<\/p>\n
\n(file photo)
\nPhoto: 123RF\n<\/p>\n
By Zo\u00e9 Leroy, AFP<\/p>\n
A French couple kept Louise, a playful black panther, in an apartment in northern France, triggering panic when she was spotted roaming nearby rooftops.<\/p>\n
The pair were handed suspended jail sentences on Thursday for illegally keeping a wild animal, despite protesting that they saw Louise as their baby.<\/p>\n
The ruling follows a September 2019 incident when the months-old feline was seen roaming a rooftop in Armentieres after slipping out of the couple’s window.<\/p>\n
Authorities recaptured the panther, which weighed between 25 to 30kg, by sedating her with anaesthetic darts after she entered a home.<\/p>\n
No injuries were reported during the animal’s time on the loose.<\/p>\n
The court in the northern city of Lille condemned the 41-year-old man in the couple to 18 months in jail, which was suspended, and a \u20ac10,000 (NZ$19,300) fine.<\/p>\n
He was also barred from keeping animals for five years.<\/p>\n
The woman, also 41, received a four-month suspended sentence and a two-year animal possession ban.<\/p>\n
Keeping Louise was “tantamount to species trafficking,” argued Graziella Dode, a lawyer for an animal rights group that joined the case as a civil party.<\/p>\n
Xavier Bacquet, representing another foundation, called the crime mistreatment, arguing that the animal’s “physiological needs” could not be met in captivity.<\/p>\n
The owner told French daily La Voix du Nord in 2019 that he no longer saw it as a panther.<\/p>\n
“She was like a big, affectionate baby who just wanted to be cuddled,” he said.<\/p>\n
He told the court that he’d bought the animal for \u20ac2500 (NZ$5000) from a travelling community.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors told the court he’d already been convicted in other cases for theft, violence, and drug dealing, as well for illegally keeping a pet monkey.<\/p>\n
After its recapture, the panther was taken to the Maubeuge Zoo, from where it was briefly stolen a few days later.<\/p>\n
The feline, renamed Akilla, now lives at the Stichting Leeuw big cat sanctuary in the Netherlands, where one of its caretakers Wendy Karsten said it is doing well.<\/p>\n
“It has a lot of fun, is playful and interacts well with the neighbouring panther through the fence,” Karsten told AFP.<\/p>\n
– AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(file photo) Photo: 123RF By Zo\u00e9 Leroy, AFP A French couple kept Louise, a playful black panther, in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":119413,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,1590,63,1589,44,1591,1588,1586,1587,128,338],"class_list":["post-119412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-au","tag-audio","tag-australia","tag-current-affairs","tag-news","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}