![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() We’ve written about this before, and you can learn more about the rationale for why – and learn what people really see instead – in that post.īut since it seems like everyone and their brother or cousin has a story of seeing a blurry animal or hearing a scream in the woods from afar and just “knowing” that it was a cougar, we’d like to turn our attention to those tales again in this post. And we can state with confidence that there’s no such thing as “black panthers” anywhere in the Appalachians, since creatures like those never even occurred here to begin with. In fact, there’s a very high likelihood that there’s no breeding population of cougars anywhere in our mountains, even as lone individuals occasionally wander from the West. There’s just one problem with that scenario, though: cougars aren’t common in Appalachia, if they exist at all. A majestic, rarely seen predator lurking in the woods and making a primeval sound is intimidating, after all. It’s common for people to attribute these sounds to cougars – even if they never actually saw an animal – since it’s the most dramatic scenario we could imagine. Tales like this are common across the mountains, especially from hikers spending the night deep in the woods only to be awoken by the sound of what could easily be a person screaming in the distance. It’s that time of year again: “cougar” season, where residents and visitors all across Appalachia report hearing a mountain lion, cougar, or panther scream out in the night. ![]()
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