Why is the Pink Panther, who is quite clearly male, called "La" Pantera Rosa in Spanish?

cause panther is feminine?

So a male panther is still referred to in the feminine?

As you learned earlier, all Spanish nouns are either masculine or feminine. Spanish adjectives agree in gender and number with the noun that they modify. For example, a feminine plural noun must be modified by a feminine plural adjective. As a general rule, if a masculine adjective ends in the letter -o, the feminine form changes from the letter -o to the letter -a. If the masculine form ends in any other letter, the feminine form is likely to be the same.

Let’s take a look at some examples. The feminine forms of rojo, blanco, and negro are roja, blanca, and negra because these adjectives end in -o. On the other hand, the feminine forms of verde, gris, and azul stay the same. Forming the plural is also very simple. If the adjective ends in a vowel, add -s. If it ends in a consonant, add -es. That’s why the plurals of amarillo and anaranjado are amarillos and anaranjados, while the plurals of gris and azul are grises and azules.

https://www.dummies.com/languages/spanish/making-spanish-adjectives-agree-with-the-nouns-they-modify/
randomhouse.com/livinglanguage/Audio-Scripts/Starting-Out-In-PDFs/StartingOutInSpanish.pdf no longer exists

The Pink Panther is actually a diamond, which is neither male or female, I suppose. Panther in Spanish is "pantera", so it would take the feminine "la" rather than the masculine "el" for "the" because it ends with "a".

Plot

As a child, Princess Dala receives a gift from her father, the Shah of Lugash: the Pink Panther, the largest diamond in the world. This huge pink gem has an unusual flaw: looking deeply into the stone, one perceives a tiny discoloration resembling a leaping pink panther – hence the name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pink_Panther_%281963_film%29

...however, we need someone who did better than a D in Spanish to tell us why panther in Spanish is pantera, but there doesn't seem to be such a thing as a pantero, which *might* be a male panther.

Qp could weigh in on this...but, my understanding is that grammatical gender is obligatory...God only knows why.

Doesn't really matter if it's a rock or a critter:

pantera
feminine noun1. panther •pantera negra -> black panther

pantera [pan-tay’-rah]
noun1. Panther. (f)
2. A mineral crystal enclosing foreign bodies. (f)

http://www.spanishdict.com/translate/pantera

http://www.e-spanyol.hu/en/grammar/gender.php

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender

In French, a 6'6'' soldier with a bass voice and a beard covering his chest is still 'la sentinelle' if he's on watch duty. People that speak these languages don't seem to have the problem that native English speakers do with gender issues (actor or actress?) Or do they?

Yes, I suppose it's like a male midwife not being called a midhusband (although fireman, postman, milkman, etc have all been made defunct in the interests of political correctness).

Actually - no to one point. A midwife is either male or female because it is someone who is 'with' the 'woman' who is giving birth. It's the customer that's female, not the practitioner.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwifery

Milkmen - I've never seen a female one yet.

On a sideline, there's a firm in Liverpool that runs big wagons carrying muck and rubble to and from building and demolition sites. These big eight wheel trucks were always all dark blue. The other day, I saw one painted in a tasteful shade of pink! (Under the road and site dirt...) Not the colour you'd expect to see in muck-shifting. Then I managed to see the driver - slim, pony-tailed and in her twenties so far as I could see.

Noun
milkwoman (plural milkwomen)

A woman who delivers milk to households and sometimes businesses early in the morning.
Synonyms
milkie (UK slang), milko (Australian slang)
milkman m.
dairywoman

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/milkwoman

Zb's post of 8:22 and Baloo's about 'la sentinelle' tell it as well as it can be told. Don't believe anybody who says only English grammar is capricious! Gender is randomly assigned to nouns, or if not randomly, the reason is so deeply buried the Spanish Academy is unaware of it. Some words are even both! (Repressing a joke here.)

http://books.google.com/books?id=89KX2RC6Gx0C&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&dq=spanish+academy+gender+noun&source=bl&ots=xLYLYigJqm&sig=yn1C00m2R_UaiVg-pCTvE6z-Fck&hl=en&ei=dkLTTNC9LoqusAOVgfGCCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=spanish%20academy%20gender%20noun&f=false

And don't believe this extrapolation of the Sapir-Whorf thesis that says in Spanish a key is called "la llave" (feminine) and therefore Spanish speakers see keys as "lovely, shiny, shaped." Baloney! I asked my husband in Spanish how he would describe a key, and he said, "hard, metallic." When he wondered why I asked, he said Spanish is goofy one that: anybody would know a key is functionally male--you stick it in and wiggle it.

http://books.google.com/books?id=WT_VEMPdOdwC&pg=PA71&lpg=PA71&dq=brym+and+lie+sociology+a+key+is+feminine&source=bl&ots=uNEF-VfEGE&sig=v3JwmRHRIFqtn9zF4j1OQUfAgsA&hl=en&ei=HkDTTI2eEpO2sAP74LmuDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

(McGruff, if those links are impossible, just axe this...after Zb sees it. Sorry and thanks.)