A large feline, unrecognized by zoologists, whose main habitat is reportedly the Sierra Madre Occidental range of northwest Mexico. Among the animals of folklore being considered by Cryptozoology but yet to be officially recognized by biologists is the onza. Accounts of the onza go back to the Aztecs, who called it cuitlamiztl. They clearly distinguished it from both the jaguar and the puma, the better-known and recognized large cats from the same area. Europeans first saw the animal in the Aztec emperor Montezuma’s zoo, where it was distinguished from the puma by its wolfish appearance. In the mid-18th century, Jesuit missionary Ignaz Pfeffer-korn gave a more complete description of the onza: He likened it to a cheetah with a long narrow body and long thin legs. The onza, he added, was also notable for its ferociousness.
Modem consideration of the onza began in 1930s when two hunters, Dale and Cecil Lee, and a client, Joseph H. Smirk, killed a strange cat on a jaguar-hunting expedition in Mexico. When they described the animal to U.S. zoologists, their story was ridiculed. They received little attention until the story was included in the 1961 book The Onza by Robert Marshall. The story of the onza was picked up again in 1982 by the International society of cryptozoology (ISC). Within a very few years, several skulls had been located in various collections, and in 1986 a complete specimen was obtained for dissection by ISC secretary J. Richard Greenwall. The specimen fit the traditional description of the onza, with distinguishing long ears, body, and legs. What remains to be established is whether the onza is a totally new species or merely a local, if extreme, variation of the puma.