La Selva

“Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?  Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God”
               ~Psalm 42:11

It’s been awhile… Lots of class and homework and reports and studying and what not.  Home-stay is getting better, communication is still a little interesting, but I think I’m beginning to understand a little bit more.  Anyway, here is more about our field trip!

We spent one day at La Selva, a biological reserve where lots of people come to do research, study, and walk around in the rainforest.  We were there for option number 3, and had a great time on our explore the rainforest walks.  The Organization for Tropical Studies is based there, and there was a group similar to ours studying abroad through that program.  It was fun to mingle with some other English speakers for a little while, though their cafeteria food was not superior to ours.  Here are some fun pictures from the day!

Iguana iguana

On a bridge!

Mot-mot!

Here are two fun animals, the strawberry poison dart frog and the bullet ant.  The strawberry dart frogs (Oophaga pulmilio) are pretty sweet.  They are not super toxic here, so you can pick them up as long as you wash your hands afterwards.  Fun fact:  The females carry the tadpoles to individual water pools or bromeliad tanks once they hatch, and she lays unfertilized eggs in the water for food for the baby tadpoles!   Bullet ants (Paraponera clavata) are moderately are terrifying.  The ants are about an inch long and apparently have one of the most painful stings in the animal world, more painful than that of the tarantula hawk wasp (ahhh those do not sound fun either).  Thankfully I cannot attest to that, but some Wikipedia descriptions include “waves of burning, throbbing, all-consuming pain that continues unabated for up to 24 hours.”  They have been used in initiation rites in Brazilian tribes where hundreds of ants are woven together in a glove with stingers facing inward.  Boys place their hands in the glove for 10 minutes, and have become temporarily paralyzed by the venom and often shake uncontrollably for days.  The venom is thought to have evolved to ward of predators, but it is probably a little over-kill…

Oophaga pumilio

Paraponera clavata

Some other pictures of interesting plants/animals/things to see…

Bauhinia

Tayassu tajacu

Tarzan!

As usual when exploring new places in Costa Rica, we went on a night hike.  The highlight of this hike was a smoky mountain jungle frog (Leptodactylus savagei).  These frogs have a distress call that sounds like baby caimans.  It is thought that the sound is to attract the mother caiman and scare off the potential predators.   We also found a tree frog that I got to hold!

Monch with Leptodactylus savagei

Agalychnis callidryas

By far my favorite part of the day, I saw my first sloth!  It was so cute, just a little fuzz ball asleep up in the tree.  My trip to Costa Rica is now complete; ok I can go home now.

Choloepus hoffmanni

Here is final fun story for the day.  We came upon golden orb spider (actually we found quite a bit of those…).  Their nests have a golden hue to them, which is where they get their name.  The female is pictured below, and she is huge!  The males are quite small and almost parasitic in a sense as they don’t build their own webs and instead rely entirely on the females for food.  They have to be careful though, as they could end up as food if they get in the female’s way.  The males feed and mate while the female is preoccupied with eating to ensure that they don’t become dinner.  These spiders are interesting because, unlike most spiders, they bite their prey before wrapping it in silk (most spiders wrap then bite).  This spider is therefore more tentative, as she doesn’t want to accidentally become prey of whatever is caught in her net.  So to demonstrate (after all this is an experiential learning program), we threw little bugs into the net watch the spider in action.  First we found an ant, but she wasn’t too interested in that one (few animals are), then we threw in a leafhopper, but it was too big for her liking.  Finally we found a cricket and that seemed to do the trick!

Nephila clavipes (and some other bugs)