Rainforest Animals

¡Hola amigos!

One of the best parts about my trip to Costa Rica has been getting to see all the animals of the rainforest in their natural habitat. In the United States, many of these animals only live in zoos. Here in Costa Rica, you can travel to the rainforest and see how the animals live.

We traveled to the rainforest near the Pacific Ocean and stayed in a very small town called Uvita. It is marked with a red star:

The weather in the rainforest is usually hot and humid. It might be sunny for a little bit in the morning, but it rains almost every afternoon. 

We had a guide through the rainforest who helped us see many animals. They aren't easy to spot because they are often hiding from people, but with the help of our guide, we saw a lot! Here are all the animals we saw:

These are capuchin monkeys. They are small but very, very smart. Our guide said that they have learned how to use basic tools to eat fruits without wasting any of it, and they have also learned how to steal snacks out of travelers' backpacks. 

This is a mother and baby sloth. Sloths are animals that live in trees and move very, very slowly. Most of the time they are curled up in a ball asleep, but our guide was able to get them to look at us by whistling loudly at them.

This is a family of fruit bats. A fruit bat is about as big as a chipmunk, but they also have wings. They make tents out of large banana leaves to keep their babies safe. 

This is a land crab. It's about as big as my fist, and can only walk sideways. It clicks its claws in the air to scare away other animals that might try to eat it.

This is a tercipelo snake. It is the most common poisonous snake in Costa Rica, and many people who work out in the fields are bitten by one each year. Most people are able to survive by getting to a local doctor for medicine to stop the poison from spreading through their bodies. It is very hard to see this snake because its brown skin blends in well with the ground, and it stays very, very still. Or guides put a large rock near it to warn others about it.

This is a blue morpho butterfly. This rare butterfly is only ever seen alone. One side of its wings are a beautiful, bright blue, but the other side is plain brown, which helps camouflage it to keep it safe. Our guide told us that the native tribes of Costa Rica tell a story about a young girl who fell in love with a boy who didn't love her back. When he grew up and married someone else, she went to the river near her village, took off her brown clothes and left them by the river bank, and was never seen again. The villagers at first thought that she drowned in the river, but when they went to gather her clothing, this butterfly flew up and away, fluttering brown and blue. This story explains why this type of butterfly is only ever seen alone, never with a partner.

This is a poison dart frog. It is very small — not much bigger than my thumb. Even though it is tiny, it is very dangerous because it sweats out a poison strong enough to kill four adults if they touch it. Native people used to catch them in a large leaf, then wipe the poison sweat left behind on the leaf onto their darts, which they would then use to hunt wild pigs. The poison would paralyze the pig so the hunters could catch it and eat it later. To eat the pig, the hunters had to wait until the poison wore off of the pig so that the meat was safe to eat.

These are toucans. They are large, loud birds with very colorful faces. They fly high above the rest of the rainforest, but they never fly in a straight line. Instead, they make large, swooping U-shapes when they fly from tree to tree.

These are leaf cutter ants. They travel together in long lines to bring back pieces of leaves to eat. We saw a long highway of ants bringing pieces of green leaves and tiny white flowers from the top of a tree, across a road, and into their hole. 

These are not pictures that I took in the rainforest. It was raining pretty hard during our tour and I didn't want to get my camera wet, so I found pictures on the Internet to show you. I did manage to take a video of the leaf cutter ants, though. If you want to see that, click HERE to go the grade 3 and 4 website. The video is all in Spanish, so if you want to challenge yourself to learn more about these animals, give it a try!

What is your favorite rainforest animal? You can write a comment to let me know at the bottom of this page.