John Kabangu: May 2011 Archives

So today... the habitat group was working out by the monkey cage... while Dr. Brown and I were distinguishing some of the plant species the habitat group found (Ok I'll be honest Dr. Brown did most of the identifying, and by most I mean all). Then something astonishing happened... something so amazing and mesmerizing that I fear I am not a good enough orator to convey. Thus I shall call upon the wise words of Professor Omar Kamal Faour - to help me sore above the Arenal Volcano (that was a Milton reference by the way) .We found "six snakes [in] one place"... vipers to be more precise. So we had to "bounce" as Omar put it, to prevent from getting... well envenomed.

Now for a moment of seriousness, I will admit that seeing those vipers was immensely petrifying; however I think that the snakes were more beautiful than they were terrifying!!! To elucidate my point... I shall use Einstein's "Theory of Relativity". To put it simply... time is relative not just in physics but also in physiology.  Furthermore space and time are not separate... rather they coexist and that is how we get the space time continuum. The "STC" can best be explained by an analogy... imagine a vacant trampoline. If you were to place a booling ball in the center of the trampoline... there would be an indentation in the center, and if you place smaller objects on the trampoline; tennis balls, ping pong balls etc, then they would move towards the booling ball. In this analogy the sun is represented by the booling ball, the "STC" by the trampoline and the plants by the smaller objects. What I wish to convey is that sun forms an indentation in the space time continuum and that is why things circulate around it. Well in my situation the vipers represented the sun... in that their combination of magnificence and terror seemed to rivet the attention of the whole environment. Every single organism had their undivided attention on the vipers, and we were all revolving around the vipers' trepidation and allure (another Milton Reference) as we watched them flow along like an omnipotent foreboding river. It is not until the sakes were out of sight that time seemed to progress. Hey Kelsey what do you think about the physics?

Following our encounter with the vipers we moved on the section of the property... where Dr. Brown said we would "be most likely to see a viper" (those might not be her exact words ... but that was what she meant, right Dr. B?). Well back to the narrative... we went by the bamboo trees - so that the habitat group could gather more data.  Everyone one was on edge of course... especially Professor Omar to quote him "man look at all these bamboo, snakes be chillin in there whalla (Arabic for OMG) bro one hundred percent snakes is chillin in there".  Shortly after... Joe and Forrest thought they spotted a "massive snake" atop a bamboo tree... in response to this Dr. Omar proceeded to enlighten us with his vast knowledge; "man if there is a big one up there, then there is a million down here". The immensely sagacious words of Professor Faour only intensified our anxiety; fortunately we did not encounter any vipers after that. 

Today was super sunny... so we got to see quite a bit of butterfly and actually caught a myriad of them.... Of course it was not as easy as it sounds, for I had to chase this amazing aesthetically pleasing giant butterfly... running in this weather with a back pack is not easy.  Oh yeah the butterfly got away... maybe next time. When we were conducting our point count we noticed that some butterfly where flying further from the ground than did other butterfly. The butterfly that would fly higher tended to have the apsometic coloration and those that were found closer to the ground had more of a cryptic coloration. Furthermore the butterfly and the hummingbirds seem to be competing for the same source of food; both of them were seen pollinating the same flowers... so it can be assumed that there is no competitive exclusion. Thus the butterfly and hummingbirds are coexisting, which requires that they both diverge in their niche. It would be interesting to see how both have diverged... we have reason to believe that they diverged in the time that they feed.

Sebastian also caught the queen of an ant colony!!!! And an ant that resembled a wasp... it had yellow and black colored antenna... so it is probably involved in an apsometaic Müllerian mimicry. Cannot wait to see what else I will discover tomorrow.   

Waking up to a volcano is among the top most illustrious things on my commodious list of things to love about Costa Rica. This morning at breakfast I made eye contact with Arenal volcano. The size and beauty of Arenal is mesmerizing and it renders me breathless and stupefied. It is difficult - if not impossible - for me to understand Arenal, no matter how hard I extend my intellectual capabilities. Arenal - to me - is somewhat paradoxical in the sense that it is the most docile feature of all of Costa Rica - that I have seen thus far - however it is also the most dangerous and capricious.  Gazing over the landscape this morning I noticed that Arenal was the most tranquil feature of the environment, the birds, insects and other animals were all active, the trees were shaken by the winds, but Arenal did not move nor make a sound. Arenal reminds me of Plato's philosopher king, for Arenal towers over everything and its looks almost as if it is overlooking all of Costa Rica which is akin to a powerful potentate overlooking his kingdom. Arenal is also similar to the philosopher king, in that it seems as if it is in constant contemplation, furthermore Arenal appears to be inviting all who gaze at its pulchritude to contemplate.

We set up our quadrate today and started gathering data, furthermore Sebastian set up ant traps... However it was cloudy and there was thunder and lightning so that might have slightly affected our data. The very first butterfly we caught seemed to be poisonous, because it had some aposemtic coloration. Thus far all the hypothesis and predictions that were made about the butterflies seem to be supported. We will have to wait until tomorrow to see how effectively the ant traps worked, they seemed to be working well when Sebastian set them up. Hopefully there is no rain when we are out in the field tomorrow, but if there is " ce la vie" or in this case "ce la forêt tropicale".