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A Bar Drink Called the Spider Monkey?

7/9/2013

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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff  http://www.amcostarica.com/

There may not yet be a drunken monkey on the bar menu, but there is a spider monkey, a  drink made with creme de banana, Kahlua and ice cream.

But this is about real drunken monkeys, the kind that are presumed to lurch through the forest after eating certain fermenting fruits.

A University of California at Berkeley professor has advanced what is being called the Drunken Monkey Hypothesis in which he suggests that humans are genetically disposed to ethanol.  Fruit, particularly in the tropics, frequently ferments and produces ethanol, a  type of drinking alcohol.

The professor, Robert Dudley, outlined his  ideas in a 2004 academic article and a 2005 book.

But no one has really  discussed the topic with monkeys.

The health benefits of low-level  alcohol consumption are consistent with an ancient and potentially adaptive  exposure to this common, psychoactive substance, suggests the Smithsonian  Tropical Research Institute. The institute is where another California professor and a graduate student are testing this hypothesis.

The institute  identified her as Christina Campbell, associate professor of anthropology at  California State University Northridge.
She has been studying spider monkeys  since 1996 and will be checking the alcohol content of Spondias mombin, a  mango relative extremely important in the monkeys’ diet, said the  institute.

They will be in the field attempting to get samples of the fruit and from the monkeys for more than a year, the institute  said.


Dudley has  said via the academic literature that understanding the primate's attraction to  alcohol might be important to understanding human abuse of liquor.

Frank  Buck, the famous early 20th century animal collector, has reported that natives  in Asia used to capture powerful adult orangutans by making available in the  jungle large tubs of alcohol. The orangutan quickly gulped down the drink and  collapsed into a drunken sleep, thus making capture easy.

Primates have  been eating fermented fruit for 40 million years, said the Smithsonian. That  means ingesting alcohol may give some kind of evolutionary advantage to the  drinker. That's a good excuse, anyway.


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Old Friends

7/8/2013

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Chiquito reaches out and draws Olivier's head toward his chest.
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Greeting involves touch and smell, without eye contact.
     Chiquito has only seen Olivier six times over the past eighteen months, when Olivier comes to do his quarterly inspection as our regent biologist.  Nevertheless, he's one of Chiquito's favorite people.  Chiquito greets Olivier by offering him a pectoral sniff...the ultimate spider monkey embrace.  Eye contact, which would be rude, is carefully avoided by both parties.
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Lolita Puts on a Scarf

7/7/2013

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     We had two young women visit today, Melissa who is a Tica from San Ramon, and Haley Hill Pearson, an American who is on her dream visit to Costa Rica, photographing and volunteering with wildlife.  Lolita was equally fascinated by Melissa's colorful head scarf and Haley's SLR camera, and it made me feel badly that we aren't giving Lolita more mental stimulation.  Spider monkeys are believed to be second only to orangutans on the intelligence hierarchy of non-human primates.  The problem is that we don't want Lolita to become habituated to human culture, or to at least keep her exposure to a minimum, so that she can be successfully rehabilitated back into the wild.
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      Melissa was wearing the scarf on her hair, so Lolita attempted to put it on her own head.  Haley was looking through the camera, so Lolita peered into it also...albeit the wrong end.
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The Howler Monkeys Have a Website Now!

6/24/2013

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Marisol
 www.howlermonkeyrehab.com
  Check out their Trivia Page!
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Open on the new website!
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Venecia
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Morning with a Monkey

6/15/2013

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PictureMarisol climbs into my sports bra for a secure ride.
     Baby monkeys cling to fur; it's a matter of life and death as their mother travels through the trees.  But Paul and I are very slippery as surrogate parents go, so we have to improvise.  (Marisol would be happy in our hair but she likes to chew on it, and there's the risk of us becoming poopheads.)
    Mornings are hectic (feeding, cleaning cages, doing monkey laundry).  And some things - pulling up your pants, putting toothpaste on your brush, hanging towels on the line - are particularly difficult one-handed.
     Hopefully Marisol will be ready to venture off us soon and spend time playing with Venecia.

