Nature: A story for All by Jack Ewing

One day more than twenty-five years ago, I was sitting at my computer writing an article about white-fronted capuchin monkeys. I paused and read over what I had written.

“This is terrible,” I thought. “It sounds like I am trying to write something for a biology textbook or a field guide. I’m not a biologist, and that isn’t what I’m trying to write. I want to write something that readers will relax and enjoy. I need to think about this. I’m going for a hike.”

Inspiration through Walking

Walking on a jungle trail is a wonderful way to spawn ideas and images. And off I went.

I took a trail through an old cacao plantation that was no longer being cared for. When we began planting cacao in 1979, the market value of the aromatic beans was around $3000 a ton. Seven years later, when the trees were in full production, it plunged to $700. Our cost of harvesting and processing was more than that. We quit spending money on caring for the plantations and turned them over to Mother Nature.

Cacao tree laden with fruit

Several years later, I wrote an article that eventually became the first chapter of my book, Monkeys Are Made of Chocolate. At that time, I was only beginning to understand the ecological complexity of a cacao plantation that has been given over to natural processes. Farmers can plant cacao on a parcel of fertile land. After being processed, it will be made into chocolate for the exclusive consumption of humans, but only Mother Nature can exploit the land to its fullest.

One of the most researched protected areas in Costa Rica is a huge nature reserve called La Selva Biological Station. A biologist friend once told me that the most biologically diverse areas of La Selva were the old, abandoned cacao plantations, not the primary forest, where one might expect. This got me thinking and paying more attention to our old cacao plantations at Hacienda Barú, which have not been pruned, fertilized, harvested, or otherwise cared for since 1986. I soon figured out that the cacao-producing trees were planted only four meters apart, and that nowhere in a natural forest do we find such a concentration of nutrients.

On the Trail

I met a friend on the trail. We greeted one another and began talking. After a few minutes, Phil spotted a bird sitting on a branch.

      “Look at that beautiful bird,” he exclaimed. “That’s a new one for me. What’s it called?”

      “Oh yeah. I’m glad you saw that one. It’s called the ‘Slaty-tailed Trogon. They’re stunning, aren’t they?”

      “They certainly are,” he replied

      “We first saw one near here a couple of years ago in this same old abandoned cacao plantation where we’re standing right now.”

A couple of days later, we saw another. They’re very secretive. We figured they were nesting, but it took a couple of years to figure out where.

Termites eat dead wood, but don’t bother the living wood. See that large, dark brown blob amongst the branches of that cacao tree? Look, there’s another. Termites made those nests. When the plantations were being cared for, we pruned all the dead wood away, and there was nothing left for termites. Now there are lots of them. We discovered that the trogons were burrowing into the center of those hard, brittle nests and hatching and caring for their young in the hollowed-out cavity. Parakeets, some of the smaller parrots, and several other species of birds do the same.

Have a Termite, I Assure You They are Great

When a Hacienda Baru guide is conducting a tour that passes through an old cacao plantation, he or she will often eat a termite and offer one to each of the guests. Believe it or not, they taste like peanut butter. I guess geckos, and a bunch of other small reptiles, like peanut butter, because they hang out on branches with lots of tunnel-like termite trails and eat the termites. We’ve noticed several species of hawks in the plantations and realized that their main reason for being there is to prey on these geckos and other small, termite-eating lizards.

      “That’s amazing,” commented Phil.

      “There’s a lot more,” I continued excitedly. “Have you ever noticed how wasteful white-fronted capuchin monkeys are? Their normal mode of eating anything is to grab a handful, stuff part of it in their mouths, and throw the rest on the ground. With cacao, they pluck a pod off the tree, take a bite out of one side, or bang it against a branch to break it open, slurp the slimy pulp off a few seeds, throw the rest on the ground, and pick another pod. Wasteful right?”

     Phil nodded.

     “That’s what I thought too, but one of our guides watched a group of monkeys on the ground messing around with some old fallen cacao pods. Eventually, he realized

that the pods were full of protein-rich maggots, which the monkeys were eating.”

Not as wasteful as I had thought. At first, there was little competition for the fallen pods. Later, pacas, agoutis, coatis, and peccaries discovered them. What’s left after

all of them are finished is consumed by ants, fungi, bacteria, and other tiny life forms. Absolutely nothing goes to waste. As the pod completely decomposes, the micro-nutrients are incorporated into the soil and used by plants.

Monkeys also prey on squirrels and their young, so the squirrels only make occasional incursions into the old plantations and never nest there. Their reason for being there at all is to eat the nutrient-rich cacao seeds, which they do by chewing a hole in the pod without removing it from the tree, digging the seeds out with their front paws, and eating them. As you probably imagine, lots of seeds fall on the ground.

The seeds remaining in the pod once the meal is finished gradually loosen up and fall through the hole onto the ground. Those animals I already mentioned, and several others, gobble them up as soon as they find them. Nothing in the natural world goes to waste.

Boa on a branch

We see lots of boas coiled in the branches of the cacao trees, patiently waiting for prey such as squirrels, opossums, and rats.

Sloths don’t eat cacao leaves, but they do eat the leaves of some of the shade trees found in the plantations, and our guides look for them there.

Spider Monkey

Lots of those shade trees are a species called poró, which produces hundreds of orange flowers. Monkeys eat the flowers, and hummingbirds go for the nectar like flies to sugar. One ornithologist counted 11 different species of hummingbirds in one poró tree.

great currassow

Large birds called great curassows scratch around in the leaf litter and lose soil looking for seeds, insects, and other tiny life forms. Litter frogs can be found on the moist ground as well.

Phil shook his head. “I never imagined any of this. It’s awesome. You know what? You should write this all down; all the same stuff you just told me. It’d make a great article. Lots of people out there would love to learn about this stuff. I’m sure you could get it published.”

I bid my friend farewell and headed home to my computer.

From the cattle business in the USA to becoming into an environmentalist and naturalist in Costa Rica, Jack is currently president of two environmental organizations, ASANA (Friends of Nature of the Central & South Pacific) and FUNDANTA (Foundation for the Path of the Tapir Biological Corridor)

A natural–born storyteller, Jack’s articles have appeared regularly in Costa Rica publications, and he is author of several books, Monkeys Are Made of Chocolate and Where Tapirs and Jaguars once Roamed: Ever–Evolving Costa Rica. His latest book is titled Monkeys Are Made of Mangos.