got close to a palm viper today in the rain forest....here's a photo

[Gato Moteado]

i got right up to a palm viper today in the rain forest near my house. my house is up at over 4000 feet in elevation and the jungle is up even higher in the mountain. got face to face with a bright green palm viper clinging to the branches low in a small tree. the funny thing is that my book says these guys aren't found any higher than about 1500 feet in elevation. any way, here are a couple pics for you to enjoy:

http://i55.photobucket.com.nyud.net:8090/albums/g138/GatoMoteado/palmviper01b.jpg

http://i55.photobucket.com.nyud.net:8090/albums/g138/GatoMoteado/palmviper05.jpg

[ForrestGump]

1. Excellent shots!

Most bodacious. Incredibly so.

I miss the wild places where I've lived and worked, never more acutely when someone who's there now brings up a reminder.

But that's not to say that you won't still thrill at my recounting of the day I got close to a Palm Pilot and lived to tell the story... :D

[Gato Moteado]

11. so, aside from the palm pilot......

...what other close encounters have you had?

[ForrestGump]

12. Mostly subaquatic, with allegedly 'dangerous' animals

Encountered sharks (many species in the tropical and subtropical Atlantic and Pacific..biggest was a 20' great hammerhead), barracudas, morays and large conger eels, sea snakes (banded sea krait), scorpionfishes (including Inimicus and the true stonefish), stingrays, dangerous coelenterates (after a night dive during which my buddy and I both got hit by what was probably a Portugese man-of-war, I started wearing a lycra hood on night dives), etc.

I studied some of them for my PhD. Rarely felt truly scared or worried as a result of proximity to such predators (humans and human society are far more worrisome and threatening, in my eyes), but I had a few moments, particularly with a few sharks I encountered in 'blue water,' where lack of substrate is disconcerting to me and where sharks' behaviors tend to be different than on the reef. The most aggressive animals I encountered underwater, apart from some terrible divers, were relatively harmless damselfishes, including anemonefishes...glad they don't get any bigger!

Here's one of my pictures of a silvertip shark, for my money perhaps the most beautiful shark. I had a spiritual experience during my several dives at this site, basically, very happily all alone down there with a trio of big silvertips (and a ton of gray reef sharks and whitetip reef sharks):



I needed the break from academia, et al., but I do miss having the reef as my 'office' and look forward to getting back there.

My experience in tropical rainforests was interesting, and pretty cool, but made me happy (extreme humidity, mosquitos drilling through clothes, every single thing that grows therein having thorns, etc) that I was doing my thing in the sea and not terrestrially... :D

[Name removed]

13. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Gato Moteado]

14. wow......great photo!

and i know what you mean about the spiritual experience of diving on a reef. i've also encountered several large sharks while diving. it's a rush and i've never felt threatened by them. same goes for moray eels, sea snakes, rays and barracudas...once after a dive in the florida keys i came up to the surface through a giant school of barracudas (i hadn't even known that they formed schools)!

and the most aggressive things i ever encountered underwater were small crabs and yellow tail snappers. once, while feeding the sting rays in the grand cayman islands i got bloodied by the teeth and sharp fins of snappers in a feeding frenzy around me.

what's your phd in?

[ForrestGump]

23. Thanks!

Yeah, those yellowtail snappers can be a real hazard, especially in areas where tourists feed them (Cheez Whiz is a favorite...that stuff's not even food for humans, let alone fishes). And sergeant-majors don't get called 'Cayman piranhas' for nothing. :D

