Onza


The onza is a fairly large cat the size of a small mountain lion living in the northwestern corner of Mexico, in the states of Sinaloa and Sonora.  The Onza isn't really a cryptid any longer, since one was shot and examined by scientists in 1986.  But it's still an animal that remains of interest to cryptozoologists, because if the Onza remained hidden in a place that close to human eyes but was never found until ten years ago, what other creatures might there be, awaiting discovery?

The Onza first appears in the legends of the Aztecs.  The Florentine Codex, Vol. 13, an Aztec natural history catalog, describes the cuitlamiztli, which they say resembled a cougar, but was far more aggressive.  When the conquistadores arrived in Mexico from Spain, they were shown the great zoo of the emperor Motecuzoma (Montezuma).  One of the Spaniards, Bernal Diaz del Castillo, said that the zoo contained "tigers [jaguars] and lions [cougars] of two kinds, one of which resembled the wolf".

After the Spaniards settled Mexico, the animal was seen more often, and they christened it with the name Onza.  "It is not as timid as the [cougar]," wrote Jesuit missionary Father Ignaz Pfefferkorn in 1757, "and he who ventures to attack it must be well on his guard".  Another missionary, Father Johann Baegert, wrote that an "Onza dared to invade my neighbor's mission when I was visiting, and attacked a 14-year old boy in broad daylight...a few years ago another killed the strongest and most respected soldier" in the area.

The onza was fairly quiet for the next century and a half, and then in 1938 hunters Dale and Clell Lee, with Indiana banker Joseph Shirk, shot what locals identified as an Onza near La Silla Mountain in Sinaloa.  Dale Lee was certain that the animal they shot was not a cougar. Although somewhat resembling a cougar in coloration, its ears, legs, and body were much longer and it was built mor lightly than a cougar.

Finally, in January, 1986, Mexican farmer Andres Rodriguez Murillo, who owned a ranch in the San Ignacio District of Sinaloa, killed an animal resembling the cat shot by the Lee brothers. Rodriguez and Ricardo Zamora were deer hunting at about 10:30 p.m. when they came across a large cat which seemed ready to charge.  Rodriguez, fearing a jaguar attack, shot the cat.

After seing that the cat was not a jaguar or cougar, Rodriguez and Zamora took the cat's body back to Rodriguez's ranch.  A Mr. Vega, who owned a nearby ranch and who was an experienced hunter, was contacted by Rodriguez.  Vega said that the cat was an onza, and that it was nearly identical to one that his father had shot in the 1970s (the skull of the Vega animal has been preserved).  Vega in turn contacted Ricardo Urquijo, Jr., who suggested taking the animal's body to Mazatlan for examination.

The cat was found to have a large wound on one of the rear legs, which both Rodriguez and Vega believed was inflicted by a jaguar.  The specimen was also found to have been in good health with a fully functional reproductive system.

Most cryptozoologists felt that the Onza represented a new subspecies of Puma concolor (mountain lion), or possibly an entirely new species of cat.  German mammalogist Helmut Hemmer even suggested that the onza represented an extant specimen of the prehistoric American cheetah Acinonyx trumani.

The International Society of Cryptozoology (ISC)'s J. Richard Greenwell concluded as far back as 1986 that the Onza was not to be identified with A. trumani, on basis of examination of skulls of that animal.  A 1996 paper laid the Onza's cryptozoological identity - or lack thereof - by stating that genetic examination of the carcass revealed that it had "molecular characteristics indistinguishable from those of western North American pumas." 

The authors of the article do not preclude the possibility of the Onza's identity as as a regional mutation or even subspecies distinct from the regional type, P. c. azteca.


ANONYMOUS
    1984          Two New Onza Skulls Found.  ISC Newsletter 4:4 (Winter).
    1986          Onza Specimen Obtained, Identity Being Studied.  ISC Newsletter 5:1 (Spring). 

DRATCH, Peter A., et. al.
    1996          Molecular Genetic Identification of a Mexican Onza Specimen As a Puma (Puma concolor).  Cryptozoology 12, pp. 42-49.

HALL, Mark A.
    1997          Personal communication.  May 25.

RAYNAL, Michel

    1997          Personal communication.  Aug. 1.


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