In today’s post we are going to talk about a new project we started this month. In this new project we are looking for dusky titi monkeys (Plecturocebus ornatus) along the eastern limit of their distribution. As we had mention in several post and pages in this website, dusky titi monkeys (Plecturocebus ornatus) is an endemic primate mostly distributed in Meta department and a small part of Cundinamarca, around Medina town. However their distribution limits in the East are poorly known and seems to be delimited by Upia and Meta rivers.
So this new project is focused in surveys done on both sides of Upia and Meta rivers. We started by doing sampling in both sides of Upia river near to Villanueva and Barranca de Upia towns.
Why close to towns? Well when you start a new project in a new area, you start close to places where you can have accommodation and food accessible and in places where you have contacts that can give you access to forest fragments inside private lands. Thanks to our contacts with Stella Gutierrez and don Arturo Aguirre of La Bendición de San Miguel agroturistic farm, we are able to start looking for new additional points that give us a better idea where dusky titi monkeys can be found.
While looking for new places, rural roads passing close to forest fragments can be additional points to detect monkeys. This strategy can help you cover large extensions of area and help you to select possible areas with potential to answer your questions. A detailed study of maps from the potential area you are surveying is always a first step to do projects in which multiple sites are necessary.
Although I will prefer to start project involving multiple sites during dry season, our changing rain patterns make those decisions difficult and in areas with relatively short dry season, such as Orinoquia region, we usually start any time of the year. But why is better to start in dry season? Well multiple sites usually means less time in each site and if it rains too much you can loose lots of time due to rain and you field schedule suffer. Logistics become more complicated and costs increases.
Sometimes those are some considerations not always taken in account while planning a project that can make your fieldwork stressful if you are not flexible enough to understand that weather is not something you can control. Fortunately for us weather has been helpful and rain didn’t stop us to make our surveys.
We already done surveys in one side of the river and get some data, lets hope surveys in the other side give us even more interesting data to clarify the distribution limits of our endemic dusky titi monkey or Mono Zocay as they are know by locals in Spanish.
If you want to support our activities, please visit https://fineartamerica.com/art/xyomara+carretero or get in contact with as at xcarretero@gmail.com if you want to collaborate, donate or volunteer in our activities.
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Today’s post is a guest post by Jose Manuel Vásquez Rey, a senior highschool student from Villavicencio who has been observing one of the Colombian squirrel monkey’s groups living inside Villavicencio city.
Lately, I have been working with the diet of new world primates, specifically with the Colombian Squirrel Monkey -S. cassiquiarensis albigena- and you could be asking yourself, what is a 17-year-old researching about such a specific topic? Well, that is exactly what I’m going to explain in this entry.
Ecology has always been my passion, since the first grades of school the Colombian Llanos ecosystems caught my attention due to the multiple endemic species that could be found, as a consequence of how near this context is to me and how I can appreciate the fauna inside Villavicencio. That’s why in high school I decided to focus my graduation project on the squirrel monkey. Additionally, in the past few years the presence of them inside the urbanization increased (at least by sights) as a result of the lack of transition between the gallery forests and constructions; besides that, news about roadkills and electrocution in S. cassiquiarensis albigena were becoming more frequent.
What I just mentioned lead me to make an approach of historic researching in this specie, to understand how the exponential growth of Villavicencio in the last 30 years is affecting them, nevertheless studies about them in this city are really uncommon so the data is nonexisting and the interviews with citizens to collect it would not be enough, considering that people in urban areas does not focus too much on animals because of the constant hurry.
At that moment, I found myself with a really confusing path (taking into account that is my first time deepening in biological studies) and had to search for aid with Xyomara, who helped me to focus the project to something feasible, so on we decided to center the attention in a monkeys feeding point, knowing that giving banana to this specie is a really common activity between locals and tourists, and how this activity affects the behavior and patterns of diet on them, something that is actually leading me to obtain interesting results.
Now, I want to reflect about the observation, and I can assure you that it requires patience and dedication. The period of study in my case was approximately 2 months and a half, going there 2 hours daily between 4 to 5 days a week, so it was hard after school. At first, it was a challenge, differentiating monkeys and what they were eating and doing was kind of difficult. But with time, I improved my abilities and understand their behaviour, taking into account external factors (like sound, cars, dogs, etc.) and acknowledge patterns, as well as some specific traits to differentiate them (wounds, scars and lack of tail) and it was satisfactory to feel how they familiarized with my presence in a short period. This left me with multiple experiences that affected me deeper than just a school project. Seeing and providing help to a youth squirrel monkey that suffered electrocution led me to grasp the cables as a danger, by how they use them to move and hoe infants and juveniles bite them. Besides that, there were curious injuries in some monkeys, that seemed like infected tissue in the tail, this would be interesting to evaluate to know the cause and if it can impact the group as a whole.