Yellowtail story: one of my more senior colleagues was on an early saturation habitat mission in the old Hydrolab habitat, I think off St Croix. Seems that this structure was little more than a 10x10-foot (I think) box with none of the mod cons of the Aquarius habitat and other current models. It didn't have a bathroom, so the scientists living in there had to do their bidness behind a large coral head not too far from the habitat, swimming out there in shorts or with no bottoms on at all. Anyway, apparently tastes can change when living under pressure (nitrogen partial-pressure effect) and foods you once liked may no longer appeal to you. Just like today, the people running the missions would bring down pretty much whatever food you wanted, and one one of the researchers on this mission loved Vienna sausages. Well, he did until he started munching on them while saturated with nitrogen. So he'd take the sausages with him when he worked around the habitat and feed them to the yellowtail snappers and other opportunists. The yellowtails ended up, of course, getting something of a search image for these little sausages. Well, one day...let's just say that one day this scientist went for a bathroom trip and -- I mean, you can see it coming, can't you? Yes. I think the wound required seven stitches, courtesy of a surgeon who dived down to administer the repair, though it's possible that having the procedure done in full view of laughing cohabitants (there was absolutely no privacy in that habitat) was a more grievous injury. And, no, I have no idea who the victim was...closely guarded secret, and rightfully so. :-)

I'll answer your questions in PM...I've posted way too much identifying information on DU and would still prefer to guard whatever anonymity I have left.

[Gato Moteado]

31. cheez whiz and vienna sausages....

great story! i feel sorry for the dude that got the jonh bobbit treatment from the yellowtail snappers. the old adage that says don't bite the hand that feeds says nothing about other appendages.

sounds like you were some sort of marine biologist. well, if you're ever coming down to costa rica for work or pleasure, let me know.

and if i'm ever diving on the reefs and i see a human turd or a severed penis swim by, i will know who to blame.

[ForrestGump]

36. I'd love to get down to Costa Rica!

Many of my colleagues have worked there (most in the La Selva Preserve, but some have been of the aquatic persuasion and dived on the Pacific side, which sounds pretty wild and wooly beneath the waves with a lot of top predators lurking about) and I've heard nothing but great things about it. One of my colleagues raved about a ssurfing trip he took there, too. :-)

Speaking of human byproducts, one very well known marine biologist who was working on the Hydrolab mission published (I'm not sure where...not one of the stuffier journals, that's for sure) a paper that was very tongue-in-cheek, that involved tracking these objects around the habitat (the acronym was 'T.U.R.D.,' but I can't remember what it stood for) and studying their behavior. It was brilliant, no matter that it was probably conceived under the influence of extreme nitrogen narcosis. It had pictures and everything. I saw a photocopy of the paper at a marine lab 13 years ago and have not been able to find the source since...wish I'd copied it myself. Excellent stuff, and it provided much-needed insight into the behavioral ecology of these enigmatic entities.

[Gato Moteado]

39. yes, the elusive reef turds......

....i think i saw a national geographic special on them once!

[Medium Baby Jesus]

33. It's to late Forest

I always suspected...

[ForrestGump]

37. Zut alors!

Zhat's raht...ay feked mah dee-ath to get awayh fruhm Priscilla...ah mayn..Simone...

Sacre merde...nowh ah ahm zo confoozed...

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Wow.......you aren't kidding!

He is right there.....

Are they poisonous? I hope not! I would guess they aren't.......

Otherwise, you wouldn't be so close for the pictures!

Still........ :scared:

I am glad you took these.....I sure couldn't have!


:hi:

[Gato Moteado]

7. actually, he's a pit viper so he's definitely venemous......

....but he wasn't aggressive at all. i was very close to him while taking the pictures.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

3. These are wonderful!

Thanks! :toast:

[Gato Moteado]

8. thanks......

....about seven years ago i believe i saw a giant anteater. i was on the road leading south from dominical. it was night and we were approaching something dead in the road...as we passed it the driver of the car slowed down. i looked to see what it was and it was definitely an anteater but it was too big to be a tamandua. it was the size of a fairly large dog. i really think it was a giant anteater, though they are supposedly extinct in costa rica. who knows.

[Suich]

4. Great pics!

I guess you get kinda used to running into different critters if you're in a rain forest!

:hi:

[Gato Moteado]

9. thanks......

yeah, i see all kinds of cool stuff.

i really was surprised to see this guy that high up in the mountains.

[Radio_Lady]

5. Those pictures are amazing! That snake is VERY green and you can

almost feel the moisture dripping off my monitor.