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Paul showers with Marisol.
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Paul shaves with Marisol.
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I do my hair with Marisol.
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Katira's Second Day with Us

6/9/2013

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PictureKatira drinks from a syringe with a small rubber tip, one drop at a time.
     Katira slept through the night beside Marisol, cuddled against my stomach (I sleep on my side).  Except for her first night, Marisol goes to bed when I do, gets up when it gets light - which is when I throw back the covers - and never pees or poos in bed.  Katira followed suit!
     At 6:00 a.m. Marisol drank 10 cc of milk in a few minutes.  Katira took 45 minutes to finish 1 cc of Pedialyte and 8 cc of soy formula from a syringe with a special tip.  Unable to open her mouth, she'd purse her lower lip, I'd put a drop or two in it, she'd swallow, and we'd do it again.  She was hungry and I knew she was happy...she could drink and purr simultaneously!

      I put salve on Katira's tight, dry burns after breakfast and noticed the scab on her nose was barely attached.  She reached up, rubbed it, and it fell off -  revealing  a soft (albeit gray) nose with no disfiguration.  I was thrilled.
     When I fed Katira again at noon the left side of her mouth started to open, almost imperceptably, and within an hour or two should she could open both sides normally.  Her tongue was intact, but the front edge of it was gray with square ridges...she had either clenched it against her teeth or bitten it when the electricity shot through her.
      Katira wasn't well when she woke from her nap around 4:00 in the afternoon.  I dribbled 1 cc of pedialyte into her mouth and watched as she appeared to "freeze" and stop breathing.  Thinking she had choked, I called Mark (an ER veterinarian from Wisconsin who lives minutes away) and gave her mouth-to-mouth...alternately sucking in case there were fluids, then blowing gently into her nose and lungs.  Mark wasn't convinced she had choked, and when he listened with a stethescope there was no congestion.  Still, she could barely catch her breath.  We tried what we had at our disposal; a shot of atropine, sugar water for energy, breast milk from a Tica neighbor, subcutaneous fluids, and Colicort drops for colic since she was crying like she had spasms.  It wasn't until later that I realized she hadn't eliminated - pee or poo - since breakfast.  Although her superficial wounds were healing, her body was shutting down. [Note: In hindsight I believe Katira had tetanus; lockjaw, and body rigidity and muscle spasms, with a typical onset 10 to 14 days after receiving second and third degree burns.]
      Paul and I took turns holding Katira throughout the remainder of the evening - she received continuous body contact from the moment I adopted her - and when I climbed into bed with Marisol and Katira  I was hopeful that somehow everything would be better in the morning.
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No treatment possibility available was ignored...
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Paul holding Katira when there was nothing left to do.
     At 12:28 a.m. Marisol woke me up, gently touching my face and purring, and I knew instinctively what she was telling me.  I reached under the covers to feel Katira's body, still warm against my stomach...but she had slipped away. 
     Paul buried Katira this morning under Lynn's memorial tree, beside Hershey, within the circle of large stones.
Mother Earth will swallow you,
                                       Lay your body down
.
  (Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young)
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Love...and the Will to Live

6/8/2013

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PictureThe family that rescued Katira, and cared for her for nine days.
     On Friday afternoon I got a call about a howler monkey whose mother had been electrocuted on uninsulated power lines - something that happens all too frequently when they mistake the lines for vines.  The campesino family that rescued her said she was drinking very little, and they were concerned that the inside of her mouth was burned.
     My initial reaction was that I couldn't help, because I have no experience with burns.  And then, in a very "Celestine Prophecy" moment, I remembered that our future neighbor Mark, who is an ER veterinarian, had arrived the day before on a five week vacation...

PictureRoad sign 3 miles outside of town by a one-lane bridge.
     Saturday morning at 6:00 a.m. Mark, Alexa (my Tica neighbor), and I headed for Katira...a town so small it isn't in the GPS or on the folding paper road map of Costa Rica.  The drive took almost four hours through beautiful countryside and past Arenal volcano, which I hadn't seen before.
     Katira (named after the town) had burns on her face, scalp, tail, stomach, and one hand.  The pain in her eyes and sad noises she made were heart-breaking, and she couldn't open her mouth wider than the tip of an eyedropper...Mark believed there were adhesions from the burns, and that she might even have lost her tongue.

