Bulgaria's black panther on the prowl mystery continues with latest sighting

The saga of Bulgaria’s elusive black panther appears not to be over after a resident of the village of Dupnitsa filmed an animal he believes could be the potentially dangerous feline.

The village mayor, Desislav Nachov, told local media that he had inspected the location where the video was filmed together with the police.

The authorities are questioning the person who filmed the footage seen by Euronews, which shows what appears to be a large black feline moving through tall grass.

Nachov said no decision has been made yet about whether to open an emergency headquarters to start a search for the animal.

"This depends on the assessment of the police. The person who filmed the video described the animal he saw as resembling a large dog," he said.

Dupnitsa is located around 66 kilometres south of the capital Sofia and relatively close to the Serbian border. It is also more than 430 kilometres west of the Shumen plateau nature park, where the cat was first spotted.

That area was on high alert and locked down for nearly two weeks as a search took place to find the big cat. The search, ruled as inconclusive, was called off in mid-July.

The search, which began on 19 June, was prompted by a widely circulated video and paw prints that initially led to fears that a dangerous predator was roaming free. 

However, zoologists from the National Museum of Natural History raised doubts, with Dr Stoyan Lazarov saying the paw print likely belonged to a large dog.

A report from fellow zoologist, Professor Nikolay Spasov, supported this claim, also stating the print was not feline in origin.

Despite days of tracking and deploying camera traps and baited stations, no apparent sightings or physical traces were found.

The animal’s movements appear “erratic and unpredictable," said Georgi Krastev, director of the Central Balkan National Park, who helped coordinate the search.

Further rumours about the cat actually being a couple and the female feline being pregnant or with cubs in tow were also dismissed.

Panther inspires memes

While the mystery of the elusive black panther may have been an anticlimactic, albeit still open-ended conclusion, it sparked a wave of humour across the country and the wider region.

Social media has been flooded with memes and AI-generated images of the big cat, as well as folk songs about the black panther or puma from Shumen, jokingly renaming the city to "Pumen".

Businesses were also quick to capitalise on the unexpected publicity, adding references to the panther in their marketing, with restaurants creating images of the panther enjoying local delicacies such as beer and grilled meat.

One of the jokes came from Romania's emergency services, who posted an AI-generated photo of firefighters rescuing a black panther from a tree, a post that quickly went viral with thousands of likes and shares.

It is not the first time a big cat has been reported to be on the loose in Europe. Residents reported seeing a panther around the Italian province of Bari in 2021, leading authorities to warn the public to avoid the countryside.

Authorities in eastern Slovakia also urged residents to exercise caution after a tiger was spotted in an area near the border in 2022.

There have also been several stories in the UK concerning rumoured sightings of panthers roaming the countryside in recent years, though some experts have disputed the veracity of these claims.