In conclusion, after observation, Squirrel monkeys took a part of my heart and my concern, seeing how normalized people have to feed monkeys and treat them like an attraction has to be stopped knowing how their food -at least in my hours and location of sight- is in a big proportion banana, that is clearly don’t part of their diet and can potentially affect them.
Jose’s observations has highlighted the importance of observing monkeys inside cities to better understand threats faced by these populations inside urban areas that are not always so evident. Solutions to problems like feeding wildlife require behavioral changes that usually involve economic alternatives to people living around them and usually using them as a tourist attraction. As well as education campaigns in the surrounding areas.
On the other hand, reducing electrocution will involve coordination with electricity companies and environmental authorities that are more complex to achieve.
If you want to support our activities, please visit https://fineartamerica.com/art/xyomara+carretero or get in contact with as at xcarretero@gmail.com if you want to collaborate, donate or volunteer in our activities
© Copyright Disclaimer. All pictures used on this web page are protected with copyrights to Xyomara Carretero-Pinzón. If you want to use any of these pictures, please leave a message on the website. Thank you. This post have pictures from José Manuel Vasquez Rey, pictures only can be used with his permission.

As we mentioned before Zocay Project is doing new collaborations and reinforcing some of its field areas of study. As part of our new collaborations, we visit Zocay Land (Tierra del Zocay) a series of community owned sites that through nature tourism are trying to reduce deforestation and protect forest remnants where dusky titi monkeys (Plecturocebus ornatus) lives.
Despite of how deforested the whole area is, mainly because cattle ranching and agriculture, especially in the past decades, there are still some forest remnants close to Macarena mountain range. However, if deforestation rates continues as in the past two years it is possible that dusky titi monkeys can disappear despite their resilience and adaptation to live in secondary forest.
Zocay Land (Tierra del Zocay) is not only an alternative to wonderful people strongly hit by violence that are changing their ways of life but also an opportunity for the biodiversity in the region.
This region is particularly important because it is close to two National Parks, Tinigua and Serranía de la Macarena, which are the only two National Parks in which dusky titi monkeys can be found.
For me this visit was full of memories of my beginnings studying monkeys at Tinigua National Park and a gift because I was able to see spider monkeys (Ateles belzebuth) after a decade.

Walks were easy and we were fortunate to have sunny days all the time. There are beautiful cascades and rivers to see in the area (although we didn’t visit any cascades, we will try in our next visit). Forest in la Corcovada farm and Santo Domingo are in a good conservation state. Beautiful murals with monkey’s paintings and a delicious chocolate are found in la pielroja farm and comfortable loggings at Palmarum Lodge and la corcovada farm will give you incredible resting nights
So if you love nature tourism visit Zocay Land (Tierra del Zocay) and support local communities to protect dudky titi monkeys habitat for future generations: @cesarangeltrips, @finca.lapielroja, @palmarumlodge, @lacorcovada
If you want to support our activities, please visit https://fineartamerica.com/art/xyomara+carretero or get in contact with as at xcarretero@gmail.com if you want to collaborate, donate or volunteer in our activities
© Copyright Disclaimer. All pictures used on this web page are protected with copyrights to Xyomara Carretero-Pinzón. If you want to use any of these pictures, please leave a message on the website. Thank you. This post have pictures from Cesar Angel, please contact him to use his pictures.

In today’s post, we are going to talk about what you need when you are looking for new places and new topics of research? Unfortunately, this is something we not always learn during our studies at the university, but for those who want to dedicate their life to research it is necessary.
Over the past weeks we started our logistic arrangements to start new research topics and new field sites. This search implies a series of logistic tasks, searching for new funding opportunities as well as talks and readings about those new topics in which we want to expand our research and understanding of how primates survive in fragmented landscapes.
Although we still continue doing research, specially collecting demographic data on primate populations in San Martin and Villavicencio. We are expanding our sampling to cover new areas of importance for the endemic primates of Colombian Llanos.
In a country like Colombia, finding new places for research implies a careful search of places where monkeys are present, but also places where we can do research without social unrest and basic conditions for logging, transport and food.
New topics also implies careful reading of methodologies and research done on those topics, as well as talking with people who knows more about those topics than yourself.
