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Look For These Animals In Costa Rica

29 11:43:52

Look For These Animals In Costa Rica






     If you're only used to seeing exotic animals in zoos, then a vacation in Costa Rica will be a real treat! Its forests and mountains are stuffed with hundreds of species of animals and plants. Get your camera ready, and keep an eye out for some of the wondrous fauna living in this gorgeous nation. Here are a few animals to look for.

You might not want to run into the red-eyed tree frog without warning! You might get quite a scare. This creature is certainly unique; their bright red eyes bulge from their heads and search for crickets, flies, and moths to eat. The juveniles are usually brown in color, but as they mature they become incredibly vibrant; they have orange toes, blue and yellow stripes down their sides, and a body that becomes a brilliant green. While you might think that this amphibian would stick out like a sore thumb with all that color, red-eyed tree frogs are actually very well camouflaged in the rainforest. Unlike most vibrant frogs, the red-eyed amphibian is not poisonous.

Costa Rica is a land of volcanoes; they make fabulous and unique tourist attractions. Volcanoes provide the environment with a unique mix of minerals and soils, so the wildlife around the area is often quite unique. The volcano hummingbird lives in the mountains of Costa Rica; it has a lovely purple throat and green-brown upper body, while it's overall length is only a few inches. Like other members of their genus, the volcano hummingbird feeds on nectar; they like Salvia and Fuchsia plants, which are normally preferred by insects. If you get a glimpse of this shy and diminutive bird, make sure to snap a photo! You'll impress all the bird-watchers you know back home.

Is it a monkey? Is it a raccoon? if you don't really know, then it's just possible that you have seen the bushy-tailed olingo. This mammal is local to the forests of Central and upper South America, however, you can be forgiven for thinking that it has a passing resemblance to the scavengers that raid your garbage cans; it's a distant relative. The olingo is an arboreal animal, spending much of its life in trees. Totally covered in thick brown fur, it has shorter forelegs than hind legs and a slender body. The bushy-tailed olingo's face is short and round; it has large eyes, small ears, and a narrow snout. Olingos eat fruit, especially figs, and will sometimes drink nectar during dry seasons. Their diet and habits are similar to the well-known kinkajou, also a distant raccoon relative from the tropics.

And if you're not squeamish about insects, you'll simply have to take a picture of a Hercules beetle. The forbidding rhinoceros beetle is aptly named and is a native of Central America: it's believed to be the strongest animal on the planet, capable of carrying 850 times its own body weight! The Hercules beetle is also one of the largest beetles; in rare cases, males have reached nearly 7 inches in length. Females are considerably shorter and lack the huge pronged horns that make these beetles so distinct. Hercules beetle larvae spend two years growing up to 4.5 inches long; once they emerge from the pupae, the adults forage for fruit on the ground. Watch your step!