What does a dark colored fur mean regarding a jaguar
Long time ago I saw a jaguar (I believe it was one). The strange thing was, that it was extremely dark. I wouldn't refer to it as "black" but actually pretty dark.
What does such a color signal? Was it sick, young or just an optical illusion?
1 answer
It's possible that what you saw was normal for a jaguar. The Panthera species (leopards [Panthera pardus] in Asia and Africa, and jaguars [Panthera onca] in the Americas) can have melanistic colours like many species. They're commonly known as Black Panthers.
Sometimes you can still see a leopard / jaguars spots through the black fur, but it's still melanistic as it's had a development of the coloured pigment melanin, other times it's a complete covering.
This post was sourced from https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/a/9949. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
0 comment threads
0 comment threads