Depending on the topics it also implies careful review of current and old maps. Contact local people to find out how to arrange for each field trip needs and to find better places to find what we are looking for. And looking for funding to cover those field trips. Sometimes when we do our undergrad thesis, all those previous steps are already done and we don’t appreciate what it implies to have all that logistics and funding done. So next time appreciate that effort and try to involve yourself on those previous steps
If you want to support our activities, please visit https://fineartamerica.com/art/xyomara+carretero or get in contact with as at xcarretero@gmail.com if you want to collaborate, donate or volunteer in our activities
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This May 22nd we celebrate the Biodiversity Day! As most of the environmental celebration days, these special days are to celebrate and raise awareness to a specific topic. Biodiversity or diversity of life is one of the most important topics currently due to the massive loss of species the world is looking at the moment.
In today’s post we are going to talk about how this year Project Zocay is celebrating this day. We are doing different activities not only during May but also in June to celebrate this special day.
Past May 20th we started our celebrations participating in an International Campaign to vaccinate domestic dogs in areas where wild cats (ocelots, jaguars, and cougars live) lives in close proximity with domestic dogs and humans in fragmented landscapes as the one in which Zocay Project works.
We also started a series of talks in Villavicencio, San Martín and Vista Hermosa where we are going to talk about primates, their importance and some of the threats they are facing to survive in fragmented areas.
Additionally, we continue with our monitoring of primate populations in San Martin are as well as Villanueva, Casanare in May, and June, respectively to continue learning how these fantastic creatures survive despite of all the human activities around them. We observed several giant ant eaters roaming in pastures near to natural lagoons, night monkeys resting in some hollow tree nests, squirrel monkeys in small forest and Mauritia swamps and some scarlet ibis resting in a solitary tree in the middle of the pasture.
In the following weeks, we also continue monitoring the squirrel monkeys living in small fragments inside Villavicencio city, facing challenges to survive in a cement jungle.
But how anyone can celebrate biodiversity every day, by taking care of our pets and not letting dogs and cats roam freely, so they cannot hunt birds, small mammals, and reptiles. Taking care of the use we give to the water we consume, planting flowers to feed bees and hummingbirds, reforesting bare areas as much as we can in places near to water sources, implementing sustainable practices in agriculture and cattle ranching if that is our main productive activity, reducing and recycling, and raising awareness through photography, painting and other artistic forms that can increase people knowledge of our biodiversity and its importance.
If you want to support our activities, please visit https://fineartamerica.com/art/xyomara+carretero or get in contact with as at xcarretero@gmail.com if you want to collaborate, donate or volunteer in our activities
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In recent weeks some people, locals from the study area, and colleagues had been asking what we do at Zocay Project. So, today’s post is about our activities and projects.
From the beginning the purpose of Zocay Project (Proyecto Zocay in Spanish) has been to monitor primate populations in forest fragments of different sizes, around San Martin town in Colombian Llanos. At the same time and during several years, with help from students and volunteers we also collected behavioral and ecological data focusing on mainly on movements, diet and individual relationships of four of the five species of primates found in the study area (see some of our findings and lessons learned in some or our past posts). Additionally, and in different years, we have support landowners initiatives of reforestation in fences and swamp areas with native species used by monkeys in the area. We have also make environmental education activities mainly with kids in farms and in San Martin town.
More recently, we initiated a camera trap project (in August of past year) to monitor wildlife use of natural and artificial water sources (see post from March 3rd, 2023 here). This project has helped us to also monitor the presence of feral dogs in the area and make possible our collaboration with Onca Foundation (a Colombian NGO) not only for this camera trap project but also a campaign of farm’s dog vaccinations that will be done in May 20th, as part of an international campaign with Onca Foundation and their partners as a prevention measure to reduce disease transmissions between domestic dogs and wild felids and canids.
In recent years we also expanded our activities and collaborations with local organizations in Cumaral town (Cumaral Biodiversa, Terra Viva Foundation and El Silencio farm) to study nocturnal monkey’s populations and nesting sites in this area. And Villavicencio city (William Barrios Fundation and SUSA research group from Universidad de los Llanos, a regional university) to study nocturnal and dusky titi monkeys in forest fragments in the urban and rural area of this city. In Villavicencio we also started a monitoring of squirrel monkeys groups living in remnant forest fragments inside the city, with help of citizen science and direct group counts.
We also had expanded our sampling to Villanueva town, limits of dusty titi monkey (zocay) in search of clarifications of their distribution area. We started monkey’s groups monitoring around this town with help of local people.
