By SAGE LEPLEY
First, let’s clear one thing up — black panthers are not real. Not technically. If you pointed to an animal and said “Look, it’s a black panther!” you’d be somewhat inaccurate.
A black panther is usually a jaguar or leopard born with something called melanism, which is a gene mutation that is dominant in jaguars and recessive in leopards (for my genealogy nerds, it is dominant in the MC1R gene for jaguars and recessive in the ASIP gene for leopards).
However, it is not just jaguars and leopards that can be black panthers. This label can apply to all animals in the Panthera Genius, which includes lions, leopards, jaguars, and snow leopards. If they are born with the gene mutation, they are a black panther.
So, if you see a fully black lion, that would be a black panther (more on black lions later). A black snow leopard? A black panther. A black tiger? A black panther.
Ultimately, there are two different types of melanism: adaptive and industrial, adaptive meaning a hereditary trait and industrial meaning a generational change. Leopards, jaguars, and tigers have adaptive melanism, so it occurs through a genetic mutation and not a gradual change.
Another thing to note is that “black lions” do not exist in nature, as no documentation of a black lion has ever been made. Lions can have dark manes due to age or dominance, but any fully black lion photographed has been artificially edited to look that way. Logically, this makes sense, as being fully black in the desert would be extremely disadvantageous and even if a lion cub was born with this genetic mutation, it wouldn’t survive long. Even having a darker mane makes it harder for lions to hunt or hide, so being fully black would be a death sentence.
So, let’s extend the idea of melanism to the cats we see everyday. Black cats have the mutation in their gene that causes their body to increase eumelanin and to suppress patterns. A black cat can also be black if both its parents have the recessive gene, so an orange cat can give birth to a fully black cat, a white cat can do the same. A black cat can also give birth to a white cat (cat genetics are apparently complex with the coloring, which is why the litter cannot ever be fully guessed unless both parents are “purebred.”
Melanin can have some health benefits! The pigmentation absorbs harmful UV rays, like a built-in sunscreen, releasing the UV rays as heat instead. In insects, melanin can boost immunity by forming a protective layer around foreign objects such as parasites.
However, melanin can also cause or indicate sickness. In one study done on silkworms, researchers made the silkworms ingest melanin and learned that it had a negative impact on their growth.
Melanin has the ability to bind to substances and can sometimes make the brain much more susceptible to chemical toxicity. Melanin’s properties can lead to interactions with drugs to be therapeutic or have toxic effects.
This entire time, we’ve only been talking about eumelinin, which is one of the two types of melanin — turning fur or skin dark. The other type is pheomelanin, which produces brown, red-ish, or yellow pigments. This is where you’ll sometimes get the yellow raccoons (erythristic or leucistic genetic variations also cause raccoons to be yellow, as it is a partial loss of pigmentation). Pheomelanin is much less able to absorb UV radiation and can act as a photosensitizer, which can contribute to skin cancer risk.
Congrats, you now know more about black panthers and a LOT more about melanin.
Featured image: Big Cat Conversations
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