I know there are several references buried in various threads, but a quick recap places cougar sightings all over the northern half of the Lower Peninsula and down the western half of the state nearly to the Indiana border, with (as far as I know) the DNR still denying there's a breeding population.

Now this, out of the thumb, from the Channel 12 (Flint) website:

http://abclocal.go.com/wjrt/story?section=...article-6587140 (has accompanying video)



Lapeer County isn't too far into the thumb... we can be there in about 25 minutes from home.

This has been discussed or at least mentioned a couple of times over the past few years. The so-called 'last' cougar in Ontario, Canada, was shot and killed above Sault St. Marie in 1907. That is just above the State of Michigan. In 1986 the cougar mysteriously reappeared on Manitoulin Island, where the deer population outnumbers the human population by around 3 to 1, or more. The Ontario Government refused to acknowledge the cougar's reemergence until around 1994 -- it was a political hot potato. It took the Province of Quebec another four years to finally fess up and Manitoba followed suit only around 2004. Since cougars don't recognize political boundaries I can't see why they wouldn't now be all over the central and eastern seaboard regions of the USA and Canada. There are 'big cat' reports from virtually every state of the Union over the past couple of decades, so as far as farmers, hunters and hikers are concerned, they are certainly back with us. We also have a lot of 'big cat' reports from the USA south which may have more to do with other felines such as the panther. I guess it is political willingness holding back the official truth.
Dudlow

In North America 3 cats larger then Bobcats and Lynx are native.
They are the
Jaguar mainly located S of the US borders but have been seen and caught by cameras N of border every now and then.
jaguarundi again mainly S of US borders but a small population lives in Florida.
And the one that confuses most people the Panther/Cougar/polecat/Puma/Mountain Lion/catamount/ and many other names I believe over 40 different namers for the same animal. But they all are the same animal living in different places. I call them panthers because I have lived in Florida most of my life. But it bugs me that so many people think panthers and lets say Cougar or Mountain lion are different animals. When the numbers of panthers here in Florida got real low years ago they even caught some from out west and shipped them here to help out.

this is very inportant & informative about michigan cougars indeedy, this is great new thread as well, keep those replys & comments comeing thanks bill

My dad saw a dark colored big cat on our farm near Romeo in the mid-80's. He tried to report it but was of course brushed off by DNR. He was a farmer and in the outdoors all his life and knew every weed, tree, bird and animal out there by sight. He knew this was not a stray dog or a large housecat. He was treated like a mental patient. MICH DNR has to be the stupidest bureaucracy ever, for a lot of reasons.

Look at things from the other point of view.
If a state admits that it has some large cats it is going to cost them a lot of money.
First they have to make laws to protect the animals. At the same time they have to make arrangements to pay say a farmer for lost live stock lost to said animals. They have to send someone out to investigate when a clam is made for lost live stock. They have to go around to all of the parks and such putting up warning signs and such to warn people that the cats might be there. Then every time a dog or house cat goes missing they will have people claiming it was a panther or what ever that took it. You can see where this would add up to a lot of money for a state.
I am sure I missed other things that would cost them money by admitting they have a population of large cats.

Do not get me wrong here. I am all for a state spending that money to protect them and every thing. But I can see their point in not wanting to admit it until they have to. I just hope it is not at the cost of someones life. But the chances of that happening is very slim as long as they have native animals to feed on such as deer and other animals.

Well, In a small state like Connecticut, we have moose, bear, and coyotes and other than moose, they are common. As for cougars there was one killed in Massachussets in 97, a timber wolf was killed in Mass last year. both were identified. If these animals can be here, they can be in Michigan and plenty of other places just as easily if not more. I find the denials to be comical.

Just an FYI that it has been confirmed that Delta Burke recently moved and become a resident of Auburn Hills, Michigan....

Sorry, Couldn't resist...

On a more serious note... were do you think these cougars are coming from? Are they migratory, or has a once tiny population of possible mountain lion grown in size???

They are extremely migratory, especially young males. And, of course, extremely secretive.

There is only one problem with the story. There have been stories for ages of the black panther, but it has never been proven that a black cougar exists. There have been black leopards, jaguar, and jaguarundi photographed and killed. I have seen hundreds of photos of cougar killed and never one black one.

BTW 'polecat' is another name for a skunk. As in the old westerns "you dirty rotten polecat"

Choctaw

In CT's case, they didnt just get here, the DEP is in denial... at least in official channels

Same here, there have been reports of cougar sightings uninterrupted since they were supposedly killed off....
Irony is that the place where Dudlow referenced them mysteriously returning to Ontario at, that is, Manitoulin Island..is an Island in Lake Huron, that is part of an archipelago that forms as close a link with Michigan(U.P) as it does with Ontario. Therefore..any cats on that island could just as easily end up in Michigan(or come from) as the Ontario mainland. As he said, these things do not recognize boarders, and all they need is food, water and cover, and much of the Upper Midwest as well as of course Canada, provides that. That's not to even mention the extensive habitat available in the eastern US and Canada as well.


