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Out and About

11/11/2012

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Picture
Sitting in some wild impatiens.
Picture
Hanging from a vine.
Picture
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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    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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