I can tell a leopard and a cheetah apart because cheetah have ‘tears’ running from their eyes. I have seen several cheetah (an acquaintance had a ‘tame’ rehabilitated one that could not be returned to the wild), but never a leopard. Leopard are solitary and nocturnal so they are not easy to spot.
I was looking up the differences in the spots between different big cats, and was surprised how different they are when you see them together. I had no idea that cheetah only had simple spots. I had somehow ‘remembered’ that they have rosettes.
A black panther is a melanistic (extra dark pigment) leopard or jaguar. You can still see their rosette patterns in direct sunlight. Here is an infrared photo of a black panther.
All these images are from Wikipedia but were not sourced.