True..but then, the same can be said of bigfoot;)

FWIW, This article is the first I've ever seen or heard any reference to black cats in Michigan. There have been many, many reports of the 'normal' ones though, and we have at least one in the area where we camp.

The animal looks to me to be bigger than a cougar, looks more like a jaguar or leopard. Perhaps the species has migrated north rather than east.

Staci,


We've heard stories about cougars in Wisconsin for years. The DNR would never confirm any of these but the WI DNR finally confirmed the first wild cougar in WI in over 100 years. It was seen in southern WI in January 2008 and eventually made it to the Chicago suburbs by April where it was shot before it could cause trouble. Tissue samples were sent to the USFS genetics lab in Missoula MT where they determined that the Chicago cat was indeed the same cat seen in southern WI. They also determined that it was genetically a close match to wild cougars found in South Dakota. This cat was a long way from home!!!!

They also have trail cam pictures from MN from an area that is less than 50 miles from WI. Take a look at the WI DNR site.

Appears that the cats are moving further and further east.

WIS

I posted about black cougars and black jaguars a couple of times in the past. Be very surprised if this animal was a jaguar....WAAY to far north for me to suspect it was that. The tracks would be proof if one lacks the animals body and can't believe that jaguars don't live in Michigan. A jaguars front feet are bigger than the back.

A friend in Idaho saw a black cougar years ago. Forget the year.

A Michigan friend's brother saw a black cougar there years ago. Somewhere around Traverse City.

There was a radio collared cougar from the Black Hills of South Dakota that was found dead from a locomotive in Oklahoma, it had travelled 650 miles.


Yes, the black gene is not found in cougars, only in the other felines you mention who are spotted.

There have been big cat flaps throughout Ohio off and on, most recently only the east side of Columbus. Michigan has outlawed the ownership of cougars, Ohio still allows it, and escapees are probably what people see in Ohio. But if they can scrap out a living for a year, then from my point of view they are living wild. Breeding population is a whole different matter, and I doubt Ohio has one yet.

Micahn, I agree that our "representatives" avoid these situations in order to keep their responsibility low. I've found big cat sightings in newspaper stories covering the entire 1900's, not just recent accounts.

I would also say that is the EXACT same position Uncle Sam is in when it comes to sasquatch.

Imagine how they would have to respond if they admitted to sasquatch, and little Timmy went missing in the woods! What would you expect them to do as the parent? Ergo, their conundrum...

tirademan

Yeah, but a Siberian tiger in Los Angeles is way suspicious, too.

WAAAY too far east and south for that......................

Maybe it swam across the Bering Strait

I've seen what I can only describe as a cougar in Michigan back in 1999 in my home town of Cadillac Mi. It was light brown with a slightly darker tail than it's body, it was about as tall as my female Great Dane at the shoulder close to 34" it's body was longer though. Nose to tail tip probably around 6.5' long. We've seen many large cats over the years. None since the last sighting in in 99 though.

~A

There's really no reason genetically why there couldn't be a black cougar. Maybe it's just a myth. The self or melanistic mutation might be a product of a genetic bottleneck, as when a very small, isolated population inbreeds for a while. Then, when they are able to expand their locality, presto, a new colour phase occurs. Happens all the time in other animals, so why not cougars.

I think the propensity to sight "black panthers" is fascinating. It's not unlike those who postulate mankind's "hereditary memory" for the reason we spot large, hairy bipeds, too. And, like the creature for which this forum exists, a North American black panther carcass has never been produced. It's indeed a mystery.

Some more old panther sighting stories for those interested...

tirademan

I am reading a book by Theodore Roosevelt, about his Amazon Adventures. He clearly knew there was no Melanism in Cougars in that book, and it was written in the early 1900's. He states "There is no Melanism in cougars, but there is in the Jaguar" (Paraphrased from memory)

The melanistic colour phase is common to an extremely large assortment of mammals including other members of the feline family. To state that a certain mutation cannot exist in a certain type of big cat is to put blinders on. Just because it has not been scientifically documented before in this species does not mean it is impossible.

All it takes is for someone to shoot one of these black cats of the purported sightings, and for it to be DNA tested. If it should test positive for a cougar, then everything will change. Not that improbable really.

LoL.... come one Drew... citing Teddy Roosevelt on the existence of black cougars is like saying global warming exists beCAUSE Algore said so...

