Ch. 2: The Puma

The Puma has been singularly unfortunate in its biographers. Formerly it
often happened that writers were led away by isolated and highly
exaggerated incidents to attribute very shining qualities to their
favourite animals; the lion of the Old World thus came to be regarded as
brave and I magnanimous above all beasts of the field--the Bayard of the
four-footed kind, a reputation which these prosaic and sceptical times
have not suffered it to keep. Precisely the contrary has happened with
the puma of literature; for, although to those personally acquainted
with the habits of this lesser lion of the New World it is known to
possess a marvellous courage and daring, it is nevertheless
always spoken of in books of natural history as the most pusillanimous
of the larger carnivores. It does not attack man, and Azara is perfectly
correct when he affirms that it never hurts, or threatens to hurt, man
or child, even when it finds them sleeping. This, however, is not a full
statement of the facts; the puma will not even defend itself against
man. How natural, then, to conclude that it is too timid to attack a
human being, or to defend itself, but scarcely philosophical; for even
the most cowardly carnivores we know--dogs and hyaenas, for
instance--will readily attack a disabled or sleeping man when pressed by
hunger; and when driven to desperation no animal is too small or too
feeble to make a show of resistance. In such a case "even the armadillo
defends itself," as the gaucho proverb says. Besides, the conclusion is
in contradiction to many other well-known facts. Putting-aside the
puma's passivity in the presence of man, it is a bold hunter that
invariably prefers large to small game; in desert places killing
peccary, tapir, ostrich, deer, huanaco, &c., all powerful, well-armed,
or swift animals. Huanaco skeletons seen in Patagonia almost invariably
have the neck dislocated, showing that the puma was the executioner.
Those only who have hunted the huanaco on the sterile plains and
mountains it inhabits know how wary, keen-scented, and fleet of foot it
is. I once spent several weeks with a surveying party in a district
where pumas were very abundant, and saw not less than half a dozen deer
every day, freshly killed in most cases, and all with dislocated necks.
Where prey is scarce and difficult to capture, the puma, after
satisfying its hunger, invariably conceals the animal it has killed,
covering it over carefully with grass and brushwood; these deer,
however, had all been left exposed to the caracaras and foxes after a
portion of the breast had been eaten, and in many cases the flesh had
not been touched, the captor having satisfied itself with sucking the
blood. It struck me very forcibly that the puma of