UPDATED: January 14, 2007.

Photograph of a cryptid black felid taken late in 2005 in Florida, by a Georgia professor (credit Ben Willis) that probably is a melanistic bobcat (Lynx rufus floridianus).

Based on one of yesterday’s melanistic bobcat blog comments, here are my promised suggestions for the hot spots to go observe these black felids.

Top Twelve Locations To See Black Bobcats

1-10. South Florida.

If there’s one place that has produced the most melanistic bobcats, it would be this south central east Florida coast county that lies next to the Okeechobee Swamp region, specifically, Martin County, Florida. Ten black bobcats have been documented in southern Florida, six since 1970. In the early days, most of these were from Martin County.

Update: Here’s more about the mystery photograph (above) from 2005. As noted here, it was taken in Martin County, Florida.

Click on map for full size version

Zoologist Fred A. Ulmer, Jr. wrote "Melanism in the Felidae, with Special Reference to the Genus Lynx" in the Journal of Mammalogy, Vol. 22, No. 3, August 1941, pp. 285-288. Ulmer noted that on April 18, 1939, Vincent Nelson and J. Townsend Sackett live-trapped a black male Florida bobcat (Lynx rufus floridianus) in Martin County, Florida, 14 miles above the mouth of the Loxahatchee River. An experienced trapper, Nelson had not previously seen a melanistic bobcat.

A black bobcat obtained by Sackett for the Zoological Society of Philadelphia was exhibited at their zoo from late April through to August 3, 1939, before it died. Its skin and skull went to the collection of the Acadamy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (specimen no 19842).

In January 1940, Nelson live-trapped another melanistic female bobcat in the same region. Famed herper Raymond L. Ditmars obtained the melanistic female for the Bronx Zoo. This one was caught about two miles from where the first specimen was obtained, in swampy jungle close to the confluence of Kitchen Creek and Loxahatchee (or Jupiter) River.

On this specific 1990 map, the locations within southern Florida where melanistic bobcat have been found are noted; source for pdf, here. The numbers 1 and 2 are from 1939-1940 – Martin County.

Click on image for full size version

11. New Brunswick, Canada.

One black bobcat was discovered and taken in New Brunswick in the early 1990s.

12. South Louisiana.

There is a rumored record of a black bobcat being obtained in Louisiana in the 1940s.

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Thanks to Ben Willis, Sarah Hartwell, and Bob Pickett for various components of this data.