For my birthday yesterday, I took Senaida to visit the La Aurora Zoo. The Zoo was packed with local visitors, plus several people from Europe and US who live and work in Guatemala. Senaida is the Q’eqchi’ Mayan speaking student intern who assists us to learn about the flora and fauna of Alta Verapaz, which is where she and her family live.
We focused on the animals which are native to Guatemala, but I will admit I enjoyed watching the mother hippopotamus instructing her baby hippo to follow her into the water. Since the water was over his depth, he tried to climb onto the slippery back of his mother.
Lots of construction going on, which means lots of new places to explore several months from now.
The Parque Zoológico Nacional La Aurora has excellent collection of owls: dozens of species are native to Guatemala. I was pleasantly surprised to see a melanistic black jaguar. Although named “black panther” in fact these are not panthers and not leopards (though melanistic black leopards also exist). The black jaguar is native to Mesoamerica and South America.
Here is a drawing of different natural colors of jaguars by Josefina, a Kakchiquel Mayan student intern at FLAAR. White are extremely rare, but do occur. The “black panthers” occur from gray to “solid black.” The one in the Parque Zoológico Nacional La Aurora is “solid black” but you can see the black spots underneath when the jaguar is wet and you have the correct viewing angle.
This trip to the zoo on January 3rd was to take notes for what animals we would like to photograph on our next visit. For example, we have never photographed coyotes or falcons here. Plus the collection of spider monkeys is zoologically interesting since there are many colors, from black with brown to pure brown with white.
The zoologists and staff at Parque Zoológico Nacional La Aurora are both knowledgeable and hospitable to research visits, which we appreciate.
In 50 years of photographing animals of Guatemala, Mexico, and Belize, I do not have good photographs of howler monkeys. Spider monkeys are easier, especially since AutoSafari Chapin has over a dozen on islands, so they are totally free to wander around (they can even swim to move away from the island if they want to). No cage, so no ugly metal bars in the photograph! Plus I estimate monkeys are happier not being in a cage.
We saw this little guy swinging all over the place. Sometimes you can hear the howl from a 8 Km. of distance.
I have not yet seen any zoo with captive howler monkeys, nor yet met anyone who has a pet howler (though we do know people do keep them). It is best to have animals out in the forests, but for photographic research, it definitely helps if the habitat of the howler is accessible in a realistic manner. We have over a thousand utilitarian plants we need to find and photograph in Guatemala (www.maya-ethnobotany.org) and hundreds of animals of the Mayan world. So it is not realistic to spend months in mosquito and snake heaven to photograph animals for study purposes.
So it was a pleasant and unexpected surprise to find a howler monkey 6 meters directly above me while I was checking in at the Hotel Ecológico Cabañas del Lago. Using a 200mm lens I was able to get a high-resolution photo (Nikon D810, 36 megapixel camera). So if you seek a howler monkey to photograph, check them out at www.ecoHotelCabanaDeLago.mex.tl
These howlers are not captive! They are in their native habitat (along the shores of Lake Izabal, Guatemala).
Out in the forests, if you are lucky, sometimes you can find a howler monkey close enough to use a telephoto lens. But if you really want good photos it helps to go to Tikal, Yaxha, or comparable places in Mexico (Calakmul perhaps), and Belize. But I lived and worked at Tikal for 12 months (in 1965) and at Yaxha over five years (1970’s) and have been at Calakmul in the 1990’s. Still no really good howler photos, though Las Guacamayas Biological reserve on the Rio San Pedro is a good place. So again, I recommend the Hotel Ecológico Cabañas del Lago.
There are two species: Guatemalan black howler, Alouatta pigra and the golden-mantled howler, Alouatta palliate. I estimate the one I photographed in Izabal is the black howler.
Our video team did a nice video of a spider capturing and wrapping up a wasp. We raise spiders, wasps, stingless (Meliponia) bees, butterflies, tailless whip scorpions and many other creatures at 1500 meters elevation in Central America.
The spider's string its very strong and in this time the wasp couldnt do anything to scape from the web.
The spider's web helps them to catch different bugs, but also the ability to envolve their victims need to be very accurtate and deadly for them.
These creatures live in our Mayan ethnobotanical research garden, where we study medicinal plants, plants for dye colorants, and other plants used by the Mayan and Xinca people of Guatemala for thousands of years.
On Oct 30th Dr Hellmuth will lecture on the creatures associated with the Surface of the Underwaterworld (2:30pm). This is the key part of the Maya cosmos, between “heaven” and “hell” so to speak. Nicholas spent eight years researching this topic to produce his PhD dissertation (Karl-Franzens Universitaet, Graz, Austria). All this work is available in a coffee-table book with 727 illustrations, Monster und Menschen, ADEVA, Graz (ADEVA no longer exists but we have a copy available for substantial benefactors for our continued research).
Crocodylus moreletii, Rio San Pedro Martyr, Peten, Guatemala. Photographed in 36 megapixel RAW image, Nikon D810, 400mm Nikkor prime telephoto lens, Gitzo tripod with Wimberley gimbal tripod head. It definitely helps to have good equipment (if we had a 600mm lens we could have captured even more detail).
To prepare for this lecture we went to the actual eco-system out in the tropical rain forests of Guatemala. And the local crocodile kindly cooperated to pose for a photograph directly in front of the place we were overnighting (Las Guacamayas Biological Station, Rio San Pedro Martyr, Peten, Guatemala).
The lecture will introduce all the creatures of the rivers and lakes, plus sea creatures of the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean, which were the sources of inspiration for Mayan murals, sculptures, and painted ceramics (vases, bowls, and plates).
Lecture is at the Centro de Formación de la Cooperación Española en Antigua (Antiguo Colegio de la Compañía de Jesús), 6ª avenida Norte entre 3ra y 4ª calle Poniente, Antigua Guatemala.
Our interest in 3D imagery and 3D animation is related to the birds, reptiles, felines, insects, scorpions, and other fauna of Mesoamerica in general and Guatemala in particular. We also do research in El Salvador and Honduras. In past decades Nicholas Hellmuth did research on flora and fauna in Mexico and Belize for decades.
But for the last ten years we work almost exclusively on rare and endangered plants and animals, especially use of advanced digital imaging technologies.
SIGGRAPH 2015, conferences, 9-13 August 2015 Exhibition, 11-13-August 2015
Assistant Editor Melanny Quiñonez has been researching and writing about Wacom pen tablets and how these can be used to work on graphic imaging about animals (especially jaguars), Andrea Mendoza has researched information related to 3D technologies.
While photographing a giant Plumeria tree on the west shores of Lake Atitlan, we noticed two huge butterfly larva.
Since there were many coffee trees enjoying the shade of this Plumeria, we do not know whether the butterfly larva were interested in the coffee leaves or the Plumeria leaves.
Plumeria, frangipani, flor de Mayo, arbol de la Cruz is native to dry areas of Guatemala so this was a garden tree, not out in its native habitat (Lake Atitlan is too high an altitude, and to moist, for wild Plumeria).
