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Paul Never Swears

1/25/2013

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Chiquito uses the footpath...
     More accurately, Paul never used to swear.  And he doesn't swear often.  So when I heard him say: "OH, F*** !!!" this morning when he was cleaning the cage, I knew that either:

           1) Chiquito had broken another pair of eyeglasses, or
           2) Chiquito had escaped.

     I headed out of the bedroom into my study, which faces the cage...and was met by Chiquito as he swung open the screen door.  There is NOTHING more disastrous than a spider monkey ransacking the house, so the moment is burned into my  "abject horror memory"  (along with a few others provided by Chiquito).
     I froze in my tracks.  And incredibly, Chiquito did the same.  He was face to face with Evie, our Golden Retriever, who was between me and the door.   Paul and I might hang out with carnivores, but Chiquito's no fool.  Nanoseconds later the screen door slammed shut in Evie's face.
     Adrenalin shot through me like electricity and I blitzed around inside the house closing sliding doors and locking everything else.  And then...never one to miss a photo op...I grabbed my camera.   
     
     I could write pages describing the fifteen minutes that followed, not unlike the TV show 24 (hours) that lasted a season at a time.  I heard Chiquito on the roof.  I snapped a picture of him peering in the front window.  I spotted him crossing the driveway.
    Paul had passed through the stages of Anger and Denial into Depression by the time I handed him Chiquito's leash and a small container of honeycomb, and he sat on the front porch to try Bargaining...with the hope that honey was more enticing than freedom.
    At some point Paul questioned my conviction that Chiquito would never run away. 
    "He won't," I said.  "He'll come back.  But it might not be until dark."   
    And then as deliberately as he'd strolled out through the double escape door Paul had accidentally left open, Chiquito sauntered back into his cage for breakfast. 

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Paul sinks into depression.
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Chiquito peers through the window.
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Chiquito plays it safe by the front gate.
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Lolita Hugs and Kisses Hershey

1/15/2013

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Lolita Kissing Hershey?
     It's either a kiss or a tiny lick.  Lolita has seen and heard Hershey for five days, but this was her first opportunity to touch the tiny infant, and she couldn't have been more gentle.  In the wild Lolita's own mother wouldn't have another baby until Lolita was about three years old, but other females in the troop would, and access to infants is coveted. 
    "Female primates are highly attracted to other females' infants (Maestripieri, 1994).  In a captive study on A. geoffroyi, we found that embraces exchanged between adult females more than doubled in the first six months after infants were born (Schaffner and Aureli, 2005).  Furthermore, in a wild study of A. geoffroyi, there was a dramatic change in the rate at which females received embraces when they had young infants than at other times, and females without infants appeared to give embraces in order to gain access to infants (Slater et al, 2007)."  [Spider Monkeys; Behavior, Ecology and Evolution of the Genus Ateles; ed. Christina J. Campbell]
     Lolita's behavior is endearing, and we hope it bodes well for her future breeding success!

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Lolita is gentle but Hershey looks terrified.
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Gorilla?  Gremlin?  Howler Monkey!

1/13/2013

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Paul holding Hershey.
      A year ago we welcomed orphaned spider monkeys Chiquito and Lolita.  Now, once again,  the monkeys gods have decided that we were getting too much sleep.
     Meet Hershey, an infant howler monkey.  Thanks to our biologist Olivier, I was offered the opportunity to drive north two hours, past San Carlos, to retrieve this newborn orphaned in a coconut plantation.  The umbilical cord was still attached.
                Age:  3 or 4 days
                Sex:  Undetermined, probably female
                Weight:  9 ounces, or 252 grams
                Species:  Mantled howler monkey 
    Female  howler monkeys have an enlarged clitoris that resembles a penis.  So with no testicles visible, or palpable under the skin, chances are that the baby is female.  But time will definitely tell...sexually mature male howlers have a white scrotum readily visible against their black fur.
     Our biggest surprise?  She was born with teeth!
    We're currently feeding her Isomil from a 1 cc. syringe to monitor her exact intake closely.  (Thank you for the video Gloria Yeatman!)
    Stay tuned...


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MODESTY?  It's uniquely human...

1/5/2013

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Chiquito in a wanton position with Paul.
     Chiquito could be the poster  boy for immodesty.  This morning I photographed him through the kitchen window...sunning his butt.  He was bent over in the only sunny corner of the cage, mooning the heat.
     Non-human primates aren't modest.  Body functions and anatomical parts  are just that.    (While human males are less modest than females, even they wear a loin-covering of some type in tropical, stone age cultures.)
    But not only is Chiquito immodest - he's carnal.  Younger men are offered a monkey butt to groom.  Older men are humped.  And my armpits are sniffed  and/or licked whenever the opportunity arises... which is frequently, because I wear sleeveless tops.  (I wore shorts just once.)
    Chiquito came to us at 22 months of age and his "eggs," as the Ticos call them, were noticeably smaller than they are now at almost three.  But he won't attain sexual maturity for two or more years, at the age of five.  Yikes?

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Chiquito moons a young worker...asking for a butt rub.
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Chiquito smells his fingers... after rubbing them under my arm.
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Chiquito humps the leg of an older man...because it feels good.
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    Picture
    In the jungle with the monkeys.

    Michele Gawenka 

       Jane Goodall has always been my hero, and working with primates an aspiration.  Africa wasn't in the cards the summer I turned 16, when my parents offered to send me to volunteer,  and there was only one class (in physical anthro-pology) when I wanted to study primatology in college.  
         Decades later my husband and I retired in Costa Rica, and this is our journey with spider (and howler) monkeys. 

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