Blog Archives

Monkey See, Monkey Do

11/22/2012

Lolita wants what Connor's having.

      Lolita wanted the pacifier in Connor's mouth simply because she saw him sucking on it. She came up, held onto his hand, and begged (pictured). She had no idea what it was, and when she got it and put it in her mouth she looked disappointed and dropped it.
      This evening we were playing cards and I noticed Lolita sucking on the end of her tail, so I gave her a pacifier of her own. She acted like I'd put a snake in the cage. She screamed at it, rattled her plastic chains, and then clung to the top of the cage with all five limbs.  Eventually she summoned enough courage to approach the pacifier, flick it with her hand, and leap backwards.  It wasn't until our cheeks started to hurt from laughing that I "saved her" and we finished the card game.
     So it was definitely a case of monkey see, monkey do.
    More interesting, perhaps, is the fact that Connor's parents and grandparents (us) saw nothing wrong with allowing him to play with, and share his pacifier with, a monkey. Even though he's been drinking bottled water because the pediatrician recommended caution...

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Filmed for a Television Series!!!

11/16/2012

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    The monkeys were filmed today by Expat's Paradise Productions, LLC for a prospective series on expats.  Okay, technically Paul and I were the ones being filmed...but the monkeys are a lot more interesting. In theory, anyway.
    First the equipment was set up to film Chiquito "helping" Paul clean the cage.

    What Usually Happens:
    1) Chiquito holds the nozzle on the hose and helps Paul spray everything down.
    2) Chiquito rides on the broom handle and helps Paul sweep.
    3) Chiquito tosses all of the fruit rinds and peels out of the empty dish Paul put them in. At least twice.
    4) Chiquito hugs Paul's face.  He motors around on Paul's head.  He perches on Paul's hand like Buddha.

    What Actually Happened:
    1) Chiquito stared at Sid behind the huge camera, and Brian pointing a sound boom at him...and squeaked. For fifteen minutes.

    As Paul lamented afterwards, absolutely none of Chiquito's cute, feisty personality was captured on film.
    Enter Lolita. The flying monkey.

(Left - Right) Michele, Paul, Lolita, Brian and Sid.

Close-up of Lolita.

Any photographer who thinks human children make difficult subjects hasn't met a spider monkey.

Leela offers Lolita a bottle.

Lolita reached over her head for the sound boom. She climbed Brian's leg to grab the curly cord. But most of the time she was darling...and she stole the show.
It will be five or six months before we have clips from the filming, but we can't wait!

Lolita likes her men hairier than Sid.

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God Called an Angel Home

11/13/2012

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                                                       My dear friend Carmen Gamboa passed away today.
                                               We loved her, the dogs loved her, and the monkeys loved her.
                                                  We were so lucky to have her in our lives, however briefly.

Carmen and Chiquito 7/6/2012

Carmen and Lolita 9/7/2012

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Out and About

11/11/2012

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Sitting in some wild impatiens.

Hanging from a vine.

Climbing a tree.

     Chiquito likes to hang from vines and they usually hold his weight - but not always. It can be nerve-wracking to watch him, and it's the main reason we no longer take the monkeys down to the waterfall.  "Health evaluations of immobilized spider monkeys at a field site revealed healed fractures on the limbs of three of nine sampled individuals." [Karesh et al., 1998] And in a collection of 516 skeletons from a variety of primate species, Schultz (1956) found that 28% had one or more healed fractures. [Chapman & Chapman, 1987]
     Chiquito also likes to look for wild fruit, which he's eating in two of these photos. A few weeks ago we thought he found something that made him sick, but after he got better he was still eating bananas half-heartedly, and we're convinced that we bought a bunch with pesticide on the skin.  Unfortunately, our own banana trees don't produce enough to keep a growing monkey happy.
     We plan to put electric fencing around some trees on our property in the near future, and give both monkeys a safe playground where they can "learn the ropes."

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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.