Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

Capuchin monkeys have been monkey-napping baby howler monkeys

Monkey-Nappers! A Group of Capuchin Monkeys Caught on Camera With Abducted Baby Howler Monkeys

Observations of Coiba's tool-using immature capuchin monkeys show them carrying abducted infant howler monkeys. What is the reason for this behavior?

Spix's disk-winged bats inside their leaf tube

Listen Up! Hungry Bats Emit Food Calls to Family and Friends

Spix’s disc-winged bats shrieked when they were first shown mealworms, a new food for them. Were they alarmed, or were they communicating their excitement to their fellow bats?

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Indigenous Marine Scientist Studies Fish Feeding Evolution in Panama

Through advanced isotopic analyses, Rodnyel Arosemena seeks to understand how fish in the Caribbean and the Pacific that had a common ancestor take advantage of the resources of their different environments today.

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A Turtle Time Capsule: DNA Found in Ancient Shell

Paleontologists discover possible DNA remains in fossil turtle that lived 6 million years ago in Panama, where continents collide

Bat lands on a speaker to collect a baitfish reward

Does This Ring a Bell? Wild Bats Can Remember Sounds for Years

Researcher May Dixon discovered that frog-eating bats could recognize ringtones indicating a food reward up to four years later

Baby biodiversity in the ocean

'Python of the Sea' Study Highlights How Marine Biodiversity Can Be Dramatically Underestimated

Most ocean life remains to be discovered. Because fish and many other animals that live in the ocean often have larvae or other, microscopic life stages that drift freely in ocean water, counting species by genetic barcoding of plankton samples adds to counts of species recorded as adults and is a highly efficient way to understand what lives in the ocean and how biodiversity changes as we modify the ocean environment

El Coral beach fish trap in Saboga Island, Panama

See a New Interactive Map of Indigenous Fishing Practices Around the Pacific Rim

Dedicated to “the Ancestors who stewarded the ocean” an interactive story map created by the Pacific Sea Garden Collective reawakens traditional ways of harvesting food from the sea from Panama to Australia to the Pacific Northwest.

As part of her fieldwork, Fernandez habituated the bats to her presence near their day-roosts, obtaining observations of their natural behaviors and recording their vocalizations in a completely undisturbed environment during months. (Ana Endara)

Similar to Human Babies, This Bat Species Learns to Communicate Through Babbling and Vocal Imitation

Long-term monitoring of the bat species Saccopteryx bilineata in their natural setting revealed that pups display babbling behavior strikingly similar to that of human infants

Foster mother, BD, feeds her adopted vampire bat pup in a captive bat colony at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Gamboa, Panama (surveillance camera image from Gerry Carter lab)

Baby Vampire Bat Adopted by Mom's Best Friend

The strong relationship formed between two female adult vampire bats may have motivated one of the bats to adopt the other’s baby.

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