Jaguars, usually humans in jaguar costumes, are the primary participants in enema injection ritual scenes on 7th-9th century Classic Maya polychrome ceramics.
On Monday evening, Nov 21, 2022, a PowerPoint presentation will be delivered by Nicholas Hellmuth on his research on enemas that started in 1977. This research won the Ig Nobel Prize 2022 for art history for Dr Hellmuth and Dr Peter De Smet. The iconographic aspect has been updated for the November 2022 presentation.
For zoologists: in addition to the common jaguar, deer, monkeys and other animals (or people in animal costumes) are occasionally present.
For iconographers: this ritual is shown in this PowerPoint much more often than published so far. Women are present in many of the scenes, however they themselves do not receive enemas; the females prepare the men to receive the injection.
For epigraphers: updated study is needed of all the hieroglyphs and symbols associated with the enema jug and participants. The lecture shows dozens of enema jugs. Many of these jugs have hieroglyphs on the jug and other symbols nearby.
For botanists: LOTS of plants were ingredients in the enemas. Peter De Smet has studied this aspect in his PhD and subsequently. I still estimate that lots more plants were added (including possibly cacao). His documentation will be cited in the bibliography.
The lecture will be in English but questions can be asked and answered also in Spanish.
The orange-breasted falcon (Falco deiroleucus) is a beautiful species, but rare to see. Although its natural distribution is wide and occurs from the southeast of Mexico and Central America, to Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia; only a few pair of nests have been spoted at Peten thus far. It is possible to observe them in El Mirador National Park and Tikal National Park, as was did during the last expedition of our current project in the Reserva de Biósfera Maya.
Falco deiroleucus in Temple IV, Mundo Perdido. Parque Nacional Tikal, Petén, Guatemala
Photographs by Haniel López. October, 2022
On our last fieldtrip in October 2022, one of our goals was to photograph this amazing falcon and we succeeded! It was spotted in a tree next to Temple IV, in the complex known as the "Mundo Perdido." This documentation was very important because the species is in danger of extinction due to illegal hunting and the deterioration of the forest caused by human activities.
Currently, the Peregrine Fund organization has the only colony of captive orange-breasted hawks in the world to achieve their reproduction and save the species from extinction. In Tikal, the Peregrine Fund has provided its support by monitoring adult individuals and facilitating the reproduction between wild individuals. This resulted in the successful birth of two healthy chicks. Both were marked with rings to keep track of their survival.
Falco deiroleucus in Temple IV, Mundo Perdido. Parque Nacional Tikal, Petén, Guatemala
Photographs by Haniel López. October, 2022
About this species
Here you can find its taxonomic classification and some information about its characteristics.
KINGDOM
Animalia
PHYLUM
Chordata
CLASS
Birds
ORDER
Falconiformes
FAMILY
Falconidae
GENUS
Falco
SPECIES
F. DeiroleucusF.
Generally, it can be seen alone or in pairs.
Their nesting occurs on large cliffs or emergent trees, in lowland areas or montane primary forest.
It is one of the few species of the genus Falco that can be found in tropical forests.
Its average size is 28 to 34 cm.
Their diet includes bats and a great variety of birds such as pigeons, trogons, woodpeckers, among others; for which the ecological function of regulating populations of certain species is attributed to it.
On the shores of Playa Quehueche in the northern direction of the municipality of Livingston, it was very curious to find different species of Arthropods. During the tour we stopped to photograph two very interesting species, since they were perched on the sand of the beach. One of them was an elegant Swallowtail butterfly of the genus Papilio (Papilionidae) and an imposing Luber grasshopper or lobster with intense red wings of the genus Taeniopoda (Romaleidae).
Pamilionidae family includes more than 600 species worldwide. A particular characteristic of the Papilio genus is that most of all of these butterflies feature tails on their hind wings which resemble the tails of swallow family of birds, hence their name. Swallowtails butterflies feed on flowers, and can often be found in mud or damp sand where they sip dissolved minerals and salts. They beat their wings rapidly when feeding on nectar, as a balancing technique.
