Wild life | 7 March 2019

Laikipia

  A female black panther was recently photographed at our neighbours’ place. Exactly like Kipling’s Bagheera, she was ‘inky black all over, but with the panther markings showing up in certain lights like the pattern of watered silk’. The images show her to be the most beautiful of creatures. A black panther is a melanistic leopard. I rarely see leopards and I have never seen this individual but for years a local Laikipia researcher called Ambrose Letoluai had heard about these black panthers from elders in our area. Based at Loisaba Conservancy next to us, Ambrose works for a San Diego Zoo leopard project. As part of his routine to record cat habits he installs devices called camera traps in rocky outcrops and trees. Leopards are elusive, but I was surprised to learn Calvin Klein perfume (‘between love and madness lies Obsession’) dabbed around the cameras was a sure-fire way to attract them within photographic range at night.