Dear Kid,
On our honeymoon, Dad and I saw wild capuchin monkeys in Costa Rica. On our recent trip we encountered semi-wild capuchin monkeys in Roatan, an island right off the coast of Honduras.
We were at the Lomalinda Natural Reserve, where first we saw a Great Kapok Tree (no joke).
Then we moved on to several kinds of iguanas (wild, but highly content to live off regular feedings by the professionals of the Reserve), macaws (somewhat less than wild and highly content to earn their living as professional models), and capuchin monkeys.
There are several other types of monkeys in the preserve, but the capuchins are territorial and generally run off the other primates from “Monkey Land” where they have the caretakers well trained to give them sunflowers for behaving nicely among the visitors. Important Note: One crosses La-La Bridge to get to Monkey Land. How could this not be a wonderful place?
The word “capuchin” was given to the monkeys in the 15th century (that’s before you were born) by explorers who saw the little black tops of the monkeys’ heads and were reminded of the “cappuccino”, the small hat the friars of the Franciscan monks wore. The monkeys didn’t object, but they didn’t start wearing friars’ robes either.
The length of a capuchin monkey’s body is equal to the length of its tail. This is so that the monkey can balance as he or she swings through trees and leaps across branches. More importantly it’s so that the monkey can wrap its tail around my neck as he or she sits adorably on my shoulder.
I cannot begin to describe how soft these babies are.
Capuchin monkeys are diurnal which means that they spend their days looking for food (with a brief siesta after lunch—I am not making that up) and sleep at night. Mostly because there are no visitors play with after dark.
They are omnivores who mainly eat the sunflower seeds the handlers give them but are quite content to hunt for fruit, berries, leaves, flowers, insects, spiders (yay for the spider hunting monkeys!), birds, small mammals (wait, what?), and eggs. All of which is to say they aren’t that picky as long as they’re fed, but they draw the line at McDonalds. And kale. They’re much too smart to eat kale, imo.
And they are very smart. After all, they’ve trained the caretakers to feed them regularly. They also use tools like sticks, stones, and large chain saws to open nuts and hard seeds.
Natural predators include boa constrictors, jaguars, cougars, coyotes, birds of prey, and people of prey. (Which one of these doesn’t belong? Hunt with cameras people!)
After our time with the macaws, iguanas, and monkeys, Dad and I took a long walk on the beach before heading back to the ship.
Day, perfect.
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