to reignite the debate about exotic big cats in Australia.

You can check out the footage for yourself below.



Source: Yahoo! News

Tags: Big Cat, Australia