THE fabled 'Beast of Exmoor’ has been spotted again – and this time there is no doubting the creature is real.

It is a female black leopard which has been relocated to Exmoor Zoo from Parc Des Felins, just outside Paris, France, where she was born in May of last year.

Called ‘Bagheera’ after Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book stories, she has the fiery temperament of the zoo’s previous black leopards ‘Zoysa’ and ‘Ebony’.

The adolescent leopard has been interacting with zoo visitors from inside her house quarters where her bright green, emerald eyes and her white teeth have been the first things anybody has noticed about her.

Black leopards are what scientists call ‘melanistic’, meaning the leopard coat pattern is still there but the guard hairs in her coat have become black.

It is extremely rare in the wild and tends to just occur in certain selected parts of the world where dense forest provides a good habitat in which they can hide.

In more open areas, black is too obvious and is not a survivable mutation.

Black leopards in captivity are thought to derive from the Victorian era when they were collected due to their unusual colour in areas such as Corbett national park, in northern India.

‘Bagheera’ was raised by her parents, which are one of the only two pairs of black leopards left in captivity in Europe.

She came to Exmoor Zoo in an exchange for one of its female caracal kittens born in 2021, which was exchanged as part of a European breeding program and co-operation with other zoos.

Exmoor Zoo collection manager Danny Reynolds said;” We would hope that Bagheera should live with us for the next 15 years or more.

“If we can, we may try and find a normal coat coloured male companion from the Asiatic leopards in captivity.

“Leopards from the African continent are slightly different, being much larger and tend not to have the recessive genes for the potential black appearance.”

The Exmoor Beast myth dates to the 1950s when many people owned ‘big cats’ as prestige pets and some escaped into the countryside.

Since the 1976 Dangerous Wild Animal Act it has become illegal to own a ‘big cat’ without special conditions and inspected licensing.