primatesperu

Basterd News

I’ve mentioned earlier that the tamarins really, really love the Master.  This is no idle claim. I’ve got the data to back it up, and what a story it is!

Chiky’s first day in the jungle was a big learning experience. We hung him up next to our large six-compartment traps and then proceeded to string up a blind for ourselves.  Going on my fifth bot fly, I really wasn’t about to sit around for hours without at least a mosquito net.

Chiky, on the other hand, much prefers the outdoors. He grabbed at every passing leaf on the way to the site and was enthralled with the idea of lying in wait for the hundreds of bugs flying around his cage. He was suspended to prevent the wild group from being able to approach him or touch him, but the final touch to his surroundings, as usual, came from him.

The area below his cage, he delicately and precisely fills with little tiny droppings.  These in turn attract a host of bugs – grasshoppers with white wings, green and black legs and yellow bodies, little metallic blue dung beetles, beautiful tiger-striped butterflies – you name it and it’s but an arms reach from Chiky.  Eventually one of these bugs, albeit with deplorable taste in food, drifts up to his cage to lick its chops and wham! Chiky has grabbed it.

And so the morning passed. We were playing recorded calls every 30 minutes with Chiky responding in glorious soprano, his long calls rending the air, the high notes clear as crystal. A little while into it, we were thrilled to hear calls coming from a different direction entirely. We played a few more fake calls on the little portable speakers we carry around but then allowed Chiky to have at it.  He performed beautifully, responding to the approaching group without fail and with mounting excitement we gazed from within our netted lair.

The group in the area is a relatively unhabituated one, but one that we have followed successfully from dawn to dusk nonetheless.  They are four individuals, one enormous one and one juvenile included. A few weeks ago we’d seen a single individual taste a piece of banana but consequently, they ignored every morsel we put out for them near the trap. Instead we caught several hungry capuchins eating from that trap instead!

Jean 4 was intrigued. They hurried over, leaping and bounding over lianas, following their leader’s path and arriving in a huff at the mess of lianas over the trap.  It wasn’t for nothing that we’d picked this spot! They came close to Chiky, and sniffed at the bananas but didn’t approach the trap at all.  Right on time and in tandem with our luck, it seemed, it began to rain. They scurried up a large tree right next to the trap and were visible to us, grooming and lolling about under the canopy, safe from the wetness around.

Chiky and ourselves were not quite so lucky. We rushed over and placed some large leaves over his cage and then tried to put up a protective layer of tarp over our net.  By the time we were done, of course, a) it had stopped raining and, b) we were wet!

Resigned to the vagaries of rainforest weather and our inability to ever be prepared in time for a sudden aquatic onslaught, we climbed back in the mosquito net and settled ourselves down to watch the scene unfold.  Soon enough, the monkeys were back down in the lianas, foraging for bugs and glancing at Chiky who was kicking up a huge racket in his enclosure. Eventually, to my utter horror, they decided that enough was enough and who knew what the hell this was all about anyway, and they took leave of us.

Gideon, the only one with his wits about him, leapt out of the cage and played some more calls.  Miraculously and for some unfathomable reason, they all returned.

“Now what!?” I wondered out aloud.

To our surprise and acute gratification, they behaved as though something had just clicked in their minds about these sweet, golden morsels wrapped in delectable skins. They returned and ate the bananas. Not just one, but a whole lot of them from all around the trap. Chiky was going beserk with jealousy and we knew we would pay for it in the future – his meal would have to be extra special to make up for it!

Eventually, about an hour since they arrived for the first time, they slowly and reluctantly left us.  We hurried out to feed Chiky before he turned apoplectic and to survey the damage. Total: 5 pieces of banana had been consumed, for no reason other than “Chiky’s doing it too!”

We returned to camp overjoyed.  My head was throbbing from some influenza-like bug I’d picked up along the way and the others took care of Chiky’s meal. I was in heaven and trying to get the hell back to earth as a purely protective measure.

“It could go on like this for weeks!” I told myself sternly, “Exit this blissful state at once!”

Eventually, I managed to convince myself that there was no point getting too enthralled with our little breakthrough, even if it really was a huge breakthrough compared to the work we’d put in for the past four months. I tried not to tell everyone what had happened and strictly left off putting it in an email.

We’d just have to see how it would go!

The next three days are a blur of headaches, body pains and nose-blowing.  I was well and truly sick. I could go out and grab clothes of the line and be panting like I’d just clambered out from some ravine. It was horrendous and it stayed that way for days.  Gideon, of course, consuming unholy amounts of vitamin C (and mostly peeing it out into the river here) stubbornly refused to get sick. And he didn’t.

These three days though, were really my undoing.  How was I supposed to stay calm and cynical and protect myself from disappointment when every day brought new developments?!!

One morning, Gideon returned to camp leaving Emma to watch Chiky – they had forgotten a squirt bottle for his water. When he returned he was thunderstruck to hear that in his absence, not only had the group arrived and immediately gorged themselves on bananas, they brought with them a whole group of emperor tamarins (no big deal) and a group of Goeldi’s monkey, Callimico (muy muy big deal!!!).

Day 5, however, was the real clincher.  Gideon, Erin and I had spent it following another newly discovered group in and out of palm swamps, my lungs threatening to give way at every step.  We finally called it quits earlier, with everyone else kindly pretending that it wasn’t because I looked like I was near collapse. Upon entering the lab however, we were greeted by an excited Karina.

“Guys, you are not going to believe this,” she began, still swallowing her lat mouthful of lunch, “but-the-tamarins-climbed-on-the-cage, into-the-cage, under-the-cage, everything!!”

I steadied myself as the lab momentarily swam in front of my eyes.

The story, quite simply, went exactly how she related it.  They came, they saw, and leaving off conquering, they clambered all over the trap, stuffing their faces with bananas. They then spent 4.5 hours drifting up to the lianas for a spot of grooming, sex and conversation, returning frequently to the trap below to stuff more banana into their tummies.  They ate, we think, eight 2.5” bananas. This after ignoring mounds of glorious fruit deposited at the same site, every single morning for over 2 months.

It was, in fact, as surreal as it sounds.

Gideon, a big impish grin splitting his face, turned to me and summed it all up – “Tomorrow is the day Min, it’s the day!”