On the other hand, Romelidae currently consists of 64 genera and 437 species. Most Romaleidae grasshoppers are Neotropical and they are characterized by presenting an apical spine on the external surface of the posterior tibiae. The Romaleids have the largest acridoid species and body biomass known in nature. They have varied sizes, shapes and colors, and can be winged, brachioptera or, rarely, apterous (without wings).
Mirador del Cañon Reserve is located in the Cañon de Río Dulce area, administered by FUNDAECO. In it we were able to document many insects, one of our favorites was a very curious wasp hive. Their colors are yellow with black and they belong to the Vespidae family
Within the Vespidae family are grouped the common wasps that are characterized by measuring between 4.5 - 25 mm (adults) and having colorations ranging from yellow to black or dark blue. Both sexes have developed antennae. Their antennae have 12 segments in females and 13 in males. In Guatemala, 90 species have been recorded that inhabit heights between 0 - 4000 meters above sea level. They build their nests with mud or vegetable fibers. (Yoshimoto, Cano and Orellana, 2015).
Taxonomy of Vespidae family.
Vespidae at Reserva Cañon de Rio Dulce, Livingston. September, 2021.Photo by Brandon Hidalgo, FLAAR Mesoamerica.
Class
INSECTA
Order
HYMENOPTERA
Suborder
APOCRITA
Superfamily
VESPOIDEA
Family
VESPIDAE
Order
HYMENOPTERA
Wasps, bees and ants
Suborder
AUSTRALIAN COMPANY
$1.38
AAD
AUSENCO
$2.38
Superfamily
ADELAIDE
$3.22
XXD
ADITYA BIRLA
$1.02
AAC
AUSTRALIAN COMPANY
$1.38
AAD
AUSENCO
$2.38
Written by Vivian Hurtado & Roxana Leal
Identified Species by Victor Mendoza
While we were walking along a path in the San Miguel La Palotada - El Zotz Biotope, we could hear the sound of the cicadas intensely, when we were about to leave in a tree we could observe the small insect on the trunk of a tree.
Cicadas are insects belonging to the superfamily Cicadoidea, they are well known for their shape and colors, you can easily see a skull, a bird and a butterfly, in the area of its head and thorax. They are also famous for being able to remain buried for up to 17 years (depending on the species); but, above all, they are very famous for their strident sounds. And why are Cicadas so noisy? They are able to produce these sounds because they possess the tymbal organ. The sound is produced only by males because is a mating call. According to Bauer, P. (n.d.) “each male cicada has a pair of these circular ridged membranes on the back and side surface of the first abdominal segment. Contraction of a tymbal muscle attached to the membrane causes it to bend, producing a clicking sound. The tymbal springs back when the muscle is relaxed. The frequency of the contractions of the tymbal muscle range from 120 to 480 times a second, which is fast enough to make it sound continuous to the human ear.”
What is most amazing of the noisy calling of Cicadas is that each species has its own distinctive song that only attracts females of its own kind. This allows several different species to coexist (Valdes, n.d.). So the next time you listen to Cicadas, pay attention because you won’t always listen to the same song twice.
Now that we are in Yaxha, Nakum and Naranjo National Park we were able to photograph them in droves. We spent more than ten minutes observing them and finding their best angles. You can find them on the Yaxha road to Nakum and at Grupo Maler, in the Yaxha area. Possibly in more places, you just have to listen and observe the logs.
Chicharra - Order: Hemiptera Family: Cicadidae
Chicharra - Order: Hemiptera - Family: Cicadidae. Grupo Maler, Parque Nacional Yaxha. June 30, 2021. Photography: David Arrivillaga. Photo taken with a Sony A7R IV camera, Sony E 30mm F3.5 Macro lens, 1/125 sec, f/9, ISO 1600
Sony A7R IV camera,Sony E 30mm F3.5 Macro lens, 1/100 sec, f/10, ISO 1600
Written by Vivian Hurtado & Roxana Leal
Identified Species by Victor Mendoza
On our June field trip in Parque Nacional Laguna del Tigre, part of the Reserva de Biósfera Maya, Petén; we were documenting savanna ecosystems -as we have been doing for the last couple years- and we get to hear a very peculiar sound. As we were getting closer, we get able to see it… A Laughing falcon (Herpetotheres cachinnans) in front of us! By its common name you can imagine the sound that produces.
