The hunt for legendary feral big cats roaming through Australian bushland has been given a helping hand by one of the world's largest car manufacturers.
Big Cats Victoria researchers Simon Townsend and John Turner have for decades tracked thousands of witness reports nationwide from those claiming to have spotted panthers in the wild.
Ford Australia has announced it will provide cameras and other monitoring equipment to the research group to help their pursuit of the puma in Australia.
Pumas are only usually found in the wild in the Americas but the researchers think they could be prowling through Victoria's Otway regions.
Ford's collaboration is timed with the launch of the Ford Puma SUV and due partly to the proximity between one of their testing grounds and the researchers' base in Geelong.
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A large jet-black cat that looks suspiciously like a black panther photographed in Mount Sabine in Victoria's Otway Ranges in June. Big cat hunters have teamed up with Ford Australia to track down a puma in the region
A reported sighting of a black panther. Black panthers are black variants of either jaguars or leopards, both subspecies of Panthera
Ford's collaboration is timed with the launch of the Ford Puma SUV and the researchers' proximity to one of the manufacturer's testing grounds
Mr Townsend and Mr Turner recently appeared in a Discovery Channel documentary, in which they claimed there are up to seven sightings of big cats a year in the area.
Mr Townsend said the partnership with Ford will allow them to track the movements of the animals in finer detail.
'The addition of new cameras and equipment will greatly aid our search for the puma and other big cats,' he told the Geelong Advertiser.
'The pursuit of the puma and other big cats in the region has been part of our work since 1973.'
In June, Apollo Bay photographer Amber Noseda was taking pictures of birds when she spotted a large jet-black feline in Mount Sabine in the Otway Ranges.
'It had a square jawline and a very thick tail, thicker than your normal feral cat. I've never seen anything like it before,' she told Daily Mail Australia at the time.
Ms Noseda, who runs Great Ocean Photography, was heading home after her photography session when she caught sight of the cat.
'I was taking pictures of birds and as I was leaving the car park, I saw it in my rear view mirror, so I quickly got out and snapped a photo,' she said.
Amber Noseda, who runs Great Ocean Photography, was heading home after her photo session when she sighted a feral feline
'I'm a local in the area and I'm aware of pretty big feral cats but I've never seen anything like this before.
'At first, I thought it was a wallaby and then a dog but it turned out to be a large cat.'
She consulted experts from Big Cats Victoria and Strange Creatures Victoria, who agreed the cat's tail was much thicker than normal.
Despite the repeated claims of a black panther roaming the area, Ms Noseda said she was convinced it was just a feral cat.
'I didn't think it was a black panther. I looked back at the photos and I just think it's a very large feral cat,' she said.
'They've become extremely resilient to their environment, so they've become bigger. The only thing that hunts them is humans, so they're mostly at the top of their food chain.'
Hundreds of sightings of the legendary 'Otway Panther' have been reported since the 1960s.
In the Otways, feral cats hunt koalas, platypuses, possums, swamp wallabies, spot-tailed quolls and native bush rats.
Feral and domestic cats kill more than three million mammals, two million reptiles and one million birds in Australia each year, according to wildlife researcher Professor Sarah Legge from the Australian National University.
The photographer consulted experts from Big Cats Victoria and Strange Creatures Victoria, who agreed that the cat's tail was much thicker than normal
A reported black panther sighting in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. There have also been reported sightings in the Hunter Valley in New South Wales, the Otways, the Grampians and in Gippsland in Victoria, the Sunshine Coast and Gympie in Queensland and south-western WA
Ms Noseda's sighting in the Otway Ranges came after twin brothers claimed to have spotted a panther while walking in the region in May.
Royce and Ben Chaffey, 43, said they also saw a large number of carcasses of various animals throughout the area, which is well known for large cat sightings.
'It was not mistaken for something else, it was a large predator cat,' Royce Chaffey told the Geelong Advertiser at the time.
Mysterious wounds consistent with a big cat claw attack on the throat of a cow, found by a documentary team as they searched for clues as to the existence of the big cats
The twins said the panther was around 1.5 metres in length and jet black in colour.
They claimed to have spotted it as they were standing in the middle of a walking track and tried to capture it on film.
The supposed panther disappeared into the bush a few seconds later.