by Evan Antin
Back home, if anyone had told me I might have that experience, I would have rowed a boat to Africa and stood by that fence for a month. And yet, it had happened by chance. Awesome, perfect, and totally unexpected. If I’d had any remaining doubts about the career I wanted to pursue and the animals that made it my calling, they were long gone by the time I boarded my flight back to Colorado.
PART TWO
Welcome to the Jungle
3
Ecuador
If you’re a film buff, you’ve got to see Citizen Kane. If you’re an architect, you’ll eventually find your way to a Frank Lloyd Wright house. And if you’re an evolutionary biology student, your professional mecca is the Galápagos Islands, the volcanic archipelago sprinkled along the equator hundreds of miles off the South American coast and made world-famous by Charles Darwin and the tortoise Lonesome George.
Traveling to Ecuador between college and veterinary school gave me a chance to check off two of the biggest items on my travel and wildlife bucket list: making my first trek into the Amazon (a.k.a. the Ultimate Jungle I’d Been Dying to See Since I Was Four) and visiting the Galápagos Islands. I was lucky enough to be sharing the experience with one of my best friends in the world, Tim Diggs. The two of us grew up together in Overland Park, Kansas, and though our adult lives have taken us on different paths, we still hang out and travel together when we can.
I’d read about Darwin’s finches, about his notebooks, and about the studies he conducted that defined evolution as we still understand it today. Arriving in the place where it all happened felt like making a pilgrimage. The way these islands are protected suggests that the whole world agrees they’re something sacred. Ninety-seven percent of the land is national park, and this isolated region teems with rare and unique wildlife. The islands are home to a higher percentage of endemic species (animals and plants not found anywhere else) than almost any place in the world, with 97 percent of the local reptiles, 80 percent of the land birds, and 20 percent of the marine species living only on or around the islands. Evolutionary isolation has fostered some highly unusual creatures here, including the pink land iguana, the Galápagos penguin (the only penguin that lives in the tropics), the blue-footed booby, and the one and only Galápagos batfish. (If you’ve never seen one of these in the flesh or in a photo, imagine an underwater bat crossed with a ray, with its lips painted ruby red. Add some whiskers and ask it to scowl like Grumpy Cat and you’ve got yourself a batfish.) Sooo neato—and so weird.
Despite their fame and the fantastical nature of some of these species, I was excited to study something much, much bigger. As soon we arrived on Santa Cruz Island, I hopped a water taxi to a tortoise sanctuary. I’d imagined big dinosaurs romping around, eating grass, craning their necks to see who’d arrived all the way from Colorado to get a look at them. First impression in real life: super-sleepy tortoises, chilling in the mud. It might have been uneventful encountering them in their own environment, except for the fact that they were so much bigger than I’d expected. I’d seen pictures. Yeah, yeah—big. But the first thing I thought of when I spied one in person was a VW bug. The carapace (the top half of a turtle or tortoise’s shell) is so massive, it’s a miracle of nature that any creature can haul it around.
Because the Galápagos have a lot of rules about what you can and can’t touch for the protection of the animals and the environment, I expected a hands-off day out among the tortoises. What I forgot in those plans was one of Darwin’s observations about island wildlife—that many of these species, isolated and unhabituated to predators, are surprisingly docile. Some people call it “island tame.” Evolutionarily, these animals haven’t developed adaptations to guard against what less-isolated species perceive as stranger danger. Basically, since they haven’t had much reason to expect people or other large, predatory animals to harm them over the course of thousands of years of evolution, they don’t worry about it.
So as I sat on a rock, watching the massive tortoises, one of these slooooowww-moving giants turned my way and started inching closer. I didn’t move toward him, but I didn’t back away. I sat still, admiring his incredible size, his sleepy eyes, and his hefty legs. I was mesmerized by the way he hauled each foot forward, top down, then righted it in front of him. It looked like a ridiculously labor-intensive way to get from point A to point B. I thought he’d stop moving or turn another way, but after what seemed like hours, his sluggish, lumbering trek put him right at my feet. I was point B. He pushed his head toward me, first just a little, and then—wow—until he was almost touching me, his neck extended at least a foot. Then he cocked his head, raised his neck a bit farther, and gazed at me eye to eye. His head was huge, his skin rough and grimy from the mud. His eyes looked ancient. It was like coming face-to-face with Yoda. I couldn’t help thinking, What does he know?