Herpetotheres cachinnans
H. cachinnas is a raptor species, inhabiting tropical and subtropical zones from southern Mexico to northern Argentina, in a variety of habitat types such as forest edges, riverine woodlands, savannas and secondary forests (Caldeira et al 2014).
Laughing falcon is not the only common name for this bird, it is also called snake hawk and the reason is that snakes comprise the majority of its diet, big and small, venomous and non-venomous, arboreal and terrestrial. The falcon pounces on snakes with great force, hitting the ground with an audible thud. When it catches a snake, it holds it just behind the head with its beak. Then it readily bites off the snake's head. However, it also will pray on lizards, small mammals, birds, fish, and large insects, such as grasshoppers (Caldeira et al, 2014; The Peregrine Fund, n.d.).
An interesting fact from H. cachinnas is that sometimes nests close to ants, because even if the ants doesn’t bother the falcons, the attack other animals that come close, helping the falcon protect its netslings from predator.
Taxonomy:
Kingdom
ANIMALI
Phylum
CHORDATA
Class
BIRDS
Order
FALCONIFORMES
Family
FALCONIDAE
Genus
HERPETOTHERES
Species
H. CACHINNANS
H. cachinnas in Parque Nacional Laguna del Tigre, June 2022
Photographies by Emanuel Chocooj
The laughing falcon in the Popol Vuh
It is very impressive when you find some of the fauna that is part of the sacred book of the Maya, because you are in the authentically atmosphere was their worldview was conceive. Nicholas Hellmuth explained how the Laughing falcon appears in the Popol Vuh:
The Laughing falcon is very important; it is also called the snake hawk. But this bird is the bird of the Popol vuh. In the Popol Vuh is considered to be a macaw and in Copan ruins in Honduras, the sacred bird is a macaw, in every aspect, kind of a symbol logo. But in other maya sites the bird that sits on the tree that has the calabash is the Laughing falcon and in my PhD dissertation I devote time for that and I showed and I incised the shell that shows two of the aspect again in the Popol Vuh, the grandmother gives a message to a flee, or an insect. The insect is eaten by a frog or a toad who carries it further, a snake eats the toad and carries the message further and the laughing falcon eats the snake. The when it gets to Xibalba the bird regurgitates the snake and regurgitates the toad but then has a little trouble regurgitating the flee.
We know the relevance of the Popol Vuh, but it was Michael Coe from Yale Univesity, he is the one who really showed the relevance of the Popol Vuh and the hero twins. And then in my PhD in the 1980’s at the Graz University in Austria showed more of the Popol Vuh that was not widely known, because every person knows a little bit about it – I don’t know everything – but Michael Coe introduce it and I was able to follow it up and find even more basis more plates, more bowls that shows the hero twins and shows the laughing falcon and I am also the one who notice on top of the tree, it was not a Macaw, it was a bird with a snake in his mouth and that’s the snake hawk which is the laughing falcon.
Bibliography
CALDEIRA, H., ESTEVES, L., DE FREITAS, B and G. ZORZIN
2014
The reptile hunter’s menu: A review of the prey species of Laughing Falcons, Herpetotheres cachinnans (Aves: Falconiformes). North-western Journal of Zoology 10 (2): 445-453.
Larvae of butterflies and moths come in amazing different sizes, shapes, and coloration. Yesterday Victor Mendoza found the green larva we show here. It is the largest I have seen in many decades of photographing larva in the rain forests of Guatemala.
We found this along the trail from Plan Grande Tatin toward the Cueva del Tigre, Municipio de Livingston, Izabal, Guatemala.
We will do a photo essay showing all our macro photographs by Nicholas Hellmuth and by David Arrivillaga (FLAAR Mesoamerica). But to start here are photographs with an iPhone 13 Pro Max, held within a few centimeters of this creature to get these views. Since most larvae are dangerous to touch, we did not touch it. And we left it in the same place that we found it (on the ground).
We now initiate library research to figure out what family and what genus this creature is.
If you want to study insects, Guatemala is a great place.