Baby monkey makes a big leap!
It was getting dark in Palo Verde, and I knew I didn't have much time to find more Bagheera spiders before the light became too dim to see. My main focus was on the Vachellia plant in front of me, although the dense cloud of mosquitoes kept growing and growing. It turns out that Palo Verde has one species of diurnal (day-dwelling) mosquito that bothers people all day, while another nocturnal (night-dwelling) mosquito comes out at night. I must've hit right at that transition, when both species were out in force.
Since I was trying to find spiders (and avoid ants) on the thorny shrub in front of me, I paid little attention to the sound of leaves and small twigs dropping, which occasionally signals the approach of monkeys. I also thought nothing of the gentle cooing that I heard in the trees overhead, thinking it was some sort of bird.
All of a sudden, I was surprised to hear what sounded like a baby crying, a sound so peculiar that it finally woke me from my spider-searching trance. I looked up to record a short video, in which a mother monkey had already crossed a gap in two trees over the road near where I stood, while the baby wasn't quite bold enough to make the jump on his (or her) own. As a result, it started whining and crying, sounding very much like a human, until it finally hopped up, grabbed the branches, and made it across. Mom sat there the whole time, patiently watching and waiting for her child, as any good human mother might do. While the whole encounter served as a remarkable demonstration of how similar humans are to other primates, I couldn't help but wonder if that monkey mother actually felt pride when her baby made such an achievement!
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