I was spoiled

Looking for monkeys in Panama has reminded me just how spoiled I was by Beza and the ring-tailed lemurs.

In Panama, I'm only doing/piloting/planning survey work on howler monkeys....

But it reminded me that rain forests, in general, can suck. I really like working in wet forests because they are incredibly interesting, but man they're uncomfortable. Too many mosquitoes, you're constantly wet and there are hills. So many muddy hills to climb in rubber boots. Oh, and the monkeys are 20-30 meters up in the trees and like to hide.

For example, while I am not collecting  behavioral data , neither of the situations pictured will ever happen with the monkeys here. Never. Not even a chance. You may be able to take your lawnchair and a paperback out to watch the howlers, but the monkeys aren't going to come down to the ground and sit in front of you.

Instead they will hang out in the trees, maybe 20 meters up where you can barely see them. Maybe you can just see the tips of their tails. Maybe you can see their whole bodies. Or maybe they will sit in little huddles so you can see a black monkey blob but not be to do the one thing that you need to get done with them (in my case, maybe count their nasty bot fly sores). In any case, monkeys in Central & South America aren't too keen on hanging out on the ground (some do come down quite close and maybe do some foraging or play on the ground, but in general, the monkeys here are big fans of staying in trees).

Beza is a dry, flat place. It can get incredibly hot (our max temp for the field season -- and every for Beza -- was just over 47 degree C, so about 117 F -- thanks Ay for the photo) and there are still some nasty plants and horrible wasps, but the lemurs are really cooperative and it makes working with them easy and pretty fun. While we had some days where we couldn't find the group we were looking for [ahem...blue, teal....], the lemurs were pretty easy to find compared to large monkeys that want to hide at the tops of trees, camouflaged as bumps on logs.


Don't get me wrong, hunting for and chasing monkeys in tropical rain forests is still good fun, but it made me a bit meloncholy for the good ol' days of flat forests and animals that would call back to you.


And just for good measure, one more gratuitous picture of me and a baby lemur (Gollum from Green)