UPDATE: Primate News

The 20th November 2013 turned out to be a very exciting day for the Primate Team at PLT. We are very happy to confirm for the first time that there are two separate groups of Azara’s capuchins (Sapajus cay) living in the reserve’s Atlantic Forest fragment and there are still Black and Gold howler monkeys inside the reserve. The Primate Team right now consists of two volunteers (Anna, Ireland and Johanna, Sweden), one intern (Christina, Denmark) and myself. We had been searching without luck for just over a week but this is the nature of working with such small, fast, arboreal animals so we didn’t loose faith and we persevered. And it was worth it! As we walked through the forest I looked up. There they were: three adult capuchins in the trees about 250m to our left. As we ran to the next fork in the trails a small juvenile scuttled up the tree right in front of us. Christina and I took one trail and Anna and Johanna circled round on another. After following the monkeys for about half an hour we walked back to find the others, heard a rustle and saw the silhouette of a monkey off to our left. As we watched, the monkey began to move from behind the branches and my suspicions were raised – it was enormous. Then as it walked out onto an exposed branch I realized why: we were looking at a female howler monkey! Then just when I thought the morning couldn’t get any better I received a phone call from Griselda. She asked me if I had found the monkeys because she was watching loads of them (6) cross the road. I said yes we had found them to which she replied “ok so you are in the south forest”. We weren’t. We were in the north, roughly a kilometer from where she was watching more capuchins. Confirmation for the first time that there is more than one family group living in Reserva Natural Laguna Blanca!! Come and join us in Paraguay and learn about primatology through field work with these amazing creatures – www.paralatierra.org/volunteer