By means of the coupled amplitude-phase method we find analytical dark solitary wave solutions for the higher order nonlinear Schrödinger equation with cubic-quintic terms describing the effects of quintic nonlinearity on the ultra-short (femtosecond) optical soliton propagation in non-Kerr media. The dark solitary wave solution exists even for the coefficients of quintic terms much larger than those of cubic terms. Optical solitons in Kerr nonlinear media have been the subject of intense current research motivated by their important applications to high-capacity fiber telecommunications and to all optical switches due to their capability of propagating over long distances without attenuation and changing their shapes [1,2]. The dynamics of solitons in Kerr media are in general described by the nonlinear Schrödinger (NLS) family of equations with cubic nonlinear terms [3 -7], However, as one increases the intensity of the incident light to produce shorter (femtosecond) pulses, non-Kerr nonlinearity effects become important and the dynamics of pulses should be described by the NSL family of equations with higher-order nonlinear terms. As such a model, Radhakrshna, Kundu, and Lakshmanan [8] recently proposed the higher order nonlinear Schrödinger (HONLS) equation with cubic-quintic nonlinear terms arising in non-Kerr media. They investigated an integrable system of coupled HONLS equations with some simplifications in the model parameters and found Lax pair, conserved quantities, exact soliton solutions, and analyzed the two-soliton interaction. However, the model [8] along with the general HONLS models proposed in the literature [9 -13], is not completely integrable and can not be solved exactly by the inverse scattering method.To date, exact analytical fundamental solitary wave solutions of the proposed model [8] have not been found. However, analytical and numerical solitary wave solutions have been obtained in the HONLS models in which the effects of quintic nonlinear terms are smaller than the cubic terms [9 -13]. In this work, by using the coupled amplitude-phase formulation [14, 15], we find analytical fundamental dark solitary wave solutions and the constraint equations for the model coefficients. The results show that the dark solitary wave solution exists even though the coefficients of quintic terms are much larger than those of cubic terms.The HONLS equation with cubic-quintic nonlinear non-Kerr terms describing the propagation of femtosecond pulses can be written in the form [8] where r) represents a normalized complex amplitude of the pulse envelope, £ is a normalized distance along the fiber, r is normalized time with the frame of the reference moving along the fiber at the group velocity, and the coefficients c z and 7 are all real. The terms in (1) are: the group velocity dispersion (GVD), self-phase modulation (SPM): The c\ and C2 terms result from including the cubic term in the expansion of the propagation constant and the effects of third order dispersion (TOD) for ultrashort 0932-0784 / 2000 /...