Friday, January 12, 2007

Howler monkeys pay a visit

Okay sharp shooters, I know that this howler monkey isn't in focus but you can pretend that the photography is an Amazonian rage of blending subject matter into environment. The picture was taken this morning at the Bosque and I have to admit that I can see more in the picture than I saw from down below looking up. I assume this is a female. One of the four howlers making the visit was a male for sure. He was huge. He refused to stay put in one place long enough for me to take his picture. We hear the roar of howlers almost every day, a sound much like that of a jet plane taking off. At the Bosque museum (not really a museum but a collection of woods and odds and ends) I show visitors the skull of a howler along with its voice box. It demonstrates why the howler may be the loudest animal in the world. Although it's the male that yells the most, females also join in the act of defining their territory.

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