16 T H E C r B A R K VIE W 



Animals or Mammalia of Cuba 



By George Reno 

 Director Bureau of Injormation, Department of Agriculture 



Cuba, like the other West Indian Islands, is strangely poor in its indigenous mam- 

 mals. The largest wild animal is the deer, a beautiful creature, resembling much the 

 graceful Cervidae of the Virginia mountains. It is in fact a sub-species of the American 

 deer. But these were imported into Cuba from some unknown place, and at a time 

 of which there is no record extant. They are very plentiful throughout nearly all of 

 the thinly settled sections of Cuba, especially in the Province of Pinar del Rio, where, 

 in places not hunted, they exhibit very little fear of man and frequently appear near 

 native huts in the hills, drawn there probably through curiosity, which is one of the 

 weak points of this most beautiful denizen of the forest. 



The abundance of food and absence of cold throughout the year, as well as the 

 shelter given by the dense woodland and mountains, has led to their rapid increase. 

 The game laws also protect them from destruction with the exception of a period of 110 

 days during the late fall and winter. 



A peculiar animal known as the Hutia, of which there are three varieties in Cuba, 

 together with the small ant-eater, known as the Solenoden, represent the entire native 

 mammalian fauna of the Island. Hutia is the name given in Cuba to three species of 

 the Capromys, which belong to this country. The largest of the three is distributed 

 over the entire island. It weighs about ten pounds and is frequently seen in the tree- 

 tops of the forest, living on leaves and tender bark, almost entirely. 



The other species are only about half the size of the former. One of these has a 

 long rat-like tail with which it hangs to limbs of trees as does the American opossum. 

 The third species is confined to the Province of Oriente. Outside of Cuba only two 

 of the Capromys or Hutias are found, one in the Bahamas, and the other in Jamaica 

 and Swan Island, now almost extinct. 



The Hutias are arborial rodents. Those of the mountains rear their little families 

 among the boulders of the tall sierras, where the feeble voices of the young can often 

 be heard by one who listens carefully. Their faint cry is very suggestive of the peep 

 of little chickens. Hutias are sometimes kept as pets in the country. 



The large rodents, as a new world product, attained their maximum development a 

 very long while ago, during the middle Tertiary period. Since that time the group 

 has been steadily diminishing, and the extensive land areas over which they once 

 thronged have undergone many changes. The Capromys are a stranded remnant whose 

 ancestral relations are difficult to trace. It is a living twig upon a large spreading tree 

 that is slowly dying. 



The largest bird of the Island is the Cuban Sand-Hill Crane (Grus nesiotes). This 

 rather rare representative of the feathered tribe is found occasionally on grassy plains 

 surrounding the western end of the Sierra Organos Mountains of Pinar del Rio. They 

 are also quite plentiful along the foothills, and on the grass covered plateaus just south 

 of the Sierra de Cubitas Mountains, in Camaguey, where they were at one time quite 

 tame. This bird is found also in Mexico and in the United States, and when less than 

 a year old is excellent eating. They stand about four feet in height and are only a 

 trifle smaller than the whooping crane of the western plains of the United States. 



The Guinea, or guinea-fowl, is one of the most common birds of Cuba and was 

 introduced by the early Spanish conquerors who brought it from the Cape Verde Islands, 

 whence it had been carried from Africa. This bird has exceptional ability in 

 taking care of itself, and while found on nearly every native farm, it soon became wild 

 in Cuba, and is quite plentiful in some of the dense forests of the Island, especially in 

 the Province of Camaguey, where it occasionally furnished food for the insurgents during 

 the War of Independence. The wild guinea is excellent eating, resembling in size and 

 quality the prairie chicken once so common on the western prairies of the United States. 



