The Dream Sighting!

There are always those dream sightings and pictures you want... well I managed to tick another one of my rather large list, and it is an excellent one too... the black panther! This chap has been roaming around Kabini for a while now, getting bolder and bolder, but this is my first sighting of him, or any other black panther, so it is very special to me! :)

This black panther is not a separate species but is in fact an Indian leopard (P. p. fusca) but due to a mutation in the melanin gene, these leopards have Melanism, a development of the dark-colored pigment melanin in the skin or its appendages and is the opposite of albinism. Historically, it was also the medical term for black jaundice [wiki].

Here is the best I could get in the brief moments I had with this handsome chap! :) Other images from this trip to Kabini will appear in due course, but these could not wait! :) As always, i do not crop, and when i do, it is minimal like in these cases... They are resized for the internet.