The Amazon. Poison dart frogs, bullet ants, bushmasters,
monkeys, night hikes, bird-watching, swimming in the Amazon, capybaras,
frog-catching, tarantulas, pirana-fishing.
The eight days that we spent in the jungle were unlike any
trip I’ve ever been on. Each day, I was amazed and awed by something new,
whether it be learning about the
caste system of army ants or seeing one of the most poisononous snakes on earth.
Our days could not have been busier – activites began at
5:30am and didn’t end until 10pm at night. Luckily we got one free hour after
lunch to sleep or go swimming in the Tiputini River. Our schedules included a
variety of activites such as night hikes, a few indoor lectures, time to work
on our field projects, primate censusing, and more. The Tiputini Biological
Reserve Station has a tower and a bridge that go up to the canopy level, and I
particularly enjoyed being able to see the jungle from up high as the sun rose.
View from the top of the tower
The tower
The bridge
Although we had one main guide who stayed with us throughout
the week, the guides who work at the reserve instructed us as well. I was
shocked to find out at the end of the week that most of them hadn’t received
education beyond 6th or 7th grade, but they knew more
about the jungle than I could imagine any Ph.D. knowing! For instance, in our
bird species activity, we sat up in the tower for two and a half hours
listening for different bird-calls. The guides would name the birds for us
based on their calls so that we could make a series of 20-species list, and
later be able to estimate the number of bird species on the reserve. The
reserve has over 540 different species of birds! I was incredibly impressed
that the guides could not only identify all of these birds, but also know their
calls and behavior patterns. And this was just birds – they could do the same
with frogs, plants, insects…
One of the guides showing us the species of ant that lives inside the branches of a tree. They taste like lemons!
One of my favorite activities that we did was a primate
census. After a few lectures and hours of field experience identifying the 10
monkey species that live on the reserve, we all walked for 90 minutes along
different trails, observing and identifying any groups of monkeys that we
encountered.
The unplanned learning experiences in the jungle were just
as good, if not better than the scheduled ones. On one afternoon, a friend and
I went for a walk to the tower during our free hour, and in this time, ran into
a colony of raiding army ants. The day before, we had heard an incredibly
interesting lecture about army ants and the way their raids work, but seeing it
all happen in real life added a completely new element to the information.
Swarm of army ants
Other things we saw:
The fungus cordyceps: mind-controls its insect host and then kills it
Banana spider - very venomous
Tarantula
Poison dart frog
Queen leaf-cutter ant
Dwarf caiman
Termites fleeing from their nest
Pirana fishing!
A bushmaster
One of the two overly friendly monkeys in the town of Coca (on the way to Tiputini)
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