You're in Costa Rica! Wow!

Thanks so much for these pictures.

In peace,

Radio_Lady in Oregon

[Radio_Lady]

6. More vipers! Snazzy shots, but not as good as yours, GM!

http://www.monteverdeinfo.com/jrscience_palm-viper-costa-rica-pictures.htm

[Gato Moteado]

10. ah, thanks......

....have you seen the photos i posted of the little red poison dart frogs on my property?

[GOPisEvil]

15. Great pictures!

How'd you have a deleted subthread in HERE?

[Gato Moteado]

17. i was wondering the same about the deleted sub-thread.....

....i never saw the post before it was deleted but was perplexed that anybody could have been trying to start trouble in a conversation like this.

[GOPisEvil]

18. Maybe it was a troll spammer.

[ForrestGump]

20. It was

Random, and nothing to do with the content of this thread. The mods seem to be deleting every post they made, presumably so that the disruptor can't sit back and giggle over what was a particularly pathetic attempt to mess around with DU.

And I thought I might join him/her in tombstonedness 'cos I used a naughtyword in describing him/her... :D

[GOPisEvil]

21. I've noticed quite a few deleted messages this morning.

That's how I came to figure out it was a troll.

You? A naughty word? :D

[ForrestGump]

24. He/she was pretty busy

Totally inane, too.

And they fully deserved me calling them a "goldurned varmint," if you ask me, and I apologize if that wording's a little strong for you this time of day.

[GOPisEvil]

25. I hope you tossed in a few "rackin' frackin's" in there, too.

Why are all the best curse words from Looney Toons? :D

[ForrestGump]

26. Be vewwy vewwy qwiet...

we'wre hunting fweepers. :D

[GOPisEvil]

27. It's always Twoll season!

:D

[flvegan]

16. snakes...in a muthafu...oh, nevermind. Great shots

though. Beautiful animal.

[Gato Moteado]

28. thanks....

...and, yeah, you wouldn't want some of these on a plane.

[graywarrior]

19. What a beauty!!!

[Gato Moteado]

29. yeah, and there are several other color morphs of this species....

...including bright yellow.

they are beautiful animals.

[Gato Moteado]

44. ah, i talked to a resident of the mountain today.......

....and he said he sees the bright yellow color morph fairly often.

i'll try to capture one on digital film if i can!

[YankeyMCC]

22. Beauty!

But obviously he hasn't been keeping up with his reading and doesn't know he's not supposed to be up at 4K Ft. :)

[Gato Moteado]

30. yeah, this is the second sighting i know of in the region....

....a friend of mine saw a dead young one on one of his hikes. i thought it's possible a bird of prey flew up into the mountain with it and accidentally dropped it. but the one i saw yesterday was a good sized adult and it was very alive. so maybe the book is wrong.

[greatauntoftriplets]

32. EEEKKKK!!! A snake!!!

Great photo, though.

[Gato Moteado]

40. come on down to cr

and you'll be hanging out with all kinds of reptiles in the jungle!

[bertha katzenengel]

34. Merde sainte!

:scared:

fantastic photos!

[Gato Moteado]

41. thanks!

nt

[RiffRandell]

35. That is so cool.

My son loved the pics too.

[Gato Moteado]

42. glad you enjoyed them......

....it was a rush to see one that up close in the wild.....believe me!

[Teenager]

38. He's a beaute.

I'm guessing he's also poisonous too, right? His eyes....

[Gato Moteado]

43. yeah, he's venemous for sure.......

....but not aggressive as far as i could tell.

[datasuspect]

45. that's a pretty motherfucker

nice pics

[Gato Moteado]

48. thanks

nt

[bigwillq]

46. Awesome pics!

:bounce: :hi:

[Gato Moteado]

49. thanks....

...and i didn't even have my good camera with me.

[sarge43]

47. Beautiful pictures

The water drops look like diamonds.

[Gato Moteado]

50. thanks....yeah it was raining while i was taking those photos....

....and that added to the challenge.