We have a full house now, with a real troop if introductions go well in the next few weeks, and we plan to add a series of exercise corridors as soon as weather permits.
Two is not a troop, and after two-and-a-half years with just our duo, Chiquito and Lolita, I was getting discouraged. IF the reason we weren't getting spider monkeys was because none were being orphaned it would have been great, but the reality is that there just aren't many left in the wild. The population of spider monkeys in Costa Rica decreased 72% between 1995 and 2007 (Ronald Sanchez, UCR) and now, seven years later, they have been "upgraded" to Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List, which means they face an extremely high risk of extinction. We have a full house now, with a real troop if introductions go well in the next few weeks, and we plan to add a series of exercise corridors as soon as weather permits.
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Pancita and Anita are next to Lolita, but the cages haven't been opened into one large enclosure yet, which will be a new experience for Lolita and for us. To be continued...
Mother's Day is August 15th in Costa Rica, and I received my best "gifts" ever! ![]() Chiquito should have been thrilled about adding two females to his troop, but he was much more interested in meeting Rodolfo. Like most male spider monkeys, Chiquito prefers males to females socially. In the wild, the males stay in the natal troop with their father, brothers, and other male relatives; whereas the females "leave home" at sexual maturity. Anita and Pancita are caged together, as they were at the other center since Pancita arrived about a month ago, and they'll be kept separate from Lolita as they get to know each other. Today we opened the two isolation cages into one large cage, giving them a common chainlink wall with Lolita, and all three girls "helped."
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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. Archives
April 2015
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