Incredibly Rare Black Leopard Captured On Camera For First Time In 100 Years

Big cats are a thing of incredible beauty. Not only are they stunning to look at, and incredible predators, it’s also fun to see them perform similar behaviors to the domestic cats we have at home.

For example, the old adage of “If I fits in it, I sits in it,” as demonstrated by this playful lion:

Many people dedicate their lives to documenting these amazing beasts, following them around the plains of Africa in order to understand them better.

Every once in a while, a photographer will capture something truly special, and that’s exactly what happened when British wildlife photographer Will Burrard-Lucas, 35, caught an ultra-rare big cat on camera: the fabled Black Leopard, pictured below.

The photographer managed to get the once-in-a-lifetime encounter while it was raining around the plains of Kenya under full moon. It is thought to be the first time one has been caught on camera for around 100 years/

While on a photography expedition in Laikipia Wilderness Camp in Kenya, Will heard rumors of a black panther in the area. Black panther is actually a loose term for a black leopard or black jaguar, depending where in the world it’s from.

I know what you’re thinking – how did he manage to get so close to this predator without being attacked? Well, he set up his camera equipment, along with motion sensors, and waited patiently for the majestic animal to show.

After following leopard tracks through the undergrowth with a guide called Steve, Will settled on a place to set up his Camtraptions camera traps.

“I’m quite used to doing camera traps and not actually achieving anything because it is such a speculative thing – you don’t know if the animal you’re trying to get is going to come down the trail that you’ve set the cameras up on.”

As well as the skill and vision that one needs to be a photographer, wildlife photographers also need to have an incredible amount of patience, as demonstrated by Will’s 4-day wait to get these shots.

“I never get my hopes up, and after the first couple of nights I hadn’t got this leopard and I was beginning to think I’d be lucky if I get a photo of a spotty leopard, let alone this black one,” said Will, pictured below on another trip.

On the fourth night though, his luck was in.

“I don’t think it sank in immediately what I’d managed to achieve, it was such an unusual subject.

“Usually on these camera trap photos with the flash you see the animal very clearly. But as it blended in with the black night so well all I could see was these eyes staring out of the picture.”

The black leopard Will captured on camera is a male, and is thought to be around two years old.

“We had always heard about black leopards living in this region, but the stories were absent of high quality footage that could confirm their existence,” said Nicholas Pilfold PhD, lead researcher for a leopard conservation program in Laikipia County.

“Collectively these are the first confirmed images in nearly 100 years of a black leopard in Africa, and this region is the only known spot in all of Africa to have a black leopard.”

Dr Pilfold and his team say that “confirmed” here means that the image is clear and detailed enough to see the leopard’s characteristic pattern.

Kenya’s Daily Nation newspaper photographed a similar animal in 2013, although Dr Pilfold claims that leopard was not wild and was brought to Kenya from America as a cub.

The black leopard is a truly magnificent beast. Although its dark fur is harder to make out in these nighttime photos, you will be able to make out the beautiful markings, which can be seen here on a common leopard:

The dark appearance of the black leopard is down to an excess of melanin production. While it doesn’t take two black leopards to make one black leopard cub, both parents need to carry the recessive gene for melanism.

It’s a very rare occurrence, which is why this beautiful creature is such a rare sight. Will says it’s hard to say how many leopards there are in East Africa, given how secretive they are, saying that “There might be a handful in east Africa that are black.”

Congratulations to Will Burrard-Lucas on a once-in-a-lifetime set of photos!

Cover image credit: Will Burrard-Lucas

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