By NATALIE ANGIER for the
New York Times - BARRO COLORADO ISLAND, Panama We were tramping doggedly through the forest in pursuit of white-faced capuchins, those familiar organ-grinder monkeys with the wild hair, piercing eyes and impatient scowls of little German professors. Capuchins are said to be exceptionally quick-witted, and that morning they might as well have been swinging from their Phi Beta Kappa keys. A mother monkey with baby on board flashed into view 20 feet above me, I whipped up my binoculars for a closer look and, hey, Marie and Irene Curie, where did you go? My gracious guide, Margaret Crofoot, a primatologist who is studying the monkeys, murmured that a big male capuchin just behind me had been scrutinizing us for some time. Slowly I turned, swiftly he rose, and, wow, thats a male all right; a crash of leaves, a twang of branches and peep show over. (more)
Nothing seems to slow them down, Dr. Crofoot said. They never stop moving. Neither did Dr. Crofoot, 29, who is tall, blond and sporty and who reminded me of the actress Laura Dern in Jurassic Park.
It was January and supposedly the dry season, but suddenly the skies burst into rain. So now would the monkeys hunker down and wait out the storm? I wish, Dr. Crofoot said. How about mutual grooming? Surely they have to stop for that. Capuchins groom each other occasionally, she said, but much less often than, say, baboons or chimpanzees.
Yet somehow the capuchins manage to either outwit or outrun the forests legions of parasites. Of the dozens of monkeys that Dr. Crofoot has handled over the years, she has found ticks on only one or two. I, by contrast, spent a mere three days in the field and am still so covered with swollen red tick and chigger bites that I look like the color plates from a dermatology textbook.
Capuchins are smart, gorgeous and socially sophisticated, and Dr. Crofoot has relished the many hours spent studying them with the traditional field research tools of binoculars, notebook and a saints portion of patience. Yet she and other scientists who work here at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute are thrilled with a new system for tracking their subjects that could help revolutionize the labor-intensive business of field biology.
Called the Automated Radio Telemetry System, the method relies on seven 130-foot-high radio towers scattered across the island that can monitor data from many radio-tagged individuals simultaneously, round the clock, through the calendar. Once an animal has been outfitted with a transmitting device, the towers can track its unique radio signature and, by a process of triangulation, indicate where it is on the island, whether its moving or at rest, what other radio-endowed individuals it encounters.
The constant data streams feed into computers at a central lab building on the island, allowing researchers to stay abreast of far more animal sagas than they could possibly follow through direct observation, and to make the best of their hours in the field. If you see an extended flat line on your computer monitor, its time to go out, retrieve the corpse and figure out what happened.
And because transmitters can now be made as light as two-tenths of a gram, scientists can tag and track katydids, orchid bees, monarch butterflies, even plant seeds.
Automated systems like this are ushering in a new era of animal tracking, said Roland Kays, another institute research associate. Theres a lot of potential for seeing the routes animals take and the decisions they make every step of the way.
The application of radio telemetry towers, global positioning satellites and other cyberscapes to the mapping and deciphering of the natural world has spawned a new subdiscipline. Movement ecology is the term being thrown around now, said Dr. Kays, who is also curator of mammals at the New York State Museum in Albany.
Dr. Kays is applying the tracking system to explore the dynamic ménage à trois among the islands population of ocelots; the ruddy, snouty rodents called agoutis; and the islands towering and thickly buttressed Dipteryx trees. The agoutis love Dipteryx seeds, and the ones they dont eat immediately they bury for later consumption. The Dipteryx needs the agoutis to bury its seeds before ground beetles or other animals destroy them, but then the tree wants the rodent to conveniently disappear. Ocelots love agoutis; the rodents are their most important food source. The question Dr. Kays is asking: How many members of each sector are needed to sustain this tripartite economy?
The telemetry system adds to the scientific luster of an island that has been a research mecca ever since Barro Colorados 3,865 acres were separated from the mainland by the construction of the Panama Canal in 1914. Its a living laboratory, said Stefan Schnitzer of the University of Wisconsin. Its the most heavily studied piece of forest in the world.
Of course, what sounds dandy in theory can act buggy in practice, and researchers admitted that the upkeep of a complex computerized network in the pitilessly catabolic conditions of a tropical rain forest is always tricky. Moreover, tagging animals remains difficult, particularly when the subjects are smart and easily spooked, as capuchins are.
At the moment, only five of the islands estimated 250 to 300 capuchins are fitted with radio collars, a figure that Dr. Crofoot hopes to double or treble. Once she is able to eavesdrop simultaneously on a representative sampling of the 15 to 20 capuchin social groups that roam the island, she can better address her abiding interest in intertribal politics.
There have been decades of work looking at social relations within primate groups, she said. But primates have neighbors, and theyre with those neighbors over decades, so the question is, what are those relationships like?
Early evidence suggests that capuchins are xenophobic but not imperialistic. The tracking data indicate theres lots of long-distance avoidance, Dr. Crofoot said. The monkeys give especially wide berth to their versions of demilitarized zones, where one groups territory overlaps with anothers.
The best way to win a war is not to start one in the first place: pure genius.
By DON WINNER for Panama-Guide.com - Received today via email: "Hi Don, Here are a few new photos of the Great Dane pups that I mentioned last week
They are very adorable, and against my better judgement have me thinking of getting another. The puppies will be available to take home starting from the 7th of July. The attached photos were taken when the pups were 4 weeks old. They are purebred Great Danes and while the puppies do not have papers, both of their parents are registered. All 11 of the puppies are Merle colored and are available for 600 USD for each. Please call Jesse 6612-3710 for details. For those who dont know much about the breed, Great Danes are best known for their giant size and gentle personality. Adult males generally grow to weigh between 130-160 lbs and females are slightly smaller with an average adult weight of 100-130 lbs. In the past, Great Danes were used to hunt wild boar and guard the manor, though nowadays they are used mostly as companion pets. The Great Dane's large and imposing appearance belies its friendly nature; the breed is often referred to as the gentle giants. Great Danes are generally well-disposed toward other dogs, other non-canine pets and humans. Great Danes can be protective and make good guard dogs. Thanks, Lucy"
By DON WINNER for 
By Janice Lloyd, 
By Raúl A. Bernal for 