I didn’t want to presume, but everything about this tortoise’s relaxed, leaning-in body language said it was okay to touch him. Animals are always honest about how they feel, and this guy seemed to feel like making friends. I cautiously stretched my hand out toward the top of his head. He had other ideas, gently bobbing so that my hand ended up under his chin. Then he lowered his neck just a little. It didn’t take a mind reader to get the request. Scratch, please?
Not a problem. I would have been happy to sit there in the hot sun scratching his leathery skin indefinitely. I made a tentative rub against the bottom of the outstretched neck, and this great big guy leaned in. The only way he could have been clearer about how this was what he’d dragged himself over to me for would have been for him to say, “That’s the spot.” So I scratched.
When it became evident that my new friend wasn’t going to wander off anytime soon, I took out my camera, trying to get both of us in the shot whenever possible. (I was way ahead of the curve on the “invention” of the selfie.) With tape rolling, I explained that the islands had once been covered with more than 250,000 of these primeval-looking creatures. When Darwin arrived, tortoises were a major food source for whalers, pirates, locals, and even the naturalist and his crew. The defenseless giants were easy to catch and easy to kill. Sailors swore their meat was a delicacy. Ships’ crews not only slaughtered tortoises throughout the islands but also loaded them on ships alive so they’d have fresh meat when they needed it later on. It would take six men or more to carry a five-hundred-pound behemoth, but tortoises were a far more practical food source to take to sea than any mammal because they could survive for months without food or water.
By 1970, some of the islands had no tortoises left. In all, only around three thousand remained. That was the year Ecuador made capturing them or removing them from the Galápagos illegal.
Today, the longest-living terrestrial vertebrates in the world spend their days grazing and napping, protected throughout the islands, and their numbers are slowly climbing. At last count the population was approaching twenty thousand—a far cry from their once-abundant presence, but a step in the right direction.
Each time I pulled my hand back to adjust the camera or make a gesture, my new pal waved his head at me, craning a little farther my way. Scratch!
Even as it was happening, I knew this was an interaction I’d never forget. The thing about reptiles is that no matter how much you love them—and, man, I do love them—they’re not cuddly. They don’t have those kind of relationships, not even within their families. Nature programs mammals with systems that release endorphins to make them feel good when they’re cuddling, or grooming, or having other affectionate interactions with their companions. This evolutionary adaptation benefits them by facilitating their being part of a family unit, which gives them better chances of survival in the wild. Reptiles just don’t have that, because they are hatched or born prepared to survive independently, already hardwired with the instinct to survive. So I have to think that this guy simply had an itch and I’d happened along at the right time to help him out. No matter what the reason, I was grateful for the moment.
When
I finished filming, I stowed my gear, then reached out to scratch my friend’s chin one more time. He was sound asleep, his neck stretched out on the ground, his giant head extended between his broad front feet. It was a shockingly vulnerable position to fall asleep in, but this guy was island tame, and he looked like he believed that nothing in the world would ever want to hurt him.
See Sea Lions
Before I arrived, I shortsightedly pictured the Galápagos mostly in terms of their tortoises. But the highlight of my visit turned out to be the spectacular snorkeling and diving. To really see this place, you’ve got to get into (and out of) a boat. Tim and I made the biggest splurge of our trip (maybe of our lives up until that point) to book a live-aboard stay on a fourteen-person boat. Each day we went out to one or two different islands, and each island brought new surprises below the surface of the water. Hammerhead sharks beneath us. Tiny, brightly colored seahorses suspended in the water. Green turtles zipping past at speeds that defied everything I thought I knew about turtles.