Finally, we are collaborating with the local environmental authority to support and participate in some activities coordinated by them in terms of environmental education in San Martin, with participation of the municipality, and fauna accidents in Villavicencio city.
So, although most of our focus and activities are concentrated in San Martin we had tried to include additional areas in the region that have the same monkey’s species and expand our collaborations. If you want to collaborate and/or participate and support our activities please contact us at xcarretero@gmail.com
If you want to support our activities, please visit https://fineartamerica.com/art/xyomara+carretero or get in contact with as at xcarretero@gmail.com if you want to collaborate, donate or volunteer in our activities
© Copyright Disclaimer. All pictures used on this web page are protected with copyrights to Xyomara Carretero-Pinzón. If you want to use any of these pictures, please leave a message on the website. Thank you.

In today’s post we are going to talk about the challenges and dangers of primates living in our cement jungles, i.e. cities. While growing up momkey’s babies and juveniles have different challenges and threats that they need to overcome and learn to identify in order to survive.
Monkeys explore those challenges in the same way they will do it if they were living in the forest. This means they will bite, lick and touch everything around them while exploring and learning from their moms what is good and what is not. In the forest this includes biting sticks, leaves and fruits while trying to learn what is tasty. In the city this can also means biting and licking metal surfaces, biting electrical cords, licking cement surfaces with or without toxic substances as well as the few trees, fruits, flowers and leaves in our gardens, parks and forest remnants.
How this affect them is poorly understood. For now we know that biting cords can be one of the causes of electrocution of young monkeys in some urban areas, as well as the bad conditions of these cord insulation. In addition in some areas electrical cords are also used to move between trees and buildings increasing their probability to electrocutions.
Crossing busy roads in cities is an additional challenge for monkeys in cities that is poorly mitigated despite of some studies showing monkey’s use of canopy bridges located in specific pathways. Presence of big trees is possible in cities along narrow roads that can make natural bridges for monkeys still possible. However many cities have policies that includes periodic trim and more common these days complete cut old trees, despite of their benefits to reduce temperature in cities.
An additional challenges is the presence of stray dogs roaming in the streets and sometimes hunting in packs that not always can be avoided. Baby monkeys and juveniles learn from their moms how to recognize those dogs as threats, however roadkill, electrocutions and sometimes mother’s death can make this learning more difficult.
We are trying to monitor those threats (dogs, electrocutions and roadkill) in Villavicencio city and San Martín town to find strategies that reduce those threats for monkey’s populations in urban areas. This threats are also present in rural areas however it seems its intensity is less strong. However more data is need it.
So if you live in the area or want to get involved plase contact us at xcarretero@gmail.com
If you want to support our activities, please visit https://fineartamerica.com/art/xyomara+carretero or get in contact with as at xcarretero@gmail.com if you want to collaborate, donate or volunteer in our activities
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In today’s post, we will like to talk about the impacts of feral dogs and cats. For the last two years we had been thinking on ways to assess the effects of feral dogs and cats on our study area’s biodiversity. Our anecdotal observations and farm workers reports over the past 5 years seems to highlight an increase of feral dogs in the area, also supported by some data of camera traps. However feral cats seems to be more difficult to register, at least on the main study area of Zocay Project in San Martín town.
In Villavicencio, feral cats effects on biodiversity seems to be more evident in some areas, such as urban parks. However street dogs affecting biodiversity seems to be more difficult to assess.
Feral dogs and cats had been reported to have a huge impact on small vertebrates mortalities near and within urban areas. Additionally to their impact as hunters, they are also reservoirs of disease that can be transmitted to wild carnivorous present in these fragmented areas. At Zocay Project area it is particularly important due to the presence of ocelots and other carnivorous that can get some disease from domestic dogs and cats.
One of the strategies that seems to start giving some results to assess feral dogs impacts seems to be camera traps as we had detected at least 5 different individuals of domestic dogs roaming in the core area of our study area. Although not hunting activity had been detected yet. However in past year we had local reports of a group of 4 dogs hunting goats in one of the farms in which Zocay Project is working.
Although we still have questions about feral dogs and cats effects on our study area, identification and detection of feral dogs and cats is a starting point to assess those impacts. Some interviews and assessment of vaccination status of domestic dogs and cat in neighboring farms can give us additional information to evaluate their effects and guide us on which management action can we suggest to landowners.
