This sexy beast is a thee-toed sloth. It graced my presence in a place called Pavones in south western Costa Rica, not too far from the Panama border. Sloths move so slow that algae easily grows on their fur (moths also like to live in there). The algae shares a symbiotic relationship with the sloth — the sloth providing a home for the algae and the algae providing camouflage for the sloth.

Back to Costa Rica for today’s photo of the day. These two squirrel monkeys were photographed just outside the lodge that I was staying at in Pavones, near the Panama border. Squirrel monkeys travel in large troops, sometimes up to 500. They are very small, growing to just about 13 inches (not including the tail) and weighing just 2 and a half pounds. Falcons and eagles are their main predators, but the fact that they travel in such large groups enables them to fend off most attacks. And just in case you needed one more wikipedia interesting fact of the day — “Female squirrel monkeys have a pseudo penis that they use to display dominance over smaller monkeys, in much the same way the male squirrel monkeys display their dominance.” Just in case you were wondering.

This coati was sniffing around in the fruit orchards at Tiskita Lodge in southwestern Costa Rica. With over a hundred different varieties of fruit that bloom throughout the year, the orchards are a magnet for the area wildlife. Those are starfruit hanging from the tree. The coati was feasting on the ones that had fallen on the ground. I also ate my fair share of starfruit, as well as many other kinds of fruit, on this trip.

This was a pretty good fight for a while. At one point the lizard even made a nice move and had the snake in its grip. Eventually, however, the snake was too much for the lizard to handle. After about a ten minute struggle, the snake swallowed the lizard whole in a couple of seconds. This was taken in Corcovado National Park on the Osa Peninsula in southwest Costa Rica.

In all my travels, Tiskita Lodge in Pavones, Costa Rica was one of my favorite places to stay. Down near the Panama border, it’s not easy to get to, but well worth the effort once you do. I probably saw a greater variety of wildlife just walking around the grounds of the lodge than I’ve seen anywhere else. I was there for four days, and each afternoon a small troop of squirrel monkeys would make an appearance just outside my room to feed on the various fruiting trees. They were just one of the many species that I could literally photograph from the hammock on my front porch.

This will be the last post until after New Years as I head to Connecticut for Christmas and then on to Yellowstone in search of winter wildlife. Until then, enjoy this red eyed tree frog from the rainforests of Costa Rica. I figured with the reds and greens it was about as Christmasy a post as I could find in my collection. Happy holidays.

This is an agouti photographed in Costa Rica. Not quite squirrel, not quite rat — a little of both but quite a bit larger.

Here’s another one inspired by the Discovery Channel’s “Life” series. In the episode “Challenges of Life,” they highlight the strawberry poison dart frog and the Herculean effort the mother goes through to ensure that her young survive. She carries each of her tadpoles on her back, one by one, from the rainforest floor to the tops of trees — big, jungle trees — in search of suitable nurseries (in small pools of water that form in bromeliad leaves). Each tadpole needs its own nursery so that they don’t eat each other. Then the mother goes from nursery to nursery dropping unfertilized eggs into the water for the tadpoles to eat (apparently it’s good eatin’ for a young tadpole and they need more than just one, so the mother must continually return to each tree and nursery to drop another, and then another). She pretty much is traveling constantly while the tadpoles are growing. The first time I was in Costa Rica I saw this happening with a tadpole on the mother’s back but wasn’t able to get any good shots. Here’s a strawberry poison dart frog from my second trip to Costa Rica. There are many different varieties and colorations of this frog — this one being the appropriately named “blue jeans” morph.

I photographed this coati at my favorite spot in Costa Rica — Tiskita Lodge in the town of Pavones, which is located on the Pacific coast by the Panama border. This guy was sneaking into the fruit orchards of Tiskita looking for some lunch. Coatis are members of the raccoon family and are sometimes even referred to as hog-nosed raccoons. They are quite widespread, ranging from the southwestern US all the way to northern Argentina, and have adapted to many different habitat types.

This was the only granular poison dart frog that I saw while in Costa Rica. He’s also known as the green jeans frog. I’ve also photographed the much more common blue jeans frog, which is very similar, only with blue legs. What I like about both of these species is that they are active during the day (most tree frogs are nocturnal) and I can photograph them without a flash. I shot this guy from all angles, and this is a rare exception for a frog where I think I like the back view better than the photos I got from the front.