I was just thinking about my first non-human primate. I was in bed on Barro Colorado Island in Panama's Lake Gatun. Suddenly an appalling, apocalyptic noise broke out. It was like waking up on the track in the middle of a drag race. Or hearing an asteroid plummeting down on the Planet Earth. Or, what I actually thought, in deep terror, it was the new American president, Ronald Reagan, letting loose the cruise missiles, target unknown. Later, I learned that it was just howler monkeys doing the thing that gave them their name ... If you have had an interesting first (or favorite) primate encounter, please tell me about it in a comment.
My first encounter with primates in the wild was a male Howler at Catemaco, Mexico. I was 16 on the trip that kindled my lifetime passion for rainforests. That passion led me to decades in the world’s third largest remaining rainforest-- New Guinea. Ironically, there are no primates in the New Guinea forests, they do not cross Wallace’s Line.
But much more profound for me was an experience I later had with primates on the other side of Wallace’s Line, in the north of Borneo, one that kindled my passion for conservation.
I was in a remote camp in Sabah which has, or should I better say had, the most magnificent tropical forests in the world, dominated by dipterocarps. These are magnificent, tall hardwoods with straight boles supporting a cathedral canopy so high the life there can move invisible from a puny, earthbound human observer. I was there as part of an effort to collect specimens for a museum; a desperate effort to at least document some of the life in these forests. We were in an enormous logging concession; what makes dipterocarps beautiful also makes them valuable. Uncontrolled clear cut timber pillage was in full swing across the lowlands.
We were far ahead of the logging front, driven as far as a D9 bulldozer could take us then we hiked deeper into the forest. There we built a camp and lived under the dipterocarp ceiling far above where several species of primates lived.
The haunting calls of gibbons would ring through the morning air, calling across valleys. Their calls are so mystical you sometimes hear them dubbed into movies—they were the sound of the Forest Moon of Endor, where the Ewoks lived (if you are a Star Wars fan). They could sit concealed for hours, only revealed when they gracefully moved, brachiating from limb to limb with their long muscular arms. Sometimes I would see one launch from the top of one tree across a huge gap to catch a limb maybe 50 feet or more away. They would use the spring of the take off branch to help launch and the bending of the landing branch to absorb the momentum. Only to use that rebound to throw the gibbon onward. Seeing this is a wondrous moment of grace, speed, and agility. Seeing this made all the day’s land leeches, stings, bites and relentless itching worthwhile.
But one moment stands out, not just among all my encounters with gibbons, but among all my encounters with rainforest primates. After six weeks in one camp, the chainsaws were getting closer. The sound of a tree dropping was dreadful—the canopy whooshed on the way down, like one last giant exhalation. The crash sends a pressure wave had that resembled the sensation of banging your head on a low beam, only longer.. After one particularly close giant fell, I witnessed a gibbon fleeing. It was clearly in a hurry heading even deeper into the doomed forest. After leaping a void, rather than launching onwards, it paused. Through my binoculars I could see her clearly; looking right into my soul. A second pair of sad eyes peered from the infant clinging to her chest. They just stared at me a long time. They seemed to be asking me “why?” as I wondered the same thing.
I had a similar encounter with a gibbon in Borneo in 1998. I found her in a tiny cage in a logging camp in the Kelabit Highlands of Sarawak. Days earlier, I had seen members of its species swinging through the treetops and I had heard their otherworldly songs. The tragic caged gibbon would never again be a part of that life. She stared into my soul and broke my heart.
Terrible experience, beautiful description. In about 1992, I was on a mountaintop in Ecuador with a group that included botanist Al Gentry and birder Ted Parker doing a rapid environmental assessment of a forest that was literally being bulldozed down around us. One tree fell near Gentry and in the rush to get out of the way, he slipped down a slope. The tree landed right beside him, close enough for him to reach out for an orchid on the trunk and say, "Oh, Gongora." The non-human primates had by then had the sense to flee the scene.
Ted was the cautious one on that trip. I remember him at the wheel on a muddy patch of road down to a crossing over some waterway. He took it slow with proper regard for the safety of us all. Al was more reckless. I remember coming to a flaming barricade across the highway in what turned out to be part of a national strike. "I can take it," said Al, who was driving. "No," the rest of us said. "You can't." It was an order, not a challenge. So we slept that night in and on top of the car, parked on the side of the road. In the middle of the night, when the flames had died down and everyone had gone to bed, we pushed on, and discovered another seven barricades on the road beyond that first one--none of them fortunately now still in flames.
I'm just back from Costa Rica, where I met the owner/developer of an ecotourism retreat called Canto del Rio, or Song of the River. [https://www.cantodelriocr.com/en] He told the story of growing up on a farm in the region, where clear cutting and crop planting had been seen as the future. But no, it turns out that we visitors to the area were the actual key to a kind a economic development that lifts the entire region--plant, animal, and human alike. Don't forget to tip your scarlet macaw.
