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Two leopard cubs from the same litter were photographed in South India, one with a rare melanistic coat
by /u/Raj_Valiant3011 | 80 comments | 2026-06-17T03:35:55+00:00 Central
Comments
| /u/girlpower0823 They're such cute kitties |
| /u/AnomaLuna I'd stupidly go ahead to cuddle them and accept my fate |
| /u/Suspicious_Bicycle https://old.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/ |
| /u/elessar9411 I knowww the one on the left is sitting like such a graceful lady |
| /u/Shaasar I thought the same thing 🥹 |
| /u/Miracle_0001 with the flowery background i think they were fully ready for photoshoot |
| /u/fmnatic Those flowering plants are Lantana Camara, an invasive species in India's Western Ghats. |
| /u/MowStealth It has an oddly dizzying fragrance |
| /u/LouizSir he still has the spots, altough much more difficult to see in a black background. |
| /u/Slight_user42069 They are pretty much visible when you see them in real. |
| /u/Snitsie And a shit camera mainly |
| /u/SoftBoiledEgg_irl Interesting tidbit: Panthers are not a distinct species. Rather, all panthers are either melanistic jaguars or leopards. |
| /u/Marwaimusoont Instead of a stork, the flamingo brought the baby, |
| /u/PagKev panthera are the genus which includes jaguars, leopards, lions, snow leopards and tigers. all of them are panthers but only some jaguars and leopards have the genetic mutation to have their base color replaced by a darker brown (black panthers keep their original marking, jsut less visible) |
| /u/tinticred Yeah, the tidbit cited here should have just said "black panthers aren't a distinct species." I also always got a kick out of mountain lions being called "panthers" in Florida despite being the largest cat that isn't in the genus Panthera. |
| /u/ChipSouthern9771 They're called by so many different names it's ridiculous- in my part of the U.S, we mostly call them cougars, but elsewhere you'll hear mountain lion, panther, puma, or even catamount (although I've only come across that last one in books). |
| /u/pectuslady Florida just be trying to rebrand things that don't need rebranding. Palmetto bug? It's a fucking cockroach, but they're in denial. |
| /u/NoSoyTuPotato I wonder if this is due to language. I'm surprised they weren't called pumas |
| /u/Kitchen_Claim_6583 Panthers are not a distinct species. Rather, all panthers are either melanistic jaguars or leopards. It's more confused than this, because the American mountain lion/puma/cougar is also colloquially called a panther depending on the region despite being distinct from jaguars and leopards. It is more closely related to the cheetah than it is to leopards, though it occupies nearly the same niche. |
| /u/PagKev funny about that is, panther (panthera) is the genus for big cats which include jaguars, leopards, lions, snow leopards, and tiger, and no other living species pumas (and their clostes relatives cheetahs) are distinctly not panthers, they are instead part of felinae, as are our pet cats |
| /u/NerdOctopus Americans call cougars panthers? Not sure I've ever heard that before. |
| /u/Name7757 In certain regions, especially in the east, hence the Pittsburgh Panthers and Florida Panthers |
| /u/vitrum_analytika We need to find that person who started all this confusion and put an Amazon Boa in his pants |
| /u/Name7757 I'm afraid I have no idea what you're talking about |
| /u/Kitchen_Claim_6583 Yep, absolutely. I grew up in a place that was thick with them -- the first time I ever saw one was a dead one in the back of a local farmer's pickup truck as a little kid -- and he called it a panther. "The cougar (/ˈkuːɡər/ KOO-gər; Puma concolor), also called puma, mountain lion, catamount, and panther" per Wikipedia. I've never heard catamount in regular conversation, though. |
| /u/RikuAotsuki IIRC "catamount" is an older and more rural term that's been almost entirely phased out. |
| /u/ChipSouthern9771 Yeah, I've come across it in books quite a few times but never heard someone use it in conversation. |
| /u/FossilFrothy One of Fort Worth's nicknames is Panther City. The moniker originated in 1875 when a Dallas attorney joked that Fort Worth was so sleepy that a panther was seen napping on Main Street. So Americans have been doing it for at least 150 years. |
| /u/Ok_Celebration_8370 It's so annoying because it has 4 distinct names in english for no reason |
| /u/Glasseshalf I mean, the name Panther comes from the name of the genus that includes all big cats, Panthera. It's just a colloquialism for a general big cat. Like how ox can refer to many different species of bovine. |
| /u/Jiquero In Finnish, "pantteri" is another name for leopard (Panthera pardus), the other being "leopardi". No need for it to be black. These big cats are already confusing by themselves, now let's introduce random colloquial usage, except in some languages it's the official usage! |
| /u/Glasseshalf The genus that all big cats belong to is Panthera that's where it comes from |
