Amazonian Adventures Part 2: Tiputini Biodiversity Station

Welcome to the second (and final) installment of my Amazonian adventure chronicles! Before diving into the pictures, I’d like to tell you a little bit about Tiputini. It is a highly selective research station run by the Unversidad de San Fransico in Quito. Only students and researchers to stay there. It is in the heart of the Ecuadorian Amazon, across the Tiputini River from Yasuni National Park (potentially the most biodiverse place in the entire world). To get to Tiputini, we took a short bus ride from Limoncocha to the Napo River, crossed the river in boat, went through a Yasuni National Park checkpoint (which is run by an oil company), took an open sided bus for two hours to the Tiputini River, and then took another boat for two hours to arrive at the station.

Right by the dock is a miniature salt lick, where butterflies and moths gather to obtain mineral nutrients.

Fun fact: the brown one is a butterfly, and the black-and-green ones are uraniid moths.

The sheer number of animals and plants we saw was astounding. I’ll stop writing so much and let you enjoy pictures of some of them.

Brownea grandiceps

A living fossil, the velvet worm (Onychophora). This is probably what the ancestor of all arthropods (insects, spiders, lobsters, centipedes) looked liked. They shoot streams of quick-drying glue from their mouth to ensnare prey and give birth to live young. (Source.)

This is the only successful photo I have of a blue morpho. Only the upper side of the wings are brilliant blue.

I know almost nothing about lizards, so I’m not going to try to identify this guy.

An amblypygid, also known as a whip spider or tailless whip scorpion. However, they are not spiders, not scorpions, and not true whip scorpions. But they are arachnids!

Big old katydid

Chestnut woodpecker

Many-banded aracari, a member of the toucan family

Baby dwarf caiman

Mother bat with young. The mother flies with the baby clinging to her belly.

Woolly monkey with a young baby

Another woolly monkey with a baby

South American tapir, one of the large mammals found in Tiputini. This one was tame and not in the reserve (it was in someone’s yard), but it’s still a cool animal.

I could talk for quite a while about Tiputini, but I’ll stop there. Tomorrow I’m off the coast with friends, since the President decided less than three weeks ago that this Friday is to be a national holiday. Hopefully I get a post in about the coast before heading to the Galapagos.