Travels on the Amazon

by Alfred Russel Wallace

Vulpes——? A wild dog, or fox, of the forests; it hunts in small packs; it is easily domesticated, but is very scarce.

Leopardus concolor. The Puma. In the Lingoa Geral, Sasurána, "the false deer," from its colour.

L. onça. The Jaguar. Jauarité, (Lingoa Geral).—"The Great Dog."

L. onça, var. nigra. The Black Jaguar. Jauarité pixuna, (Lingoa Geral). Tigre (Spaniards).

L. pictus and L. griseus. Tiger Cats. Maracajá, (Lingoa Geral). The Jaguar, or onça, appears to approach very nearly in fierceness and strength to the tiger of India. Many persons are annually killed or wounded by these animals. When they can obtain other food they will seldom attack man. The Indians, however, assert that they often face a man boldly, springing forward till within a few feet of him, and then, if the man turns, they will attack him; the hunters will sometimes meet them thus face to face, and kill them with a cutlass. They also destroy them with the bow and arrow, for which purpose an old knife-blade is used for the head of the arrow; and they say it is necessary not to pull too strong a bow, or the arrow will pass completely through the body of the animal, and not do him so much injury as if it remains in the wound. For the same reason, in shooting with a gun, they use rough leaden cylinders instead of bullets, which make a larger and rougher wound, and do not pass so readily quite through the body. I heard of one case, of a jaguar entering an Indian's house, and attacking him in his hammock.

The jaguar, say the Indians, is the most cunning animal in the forest: he can imitate the voice of almost every bird and animal so exactly, as to draw them towards him: he fishes in the rivers, lashing the water with his tail to imitate falling fruit, and when the fish approach, hooks them up with his claws. He catches and eats turtles, and I have myself found the unbroken shells, which he has cleaned completely out with his paws; he even attacks the cow-fish in its own element, and an eye-witness assured me he had watched one dragging out of the water this bulky animal, weighing as much as a large ox.

A young Portuguese trader told me he had seen (what many persons had before assured me often happened) an onça feeding on a full-grown live alligator, tearing and eating its tail. On leaving off, and retiring a yard or two, the alligator would begin to move towards the water, when the onça would spring upon it, and again commence eating at the tail, during which time the alligator lay perfectly still. We had been observing a cat playing with a lizard, both behaving in exactly the same manner, the lizard only attempting to move when the cat for a moment left it; the cat would then immediately spring upon it again: and my informant assured me that he had seen the jaguar treating the alligator in exactly the same way.

The onça is particularly fond of dogs, and will carry them off in preference to any other animal. When one has been committing any depredations, it is a common thing to tie a dog to a tree at night, the howling of which attracts the onça, which comes to seize it, and is then shot by a person concealed for the purpose.

It is a general belief among the Indians and the white inhabitants of Brazil, that the onça has the power of fascination. Many accounts are given to prove this; among others, a person informed me, that he had seen an onça standing at the foot of a high tree, looking up into it: on the top was a guariba, or howling-monkey, looking down at the onça, and jumping about from side to side, crying piteously; the onça stood still; the monkey continued descending lower and lower on the branches, still uttering its cries, till at length it fell down at the very feet of the onça, which seized and devoured it. Many incidents of this kind are related by persons who have witnessed them; but whether they are exaggerated, or are altogether imaginary, it is difficult to decide. The belief in them, by persons best acquainted with the habits of the animal, is universal.

Of the smaller Tiger-cats, there are several kinds, but having lost my collection of skins, I cannot ascertain the species. The Puma is considered much less fierce than the jaguar, and is very little feared by the inhabitants. There are several varieties of the jaguar, distinguished by the Indians by different names. The black variety is rarer than the others, and is generally thought to be quite distinct; in some localities it is unknown, while in others it is as abundant as the ocellated variety.