My lucky (mammal) month

This month is almost over and I can already call it my luckiest one, considering sightings of mammals. It all began with an opossum (Didelphis marsupialis caucae) which came in the attempt to eat our chicken in the garden. After taking some pictures of it, I chased it away and rescued the chicken. Then I had this fabulous sighting of the puma and the week after we had the capuchin monkeys next to the station’s house (see our blog entries). Last week I met an agouti in our entrance road and another one I saw with Wilo on our way to Tulipe.

Today we went to Las Tolas and on our way back, around 6.00 p.m. I saw an anteater or so called Western Tamandua (Tamandua mexicana punensis) crossing the road. Luckily Wilo brought the camera and I jumped out of the car and found this interesting creature hiding on the ground. It has huge curved claws on its forelegs which allows it to climb up trees. Its nose/mouth is slender because it feeds on insects (e.g. ants) and gets them out of holes. It didn’t move at all and gave me the chance to take some pictures. But as it was already dusky they are a little blurry. One I took with flash (although I don’t like taking pictures of animals with flash that much) and then we decided to leave it alone.

When we moved away the tamandua startet climbing up the nearby tree and we observed it until it reached the top.

This blog post was written by Nicole