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Coconut Head

4/8/2012

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      We use it as a term of endearment, but Lolita's head resembles a coconut.  It also sounds as hard as one when she bonks it, which happens surprisingly often when she's on the ground (where she obviously doesn't belong).
     "The cranial anatomy of Ateles is notable for what it does not display.  The narrow facial skeleton is relatively shallow, gracile and unremarkable, in keeping with the general expectations of a highly frugivorous taxon.  The braincase is also relatively simple in design, rounded as might be expected in a modestly encephalized form.  This simplistic picture is not meant, however, to imply that the Ateles head is also primitive in design.  On the contrary - it combines a variety of traits not expected in the ancestral morphotype of atelins or atelines..."  (Spider Monkeys; Behavior, Ecology and Evolution of the Genus Ateles, ed Christina J. Campbell, 2008)  
      Translation?  Lolita has a good head on her shoulders.  But we already knew that.
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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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