If you want to support our activities, please visit https://fineartamerica.com/art/xyomara+carretero or get in contact with as at xcarretero@gmail.com if you want to collaborate, donate or volunteer in our activities
© Copyright Disclaimer. All pictures used on this web page are protected with copyrights to Xyomara Carretero-Pinzón. If you want to use any of these pictures, please leave a message on the website. Thank you.

First, we apologies for posting this a bit later than usual, but as it is mentioned in the title fieldwork have some challenges and Zocay Project has not exceptions on this even after almost 19 years of visiting the same forest fragments and farms.
Depending on the focus of your fieldwork there are different challenges that comes with sampling in the field. When I started, those challenges include travelling to far remote areas, something that now is easier because Zocay Project study area is close to a town and public transport to that town runs daily, several times a day, which is a huge advantage when your presence is need it urgently. But what kind of things would require that you need to travel urgently to your field site…
Well, when your samplings require to put traps, like camera traps and the study site has flooded areas. This will mean that when rainy season start some streams, lagoons and swamp areas could be flooded in a matter of hours. These situations are common in Orinoquia and Amazon areas where certain areas of the forest are highly influenced by water level rises, that goes from a few centimeters to up to several meters (Amazon forests).
Other challenges include time to accommodate fieldwork and the rest of your job/ personal life. Although having a field site close to your home base can help, you also need flexibility in your job hours to be able to make quick trips to the field in case something happens or when that is not possible to be able to delegate those field activities to people you can trust to make the work in the same way you will do it. It is not always easy to delegate activities, especially if those activities can have a huge impact on the data you are collecting.
In science, we usually work with schedules and most of our field trips usually are planned ahead, however we cannot control weather and sometimes rains start before usual times and you need to be flexible to adjust to those climate patterns, especially now that rainy patterns are changing so much in unpredictable ways.
Other challenges include equipment damage because of humidity conditions on the field site or faulty equipment. Humidity is a big problem for most of the equipment we use and sometimes even if we carefully choose the brands and take care of equipment as much as possible, still can get wet inside. Therefore, is always useful to take some silica gel to put wet equipment inside a hermetic box or when you have difficulties to get it, some rice will also works to extract humidity, from cameras, GPS, binoculars and camera traps. It is also wise to check your equipment before going to the field to avoid taking faulty equipment to field sites.
However, even when you plan, check your equipment before going to the field or when you can delegate, it is sometimes difficult to face some of those challenges and it is up to us to maintain a flexible mind to face those challenges to do our sampling, even when it seems we don-t have the skills and tools to solve it.
If you want to support our activities, please visit https://fineartamerica.com/art/xyomara+carretero or get in contact with us at xcarretero@gmail.com if you want to collaborate, donate or volunteer in our activities
© Copyright Disclaimer. All pictures used on this web page are protected with copyrights to Xyomara Carretero-Pinzón. If you want to use any of these pictures, please leave a message on the website. Thank you.

In today’s post we are talking about camera trap surveys, some of the wonders and challenges of working with this incredible technology. Camera traps had made easier to witness some behaviors that otherwise will be so difficult to see, especially for species that are naturally shy. It also had made possible to discover new locations for some species that we though weren’t able to inhabit those areas.
Don’t get me wrong, I started doing behavior in the old way, with binoculars at hand and following monkeys all day long, and still enjoy that part. However, camera traps can help with animals of nocturnal habits that are difficult to follow or behaviors that are rare and not commonly seen.
It is surprising the number of behaviors that you can discover using camera traps, from giant ant eaters taking a bath or discovering that crab-eating racoons are more common that you thought in your study area. Or finding out that huron or grison are also found in small gallery forest fragments.
However, there is a lot of challenges, not only to find the right kind of camera trap to use, where to located it and make sure that the camera trap you choose is resistant to humidity, and even to battery explosions due to excess of heat!!!!
In tropical forest humidity is a big challenge that not always is easy to sort out, and sometimes in areas where you have high humidity at sometimes in the year while at other times you have high temperatures and very dry air, make difficult to choose the right kind of camera and not always you make the right decisions. Balancing cost of cameras and resistance to humidity and high temperatures is not easy and sometimes means a lot of trial and error.
If you want to support our activities, please visit https://fineartamerica.com/art/xyomara+carretero or get in contact with as at xcarretero@gmail.com if you want to collaborate, donate or volunteer in our activities
© Copyright Disclaimer. All pictures used on this web page are protected with copyrights to Xyomara Carretero-Pinzón. If you want to use any of these pictures, please leave a message on the website. Thank you.