And you know you’re not in Kansas anymore when you dive under the water’s surface and see a huge iguana swimming right beside you. These lizards are the only known marine iguanas in the world. Somewhere in their ancestry they developed a taste for seaweed, and in the absence of many natural predators on the land or in the water, they learned to swim. The water in the Galápagos stays in the seventies Fahrenheit most of the time, so these guys have to forage quickly before their body temperature drops so far that they get too sluggish to swim. When you see a wet iguana on the seashore in the Galápagos, chances are it’s waiting for the sun to bring its body temperature back up and energize it again. This post-swim warming is the time when marine iguanas are most vulnerable, and the wild dogs introduced to the islands in the past century sometimes take advantage of that moment of weakness to prey on them.
The clear blue sea around the islands was the stage for some of the most amazing fish and reptile sightings of my life, but the creatures I will forever associate with my snorkeling days in the Galápagos are the sea lions. I had never interacted with marine mammals before, and they were about to give me a lesson in just how curious, quick, and quirky an animal can be.
The first time we saw them, Tim and I were snorkeling near a tiny, rocky outcrop of a small island. The group on our boat was only ten people total, so we had plenty of autonomy and no tight time constraints. Since Tim and I are both adventurous and strong swimmers, we typically tried to cover a lot of real estate on each snorkel. On this day, we swam around to the far side of the island and spotted a cave along the shore with a single stream of natural light breaking in through an opening somewhere overhead. The walls were steep, smooth stone, and the water was quiet inside. No way were we just going to swim on by.
Seconds after we entered the cave, two sea lions slipped in behind us. I’d thought we were swimming, but these creatures quickly made us feel about as agile in the water as a pair of plodding ogres. Ogres in boots.
Sea Lion One and Sea Lion Two swam circles around us, gliding forward and backward, diving, flipping, and rolling—a nonstop flow of movement. They were crazy fast, zipping just inches from us, doing their unique brand of underwater acrobatics. Each time one zoomed by me it came so close it almost touched me, missing by a millimeter. Tim and I kept looking from the sea lions to each other and giggling like little kids. If I’d been quick enough, I might have reached out to pat one, but I was too mesmerized to move. Twice, one of the swimmers stopped a couple feet from me and poked its head out of the water, giving me a good look at a face like an adorable puppy. A giant puppy. Galápagos sea lions are the smallest sea lion species, but a mature male can still grow to eight feet long and weigh over five hundred pounds. If it wanted to, any full-grown sea lion could take out even the biggest, sturdiest human in the water. But these animals were clearly not malicious. Once, a snout bumped my leg. On another pass, the sea lion … bit me? It could have shredded my leg, but instead it gave me a tap with an open jaw. This was play, pure and simple. It was a magical experience, especially because this extremely intelligent wild animal chose to interact with us. There were no treats or rewards involved, and force was definitely not an option. It reminded me that humans are not the only inquisitive species; animals can take an interest in us, too.
As far as Tim and I were concerned, there was nothing to do but enjoy the sea lion show. I would have given anything for a camera in that moment, but as I watched them, I realized that taking it in was enough. We waited until these guys had finished literally swimming circles around us. When they left the cave, we paddled out behind them and back to our boat. We were the last snorkelers to return that day, but also the ones with the best story.
Full-on Jungle
We have beautiful forests and amazing wildlife in the Midwest. But the jungle? The jungle is the jam, the ultimate habitat. I’d idealized it for as long as I could remember, and the name that occupied my childhood imagination and my grown-up travel dreams was the Amazon.
It took a flight, a bus, a ride in a truck bed, and finally a three-hour riverboat trip to get there. With each change of transportation mode, the landscape got more exotic. The Amazon is teeming with thousands of species on every acre, and even though you can’t hear, smell, or see all of them, your senses can’t ignore how incredibly alive the environment is. This was all the jungle fantasies of my childhood come to life. The lush green canopy nearly enclosing the road. The sounds of birds and insects buzzing all around me. Craning around the side of the truck, I saw a tamarin race across the road in front of the vehicle and then stop to stare, his wizened face surrounded by a shock of red fur that made him look like a tiny monkey Einstein. He hurried on into the jungle before I could even snap a picture. I had arrived.
