Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Feeding the monkeys

Here you see a white faced Capuchin monkey who is taking a piece of banana from my older son. I like the eye contact between the two of them. The monkey stared at my son from a tree branch, assessed that my son did not pose a threat and was making a friendly hand out offering of food, then the monkey quickly scampered to the end of the branch and quickly reached out to take the banana piece right out of my son's hand, keeping eye contact with my son the entire time.

Monkeys would take banana pieces out of my son's hand so quickly that it was hard to get a photograph of the moment of contact. I told my son that getting a photo of the point where the hand of man and the hand of monkey were reaching out and making contact was a bit like the central scene in the middle of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

My son was standing on the bow of a boat on a wildlife excursion on the Tempisque River in Palo Verde National Park. It is a wetlands area that flows into the Gulf of Nicoya just east of the Tamarindo area. The boats will pull up to a particular part of the woods where the monkeys have trained humans to stop and, if you are so inclined, you can feed the monkeys.

Tomorrow I will show a photo of what happened right after the above exchange of a banana piece.

6 comments:

brattcat said...

If you enlarge this, it looks almost as if the monkey is offering the banana to your son.

Sharon said...

What a fun experience, feed the wild animals in the wild. I love the expression on his face. You can really see how he's assessing the situation.

Judy said...

The expression on the monkey's face looks a bit on the grumpy side in this picture. Now I'm wondering what tomorrow will bring.
I like the new banner photo!

Julie ScottsdaleDailyPhoto.com said...

great photo and interaction

Unknown said...

While we were swimming at the most beautiful beach of Manuel Antonio N.P., we were 'robbed' by these fellows! They even know how to unzip the bags!!! :-)

Dave-CostaRicaDailyPhoto.com said...

JM,
That is funny. Hopefully they were trying to rob you only of food and they have not learned how to use cash, keys or credit cards.

I was hiking in Yosemite National Park in California one time and a person on the trail ahead of us had a bear come out of the woods and rip the backpack off his back to steal his raisins. I would rather experience a robber-monkey than a robber-bear.

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