Onza

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The Onza is a cryptid , that is, according to some individuals, a potentially real fantasy creature that is said to have lived in Central America at the time of the Spanish Conquistadores . It is a big cat that was known to the Aztecs as cuitlamiztli .

According to the Spanish reporters, Onzas are said to have been kept in the private animal enclosure of the Aztec ruler Moctezuma II next to pumas ( leones ) and jaguars ( tigres ). Later, Spanish settlers in the area around Sinaloa in Mexico occasionally reported of Onzas who were supposed to live here alongside pumas and jaguars. Missionaries such as the Jesuit Ignaz Pfefferkorn reported that the Onza was more dangerous and less reticent than the Puma and that people were regularly attacked. Pfefferkorn, who claims to have seen a specimen in 1757, described this in his country description of Sonora published in 1794 . There he describes the Onza as a wolf-like cat with a body that is elongated, thin and narrow compared to the puma. The fur is reddish in color.

Animals identified as Onza were shot in Sinaloa in 1938 and 1986. They resembled the pumas, but were more slender, had longer legs and ears, and were spotted. Molecular biological studies on the animal from 1986 showed characteristic features of the puma from western North America, but the scientists did not rule out the possibility of the Onza as a subspecies of the puma.

The scientific name for the jaguar is Panthera onca . The Spanish word Onza is used for both the jaguarundi and the snow leopard .

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