The next amazing creature wasn’t elusive at all. Above the road, a sloth lazed in a tree. I asked the driver to stop and got my camera out to document my first encounter with this amazing animal.
Sloths have a lot of trophies on the shelf: Slowest-Moving Mammal on the Planet. Lowest Metabolic Rate. Slowest Digestive Process. Lowest Body Temperature. They also have a highly unusual ability to let their body temperature rise and fall with their surroundings—like reptiles. Whether it’s too hot or too cold, a sloth’s temperature can shift several degrees with the weather, and the animal can remain alert (though not active) while riding out either extreme. Of course, to the casual observer, absolutely nothing changes when this happens, because either way the sloth barely moves.
This was a three-toed sloth—an even slower species than his two-toed cousin. His fur was tinged with green, courtesy of the algae that grows there and helps camouflage him in the canopy. His body hung motionless, but his head slowly swiveled almost all the way around so he could look right at me. Sloths can’t move their eyes much, but they can rotate their heads nearly 270 degrees—like owls. It was all I could do to sit still and not start climbing up the tree for a closer look. Sloths like the one I was studying make their homes in the relative safety of the canopy (often a single tree), inching along, eating a diet of mostly leaves, and watching the world go by. Unless they’re mating or raising babies, they’re mostly loners, content to go about their business at a pace that looks like slow-motion capture.
Once a week, the sloth gets surprisingly fastidious (for a creature with algae growing on it) and makes a long and dangerous trek—all the way to the ground.
Under its tree, the sloth digs a hole, poops in it, and covers it over with dirt or leaves. The adage about not shitting where you eat weighs heavily on sloth life—because while most spend only a tiny fraction of their lives on the ground relieving themselves, an estimated half of them die there. They’re too vulnerable, too slow, and too predictable for predators to resist. Jaguars, ocelots, foxes, eagles, and wild dogs all help themselves to the easy prey.
A lot of people wonder why the sloth is so slow, and the answer is a perfect example of the evolutionary process. The sloth’s diet is composed almost enti
rely of a few kinds of leaves, all of which are nutritionally limited. Technically sloths are omnivores, but they’re not hunters, so they generally fill up (literally—the body weight of a well-fed sloth at any given time is almost half partially digested food) on leaves alone. When your fuel is minimally nutritious in the extreme, your body has a choice to make: find a better diet or limit your expenditure of energy. Guess which way the sloth went?
I put my camera away and nodded to the guide, and we were on the road again.
When the road met the river, we transitioned to a twenty-foot flat-bottomed boat with a motor in the back and five rows of benches, each big enough for two people, three if you squeezed. From the dock we set out on a wide swath of the Amazon—the actual Amazon River! For the first hour, we cruised along quickly, taking in the scenery, grateful for the breeze, which cut the heat. After that, though, we turned, gliding into a tributary where the river narrowed by half, and soon by half again. We were fully in the jungle, with gorgeous greenery surrounding us on all sides. I thought, This is my happy place.
As we cruised along the river, our guide pointed out some of the spectacular wildlife: a family of tiny squirrel monkeys in a tree; a caiman partially submerged in the water. We heard a hair-raising screech and the guide spun around, following the sound, then pointed high in the canopy where a pair of bright blue-and-gold macaws perched above us.
As the water narrowed, he turned off the engine and pointed to the base of a tree abutting the river’s edge. The entire thing was alive with giant ants, each nearly as long as my thumbnail. Sometimes Mother Nature is tricky when she makes things outsized. An extra-large creature might be a gentle giant, or it might be a danger to everything that passes its way. These ants belong in the second group—not just big but fierce. Besides being the biggest ants I’d ever seen in person, they were also the most dangerous. They’re called bullet ants, and they earned their name because of the way it makes a person feel to get stung—like you’ve been shot. I started filming the ants, filling in a little info about one indigenous Amazon tribe where the initiation for a boy to become a man involves packing two gloves with these SOBs, putting them on, and letting the ants sting you.
