Most leopards recorded at 16 sites south of the Kra Isthmus between 1996 and 2009 were black, indicating a near fixation of melanism in peninsular Malaysia. The taxonomic status of captive black leopards and the extent of hybridization between the Javan leopard and other leopard subspecies is uncertain. Therefore, coordinated breeding programs for black leopards do not exist in European and North American zoos. Black leopards occupy space needed for breeding endangered leopard subspecies and are not kept within the North American Species Survival Plan. Two black Amur leopard ("P. p. orientalis") cubs were born in zoos. A pseudo-melanistic leopard has a normal background color, but the spots are more densely packed than normal and merge to obscure the golden-brown background color. Any spots on the flanks and limbs that have not merged into the mass of swirls and stripes are unusually small and discrete, rather than forming rosettes. The face and underparts are paler and dappled like those of ordinary spotted leopards. In 1801, Félix de Azara described a black jaguar observed by local people near the Paraná River in Paraguay. Melanism in the jaguar is conferred by a dominant allele. In 2009, a black jaguar was recorded for the first time in Costa Rica's Alberto Manuel Brenes Biological Reserve. In the mountains of the Cordillera de Talamanca, 104 records of jaguars were obtained between 2010 and 2019; 26 of them showed melanistic jaguars. There are no authenticated cases of truly melanistic cougars. Melanistic cougars were neither photographed nor killed in the wild, and none have ever been bred. Unconfirmed sightings, known as the "North American black panther", are currently attributed to errors in species identification by non-experts, and by the mimetic exaggeration of size.