| /u/Glasseshalf The Florida Panther is its own subspecies of cougar, with some scientists even arguing it should be a separate species due to its separation from the rest of the population. At least when I lived there it was considered critically endangered, unlike its northern siblings. |
| /u/OneMoreFinn Hmm so if puma is more closely related to the cheetah, is it not then a big cat (meows), or is it still a big cat (roars) despite being closest to it? |
| /u/GiganticCrow Isn't that literally what panthers are? |
| /u/Decloudo Just a normal Panther. Panthers are not their own species: A black panther is the melanistic colour variant of the leopard and the jaguar. Panthera, the cat genus that contains tigers, lions, jaguars and leopards Panther practically just means: "a big cat". |
| /u/energy1256 They look like two stuffies I once had. Much more deadly of course. |
| /u/Dry_Huckleberry_6342 So cute,, look at those eyes and the look the give. |
| /u/dndDAAKU23 theres lots more documentations of a similar case ( or the same, maybe ) in the Bhadra Tiger Reserve, Karnataka where a leopard and a black panther are a pair. do look them up, super cool couple |
| /u/Active-Coconut-8961 Both are so beautiful 😍 |
| /u/indianodysses Did they take away their toys ? Why are they angry/sad ? |
| /u/yukiteru9 they look even more cute in that grumpy expression 😭 |
| /u/peachesxbeaches I can't tell which one is the hotter sibling, they both lookin fierce for the camera |
| /u/Ok-Comment6081 "He's just my brothuh from another mothuh" |
| /u/lonely_eyed_girl Same mother because same litter. |
| /u/Elyprincess One is working undercover |
| /u/brooklyn_kod Bagheera, is that you? ( The Jungle Book) |
| /u/Dear-Definition5802 According to wiki, the frequency of melanism appears to be approximately 11%, which is about equal to the current rate of lefthandedness in people. So, it's not typical, but I'd be reluctant to describe it as rare. |
| /u/muhmeinchut69 Google tells me they are very successful in dense tropical environments, and in the Malayan Peninsula, up to 95% of the leopard population is melanistic. They are exceptionally rare in Africa though. |
| /u/PsychoSushi27 I'm from Malaysia and I've always associate leopards with being black in colour. Grandparents who used to live rural would talk about seeing black leopards back in the day. I always thought the spotted version is the rarer version. |
| /u/StaticSystemShock I didn't even notice the left one for like full 3 seconds lol |
| /u/wonkey_monkey "Mom says we just have to get our photo taken then we can have ice cream deer." |
| /u/stanknotes If I was a leopard... I'd wanna be black as fuck. |
| /u/farquuaad44 One will kill you the other will only rob you |
| /u/Levity_brevity I'm fine either way...but preferably both. |
| /u/DramaAlternative1188 A black panther is just a melanistic leopard or jaguar, not it's own distinct species. |
| /u/verifiedshitlord Black one can try as hard as it can be it will always look like a pentacle cuddler |
| /u/Toukafan4life Someone check the fur of the mail leopard |
| /u/tarun_rwt That's black panther also known as "ghosts of the forest" |
| /u/Acrobatic-West3645 These guys are so cute. It's funny that for a long time I thought jaguars and panthers were different animals. |
| /u/Projectstfu What is the cutoff on the word rare? I know the definition is "not common" but what amount would there need to be in order to not be common? There is a higher rate of melanistic leopards than there are left handed humans. Can I say "look at this video of a rare left handed human"? There are more leopards that are not melanistic, yes. But rare? |
| /u/Decloudo Most people dont care for what words actually mean. |
| /u/Norwester77 Yup, just like you can have black and striped house cat kittens in the same litter. It doesn't take much genetic difference to cause melanism. |
| /u/Both-One4516 These are such a cutiee 🥰 |
| /u/augbanane come heeere, kitty kitty! 🥰 |
| /u/Kill_4209 His dad giving his mom a look right now... |
| /u/EarlyXplorerStuds209 This photo is from 2018. Why post it now? This is fairly common amongst leopards and jaguars anyway. Nothing special about it, guy. |
| /u/candidaleena82 Yo, check out the blue eyes on the black one. Kinda wild how they can be siblings and look so different. |
| /u/iDoMyOwnResearchJK Where are my melanistic ppl at?!?! |
| /u/mysoulalamo Makes me think of this |
| /u/New_Average_2522 and one of them says "who is this n*gga?" |
| /u/No_Priors "Why is it always you two?" |
| /u/lovesducks even when theyre black they just wont get rid of the leopard print |
| /u/JeffTheChillDude Did they show up in school without their homework? |
| /u/NoGarage7989 They both look so done in the cutest way |
| /u/Acceptable_Honey_223 bro that third comment just blew my mind, always thought panthers were their own thing lol. these lil guys are straight up model material with that flower backdrop tho. |
| /u/fothergillfuckup They have to sit still for face eating lessons. |
| /u/Catsareawesome1980 Beautiful. I hope they're left alone after this. |
| /u/Arcturus_mayflower Why is he melancholic? |
| /u/storyofmylife92 His tail is so long 😍 |