I am not sure why I didn’t even know there were monkeys in Central and South America until I was almost today years old. It’s common knowledge, I know, but I didn’t know.
Capuchin monkeys really like the beaches in Costa Rica.
We have monkeys in the New World? So cool! I had no idea. What’s even more cool is the story of how these monkeys got over here. Buckle up, I promise if you didn’t know this already it’s going to blow your mind.
36 million years ago, there were no primates in what we now call the Americas — they only lived in Asia and Africa. This is long after the continents had all gone their separate ways from Pangea, and the world looked something like this:
Image Source: From https://youtu.be/IwBu2T2OJG4?t=10 University of Sydney
Sometime approximately 36 million years ago, some monkeys were washed out to sea on a raft — a bunch of trees and other debris — and were transported via currents to somewhere in South America.
Image from Encyclopedia Brittanica: https://www.britannica.com/place/Atlantic-Ocean/Hydrology
It sounds crazy, but maybe it’s not as crazy as it sounds. Storms happen often enough, and the currents are reliable enough that it’s conceivable monkeys could have even rafted west more than once since South America and Africa separated more than a hundred million years ago.
Humans started taking advantage of the westward currents across the Atlantic a few hundred years ago — This much is verifiable history, though some argue with good reason for the possibility of prior voyages westward, including perhaps most famously the predacesar to Mansa Musa in the thirteenth century. Humans have certainly been using ocean currents to move around for tens of thousands of years — that’s how the first of us reached Australia and remote Pacific Islands. To this point, it’s quite likely that the first people to arrive and settle in North and South America arrived with boats, as well as by foot. Some call it the “kelp highway” — a likely route down the Pacific Northwest coast for people in boats, moving South from Beringia as it flooded and iced over. People most likely also arrived by boats from Polynesia, landing in South America at least as early as 1200 AD, and in fact there is genetic evidence not only for Polynesians landing in South America, but for movement that went both ways. Fifteen years ago, when I was studying archaeology, these concepts were fringe theories. Note that archaeology is catching up with what indigenous people have been saying the whole time, in many cases. Science is informed by social bias as much as anything else, including bias towards whose knowledge really counts.
For another reference consider the case of the Mexican fisherman who survived at sea for 14 months adrift in the Pacific Ocean, eating only what he could capture from the sea and drinking his own urine.
Maybe it’s not so weird that monkeys would have made the treacherous journey on a raft of trees and roots, perhaps one that even included enough grub and freshwater storage to keep them relatively healthy on the way.
Read more about the science behind the rafting monkeys in National Geographic or Smithsonian.
Since the original monkeys washed ashore somewhere in South America, they have flourished into more than 70 species! In Costa Rica, there are four types of monkeys: spider monkeys, howler monkeys, squirrel monkeys, and white-faced monkeys (of which there are Colombian and Panamanian versions, however I am not quite sure what the difference is or which ones we’ve seen).
Julie and I have seen white-faced (or capuchin) monkeys, spider monkeys, squirrel monkeys, and howler monkeys. The squirrel monkeys are more elusive, and it took us longer to get a glimpse, but once we saw them we decided they were our favorites, and even go a new stuffy for the family, whose name is Tica. She’s a monotita, or squirrel monkey.
Below are some videos we took: one of the white-faced monkey at the beach near Manuel Antonio National Park. Living their best-life, hunting for coconuts and grub! Another of squirrel monkeys. Harder to see, because they move so crazy like squirrels high in the trees!
Kayaking in the mangroves, we saw capuchin/white-faced monkeys walking along the trees searching for their favorite grub, a type of crab that lives in the mangrove ecosystem. We also learned about the significance of the mangrove ecosystems: they sequester carbon, protect the shore from erosion, clean the water, and make habitat for a myriad of animals. Only one type of monkey in feeds in the mangroves. The others are vegetarians, so they stay deeper in the forests.
Costa Rica is a leader in its approach to natural resource management and wildlife protection. Vast swaths of the country are 100% protected wilderness, and 30% of the country is a protected area of some designation. To visit Manuel Antonio National Park, we are not allowed to bring in any single-use plastics (i.e. energy bars in wrappers, or plastic water bottles). See our other post about the sea turtles.
Having worked in some beautiful places in the US including Yosemite National Park, I can’t help but make comparisons. In Yosemite, I was paid to chase bears out of campsites, because of endless streams of garbage and food that bears were given access to. Things are managed a little differently here, although surely it’s no panacea and monkeys are habituated to humans — especially near Manuel Antonio — and probably get lots of food from tourists (perhaps most likely the American ones?)
Howler monkeys are more heard than seen, it seems. We did have the chance to both hear and see them in Tortuguero, while kayaking with our guide there. They sound kind of scary, and in fact when I first heard their shouts I thought it was some kind of angry dog or something! The spider monkeys have longer limbs and move effortlessly from tree to tree - we got to see it but didn’t capture the best video - yet! Check out our youtube channel for more videos if you want to see more :)