Sloths Flying the Nest, Monkeys, and More

Casper perched in a tree before her release, wearing her tracking collar.

Hello! We've had several big developments this week with both releases and intakes, along with the daily routine of medications, training, feeding, cleaning, and doing research. Casper, our three-toed sloth that I've mentioned before, is finally released! We released her in the forest near the clinic so that she can be monitored for several weeks to ensure that she is doing well in the wild. I'm part of the team that is conducting tracking on released sloths. When we went to go find Casper to observe her, the telemetry equipment indicated that she was at the bottom of a steep, muddy hill. There was no path down, so our only option was to hang on to the bulky antennae and slide down the slope. When we arrived at the bottom, muddy and scratched up, she was peacefully perched in a guarumo tree casually scratching her head, unbothered by the messy observers below! I wrote more about Casper in the weekly clinic post on Kids Saving The Rainforest's social media accounts; if you want to read more, check out this Instagram post!

One of the biggest events recently is that we had a squirrel monkey (or monotiti as they are known locally) admitted after being electrocuted by a power line. This is the second most frequent injury seen in wild animals we admit, and it can cause some pretty nasty injuries and electrical burns. This monkey had two blackened hands and some obvious neurological damage, as he was disoriented and lethargic, unable to stand up or to eat food on his own. The clinic staff gave him all the medicine he needed and syringe fed him for a couple days until he started to gain enough consciousness back to start eating on his own again.

Chicky on his first day in the clinic.

Gradually, he has grown more alert to his surroundings and more mobile, however, due to his injuries, he doesn't use his right hand and spins in a circle when he tries to move. The brain damage that causes behaviors such as these takes a while to heal, but his improvement so far gives us hope that he will eventually make a full recovery. The clinic staff names all the animals who come in, and we decided to name him Chicky, the name of a certain type of Costa Rican cookie that has been all the rage at Kids Saving the Rainforest recently.

Syringe feeding Chicky.

After several weeks, Chicky is now eating on his own!

Julian the curious kinkajou peeking out from his box.

My research project is coming along, but I've redirected it's focus after learning more about the animals I will be studying and the equipment I will be working with. After observing the kinkajous both in person and with camera traps, I realized several things. First, I realized that stereotypical behaviors are not as big of an issue as I anticipated. The coatis, which are closely related to kinkajous, constantly pace their enclosure, but the kinkajous only occasionally show stereotypical behaviors such as pacing and spinning. I also realized that the camera traps had too limited of visibility and the wrong settings to provide a viable way to conduct behavioral observations. I would need to conduct all of my behavioral observation in person, and wouldn't be able to observe them at all times of the night when they are active. Therefore, I changed the direction of my project and shifted the focus away from developing a training plan to measuring habitation to environmental enrichments.

Habituation refers to animal's boredom with the same toys and enrichments over time. The amount of time it takes the kinkajous to habituate to enrichments dictates how often their enrichments should be changed, so knowing how long this takes will allow us to change out the enrichments frequently enough so they don't get bored. Since stereotypical behavior isn't as big of an issue as I anticipated, it will be of more long-term benefit to the kinkajous to have data over how often their enrichments need to be changed. So far, I haven't found any scientific literature over how long it takes kinkajous to habituate to various types of enrichment, so I'll be using camera traps to watch their food bowls and measure how long they are spending foraging before enrichments and after new enrichments have been added to their cage.

Julian during nighttime observation. I observe them using a red light to avoid affecting their sensitive sense of vision.

I also went to Manuel Antonio National Park this week with a group from Kids Saving the Rainforest. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, so I'll put the highlights below! Thanks for tuning in!

The beautiful view of the Pacific from the national park.

What's the obvious thing to do when at the beach? Hermit crab races, of course!

Raccoon tracks on the beach, evidence of last night's crab hunting.

A fer-de-lance snake, known locally as a terciopelo. The most dangerous snake in Costa Rica, we found this fella curled up on the edge of the path. We grabbed a couple photos, then let him have his space!

The capuchins at Manuel Antonio are very habituated to humans, which may seem cute but is dangerous for both humans and monkeys. I'll probably touch on this subject more in a future blog post.