#68 - TALES FROM THE FIELD #13

Let's return to Suriname ...

As I've written, our field trip to this former Dutch colony on the northeast coast of South America was due to Maria Sibylla Merian's pioneering journey there in 1699. She was fascinated by insects, especially the then unknown metamorphosis of butterflies. An accomplished illustrator, Madame Merian left us with the first depiction of a "bird-eating" tarantula and this led to Linnaeus' Avicularia avicularia.

In Blog #49 back in late July I told her tale and of our journey to a restored plantation where we found the first of many Avics of our Suriname adventure. This plantation was on the north side of the Commewijne River east of Paramaribo, the capitol of Suriname and port on its northern coast. Although our day on the plantation yielded a large number of Avicularia, we still had a desire to find one within Paramaribo's "city limits". Over half of Suriname's population lives in "Parbo", and we knew for sure that Merian would have started where her ship had landed.

Prior to our field trip a Dutch team that had visited Suriname some years earlier had corresponded with Andrew Smith. They told of finding Avicularia in the forest near Parbo's zoo. So one day during our first week before we headed south to Babunhol and Brownsberg we decided to visit what would prove to be a very dismal little zoo.

The zoo itself is on the northwest side of the city and as we pulled up to its parking lot we noticed it was surrounded by a beautiful forest. We presumed this is the place the Dutch men had suggested. We decided that exploring the trees in this area would be better than a trip into the zoo and disappeared into the foliage.

As we searched the forest I discovered my first Plica lizards. These well camouflaged saurians cling to the trunks of trees and, much like our American Sceloporus, will tend to circle away from you and ascend at the same time when they know they are spotted. But many proved to be great models and would freeze still for my photo shoot, confident in their splendid camouflage. As I searched the trees for arboreal spiders I also came across turnip-tailed geckos (Thecadactylus rapicauda).

The rainforest beside the zoo where we explored.  © Michael Jacobi

Plica umbra in Paramaribo, Suriname  © Michael Jacobi

You can see how perfectly the turnip-tailed gecko (Thecadactylus rapicauda) also blended in with the rainforest trees.

My mate Paul Carpenter is highly skilled at shining his "torch" (flashlight) in the right place. He's hunted spiders around the world so this wasn't his first rodeo. It was he who discovered our first theraphosid spider, but to our surprise it wasn't Avicularia. And, SPOILER ALERT, we would find zero Avicularia in the woods surrounding the zoo. As Paul's light rays penetrated a natural hole at the end of a small limb he discovered our first Tapinauchenius plumpipes.

Out of this hollow tree limb came our first Tap.

The team at the small tree where Paul found our first Tapinauchenius. The hole was at the "L" bend right above Andrew Smith's left shoulder. (l. to r. Guy Tansley, Andrew Smith, Michael Jacobi & Paul Carpenter). Photo © Michael Jacobi

Tapinauchenius plumipes near Paramaribo Zoo. © Michael Jacobi

Another Tapinauchenius plumipes  © Michael Jacobi

The Taps shared their trees with these colorful arboreal millipedes  © Michael Jacobi

We discovered that this forest bordered some gardens where locals where growing various vegetables. We began to encounter more people, but we also discovered more Tapinauchenius plumipes. We were in the most populous area of the country, but there was no shortage of tarantulas. Eventually we made our way back to our hired car where another lunch of sardines, crackers and chips awaited. Refreshed and fed we decided we might as well give the zoo a quick look. I won't bother with the details of how depressing this little zoo was. Seeing big African and Asian cats in crappy little pens ruins my day. I hated being at this zoo and, quite frankly, I hate even America's state of the art zoos. I did not want to be there at all. But the paved trails through the little zoo had loads of big shade trees and we found that every one was inhabited by Avicularia! We had found our "city limits Avics".

An Avicularia retreat in a tree inside the Paramaribo Zoo  © Michael Jacobi

We found many Avicularia in silken tubes among the zoo's trees.

Guy Tansley poses with the subadult Avic from the previous photo. The other zoo visitors were looking at shoddy exhibits while we were only interested in the zoo's free ranging creatures like the Avicularia and the Ameiva lizards.

The "jungle runners" (Ameiva ameiva) that scurried about the zoo grounds.  © Michael Jacobi

Avicularia "Paramaribo Zoo" ;)

We hadn't travelled but 15 minutes from our suburban resort and had found two species of Aviculariinae and some nice lizards. It was just another highly successful day for our team and I'm sure we rewarded ourselves with a fine dinner and some cocktails. We had discovered a nice little restaurant in downtown Parbo and dined after dark before returning to Oxygen resort to write in our journals with a cold beer and, in the case of Andy and I, a fine cigar.


Until next time, MJ