I was just thinking about my first non-human primate. I was in bed on Barro Colorado Island in Panama's Lake Gatun. Suddenly an appalling, apocalyptic noise broke out. It was like waking up on the track in the middle of a drag race. Or hearing an asteroid plummeting down on the Planet Earth. Or, what I actually thought, in deep terror, it was the new American president, Ronald Reagan, letting loose the cruise missiles, target unknown. Later, I learned that it was just howler monkeys doing the thing that gave them their name ... If you have had an interesting first (or favorite) primate encounter, please tell me about it in a comment.
My first encounter with primates in the wild was a male Howler at Catemaco, Mexico. I was 16 on the trip that kindled my lifetime passion for rainforests. That passion led me to decades in the world’s third largest remaining rainforest-- New Guinea. Ironically, there are no primates in the New Guinea forests, they do not cross Wallace’s Line.
But much more profound for me was an experience I later had with primates on the other side of Wallace’s Line, in the north of Borneo, one that kindled my passion for conservation.
I was in a remote camp in Sabah which has, or should I better say had, the most magnificent tropical forests in the world, dominated by dipterocarps. These are magnificent, tall hardwoods with straight boles supporting a cathedral canopy so high the life there can move invisible from a puny, earthbound human observer. I was there as part of an effort to collect specimens for a museum; a desperate effort to at least document some of the life in these forests. We were in an enormous logging concession; what makes dipterocarps beautiful also makes them valuable. Uncontrolled clear cut timber pillage was in full swing across the lowlands.
We were far ahead of the logging front, driven as far as a D9 bulldozer could take us then we hiked deeper into the forest. There we built a camp and lived under the dipterocarp ceiling far above where several species of primates lived.
The haunting calls of gibbons would ring through the morning air, calling across valleys. Their calls are so mystical you sometimes hear them dubbed into movies—they were the sound of the Forest Moon of Endor, where the Ewoks lived (if you are a Star Wars fan). They could sit concealed for hours, only revealed when they gracefully moved, brachiating from limb to limb with their long muscular arms. Sometimes I would see one launch from the top of one tree across a huge gap to catch a limb maybe 50 feet or more away. They would use the spring of the take off branch to help launch and the bending of the landing branch to absorb the momentum. Only to use that rebound to throw the gibbon onward. Seeing this is a wondrous moment of grace, speed, and agility. Seeing this made all the day’s land leeches, stings, bites and relentless itching worthwhile.
But one moment stands out, not just among all my encounters with gibbons, but among all my encounters with rainforest primates. After six weeks in one camp, the chainsaws were getting closer. The sound of a tree dropping was dreadful—the canopy whooshed on the way down, like one last giant exhalation. The crash sends a pressure wave had that resembled the sensation of banging your head on a low beam, only longer.. After one particularly close giant fell, I witnessed a gibbon fleeing. It was clearly in a hurry heading even deeper into the doomed forest. After leaping a void, rather than launching onwards, it paused. Through my binoculars I could see her clearly; looking right into my soul. A second pair of sad eyes peered from the infant clinging to her chest. They just stared at me a long time. They seemed to be asking me “why?” as I wondered the same thing.
https://open.substack.com/pub/andrewmack2/p/primate-encounters?r=nia4b&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
I had a similar encounter with a gibbon in Borneo in 1998. I found her in a tiny cage in a logging camp in the Kelabit Highlands of Sarawak. Days earlier, I had seen members of its species swinging through the treetops and I had heard their otherworldly songs. The tragic caged gibbon would never again be a part of that life. She stared into my soul and broke my heart.
Terrible experience, beautiful description. In about 1992, I was on a mountaintop in Ecuador with a group that included botanist Al Gentry and birder Ted Parker doing a rapid environmental assessment of a forest that was literally being bulldozed down around us. One tree fell near Gentry and in the rush to get out of the way, he slipped down a slope. The tree landed right beside him, close enough for him to reach out for an orchid on the trunk and say, "Oh, Gongora." The non-human primates had by then had the sense to flee the scene.
Ted was a dear friend, we are both from Lancaster and he helped me get started birding. We had a lot of good times together.
Ted was the cautious one on that trip. I remember him at the wheel on a muddy patch of road down to a crossing over some waterway. He took it slow with proper regard for the safety of us all. Al was more reckless. I remember coming to a flaming barricade across the highway in what turned out to be part of a national strike. "I can take it," said Al, who was driving. "No," the rest of us said. "You can't." It was an order, not a challenge. So we slept that night in and on top of the car, parked on the side of the road. In the middle of the night, when the flames had died down and everyone had gone to bed, we pushed on, and discovered another seven barricades on the road beyond that first one--none of them fortunately now still in flames.
LOOK AT THOSE EYEBALLS!! They’re so cute!!!!!! Look super similar to sugar gliders
Substack should let you post photos in comments. You could do a side-by-side.
HONESTLY. This is way overdue
I'm just back from Costa Rica, where I met the owner/developer of an ecotourism retreat called Canto del Rio, or Song of the River. [https://www.cantodelriocr.com/en] He told the story of growing up on a farm in the region, where clear cutting and crop planting had been seen as the future. But no, it turns out that we visitors to the area were the actual key to a kind a economic development that lifts the entire region--plant, animal, and human alike. Don't forget to tip your scarlet macaw.