Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Coatis

Freshly back from Guatemala, having endured the rigors of International travel once again. I was COMPLETELY off the grid for the better part of ten days - no e-mail, no phone service, no nothing to link me to the world from which I came.

As usual, I made many images, and below are a few...

Like some strange piece of furry, living art, a sea of coati tails hooks sinously skyward. This platoon was foraging on a lawn at Tikal, Guatemala.

His "brother" may be the raccoon, but White-nosed Coatis look much like a small bear. That spadelike snout is an extremely effective digging implement. A favored treat is large tarantulas, which the coatis snout from their earthen dens.

More to come...

8 comments:

Tom Arbour said...

Jim- I thought after glancing at your first image that you had encountered a field with a herd of mini brachiosauri. I didn't know they had any remnant dinosaur populations in Guatemala. Don't their tails look like the necks of large plant eating dinosaurs?

Cathy said...

Like Tom, above - I couldn't make sense of that scene. Kept trying to turn them into birds (the tails as some weird sinewy necks).

Welcome home - just in time for sweet spring.

Dave said...

Welcome back to reality!
I can't wait to hear stories of Guatemala.

Anonymous said...

I love this photo. I've seen coatis in the zoo, but never so many in one place, and poses are perfect.

Heather said...

Good job confusing us, Jim! Like Tom and Cathy, I thought there was some dino action going on in that first photo. Welcome back!

Anonymous said...

To think that so many tarantulas might be living in that lawn! Yuck! I would not want to walk barefoot in that grass at night.

Cathy said...

Anon!

Yikes . . I hadn't thought about that!

Jim McCormac said...

Thanks for the comments, all. Yes, platoons of CO-OT-EE's patrolling, tails held skyward, is an interesting sight. As there are apparently some spider enthusiasts here, I'll try and slap up some nice photos that I took of a very handsome - and large - tarantula.

Jim