Vilnoori,

You are right that a genetic mutation is possible that would result in a melanistic cougar, but the odds against a true mutation is in the multi-millions to one. Still there are many things that no one knew existed even in our domestic animals that were brought to light by close inbreeding.
Recessive genes can hide for years, and recessive traits that are caused by multiple recessive genes can hide for thousands of years, but the number of sighting of black cats in the US seems to imply that the trait might not be that rare. So why no dead ones?

I would have told you also that white tailed deer didn't have a melanistic phase, but a picture I saw last year proved to me that I was mistaken.

I guess we will just have to wait to see what the future holds in regards to the big black cats.

Choctaw

Thanks for the concession, Choktaw. However, inbreeding is far more common than people think in animal populations, especially big cats, and all it takes is a situation where a small inbred population is isolated for a time followed by their sudden access into a whole new area. Exactly the scenario we might have here. In fact we might be witnessing the beginning of a new subspecies.

How I miss the columns of Stephen Jay Gould, in Natural History magazine! His writing introduced me to the concept of punctuated equilibrium.

From Wiki:

Punctuated equilibrium is a theory in evolutionary biology which states that most sexually reproducing species experience little change for most of their geological history, and that when phenotypic evolution does occur, it is localized in rare, rapid events of branching speciation (called cladogenesis).

The problem with the theory of punctuated equilibrium is that it relies heavily on the fossil record. If I remember correctly it relies heavily on changes to the skeletal structure of species. What I don't think the theory takes into account is the many minute changes that take place in DNA between those identifiable changes to the physical structure of an organism.
For example it is theorized that homo-sapiens first appeared in Africa between sixty to one hundred thousands years ago. It is believed that the African San people are the closest modern man to the pure race that first emerged from Africa. The San are slim built, yellowish brown skinned, short haired with some Negroid facial features. If you were living one hundred thousand years in the future the fossil remains of homo-sapiens from modern times to one hundred thousand years past when homo-sapiens first emerged would show only slight variation in our skeletal structure.The changes would be almost negligible, and indeed many of them could be attributed to a better food supply. However, you would be missing the vast array of mutations to the code that would not impact the fossil record you would lack the knowledge that people have diverged greatly from that original ancestral form. We now have people that range in color from the blackest black to the whitest white. We have curly hair, straight hair, blond hair, black hair, red hair. We have thick lips, thin lips, thin noses, wide noses, and eye color from blue eyes to a dozen variations in shades to the blackest of brown eyes. All these changes are genetic variables that would not necessarily be noted in the the fossil record.

All the changes I have listed to mankind from the original San model are likely due to recessive genes or in some cases the doubling of dominant gene to produce a more profound effect, than in the original. The only real question left to ponder is the 'when'. When did the mutations take place? In the last hundred thousand years or were the mutations present back into the millions of years ago? Has the divergence of humans across the world lead to the surfacing of the recessive traits that already existed in the gene pool or are they recent additions?

We know from the reports that there are genetic variations in the bigfoot populations; black hair, red hair; short hair ,long hair. What do you think about the eyes could there be blue eyed bigfoot.


Choctaw

Published Saturday January 31, 2009
Mountain lion's presence confirmed west of Columbus (NEBR)
BY DAVID HENDEE
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

A mountain lion appears to be passing through eastern Nebraska.


The Nebraska Game and Parks Commission confirmed cougar tracks in snow near the Loup River west of Columbus on Friday. A mountain lion was photographed Jan. 12 upstream along the Loup in Nance County.

Sam Wilson, the Game and Parks mountain lion specialist in Lincoln, said it's likely the two sightings were of the same animal as it moved eastward along the river. The tracks confirmed Friday were discovered Thursday by a landowner.

Wildlife biologists say roaming mountain lions use Nebraska's river system as roadways across the state. The wooded corridors provide ample cover and plentiful deer to eat.

"We've picked up on it twice now, and it'll be interesting to see if people come across tracks again," Wilson said. "Finding a mountain lion in just one location doesn't tell us a lot about where it's going."

Most of the 70 confirmed cougar sightings in Nebraska since 1991, many of them duplicates, have been young males driven out of their home territories in South Dakota's Black Hills or the mountains of Colorado and Wyoming by a dominant adult male, Wilson said.

"So they leave in any direction in search of females," he said. "They roam until they find what they're looking for."

The cougar or cougars sighted along the Loup River could be hundreds of miles away in a few weeks, Wilson said.

The big cats have a tan coat and a 30- to 36-inch-long black-tipped tail. Adult males weigh 100 to 150 pounds. Females typically weigh 55 to 90 pounds.

Mountain lions are protected in Nebraska. It is illegal to hunt or trap the animals.
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This is approximately 80 miles west of me, and within 20 miles of the village where I grew up. Fairly exciting news, in the vicinity.