       The whole family bid Katira farewell at the door - except for the father, who wasn't present during our brief visit because he was afraid he would cry when she left.  Hopeful that we could save this baby who had probably been nursing when her mother was electrocuted, and bravely lived for nine days with the wonderful family that rescued her, we drove the four hours home to San Ramon...after a stop for pain medication (Tramadol) in the first town with a pharmacy.  
     We know the odds are against us all...
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The family says good-bye to Katira.
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Katira's burns nine days after-the-fact.
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With Mark, an ER vet from Wisconsin.
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Venecia Has Been Here a Month

6/6/2013

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PictureIs Venecia trying to text Home?
     Venecia has gained weight steadily since she arrived a month ago, from 694 grams (24 ounces) to 872 grams (31 ounces).  And although that's not quite half a pound, it's enough to snap the deck plants instead of bending them.  The time has come to head into the jungle to play.
     [Postscript from the next morning. FAIL. Venecia was convinced Paul was going to abandon her...with no trail of breadcrumbs to follow.  However Chiquito, our spider monkey, had the same reaction initially.  Soon Paul will be trying to spot Venecia among the leaves.]   

     Our hope is that wild howlers will eventually join the babies in the trees on our daily outings, like they do at Jaguar Rescue on the Caribbean coast.  And then, that wild males will patiently hang around the cages, waiting for the girls to be released, like they do at SIBU Sanctuary in Nosara on the Pacific coast.  Time will tell.
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Venecia has turned into a gymnast.
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My "tiger paw" has turned into a stump.
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And now for the lipstick palm... aaaggh!
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Venecia Loves Guaba Fruit

5/30/2013

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Venecia snacking on guaba fruit.
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Guaba fruit hanging in the tree.
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Fuzzy white pulp surrounds seeds.
     Venecia was weaned when she was rescued, or at least refuses goat milk and soy formula.  She has a hearty appetite, though, and has gained weight steadily.  Her eyes are bright and her coat is thick and glossy.  Fortunately, all of her scabs have healed without intervention. 
     Howler monkeys are foliovores, or leaf eaters.  Classified as hind gut fermenters, they have digestion similar to the horse.  But they have proved to be very adaptable in the aftermath of hurricanes, and also eat fruit and flowers and insects.
     Venecia has yet to refuse any fruit she's been offered (apples, papaya, banana, and canteloupe), and here she relishes the fuzzy white flesh around the seeds of the guaba.  This fruit will be plentiful when she's released.
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Thumb, Finger and Tailsucking

5/28/2013

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PictureMarisol sucking two fingers.
     Marisol is fed from a syringe to help prevent aspiration...a potential problem with bottle-fed orphaned howler monkeys.  The downside is that she's not suckling, which is naturally soothing for infant primates.  Here she's pictured with a full tummy, and two fingers in her mouth.  A few minutes earlier she was sucking her thumb. 
     Is it possible that she would exhibit this behavior in the wild? I don't think so.  She would have her mother's teats available AND she would be clinging to her mother's fur.  Non-human primate mothers don't hold their babies - their babies hold onto them. 
     Lolita too has exhibited occasional tailsucking, even though she's been bottlefed since she arrived.  (Spider monkeys don't have thumbs on their hands, and I have never seen her suck the thumbs on her feet.)  She was very envious of our grandson's pacifier, which he generously offered her, but she was disappointed and dropped it almost immediately.  I've since given her pacifiers of her own, which have also been ignored.
     Venecia, another young howler monkey, was with her mother longer than Marisol and was weaned when we got her...or at least refused goat milk and formula.  I think it's significant that I haven't seen her sucking on her thumb or fingers.  

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Lolita occasionally sucks her tail while falling asleep.
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Marisol sucks her fingers before falling asleep.
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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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