Today we started our time on land! While most of the morning and early afternoon was spent traveling from Glovers Reef to inland Belize, this evening we got to hear a very interesting lecture and visit the Belize zoo after dark to see the nocturnal animals. (Side note: We learned today that the Dramamine we took for the forereef boat ride was actually just ginger pills, so that’s why it didn’t work at all, luckily I had real Dramamine for today.)

We heard about Scarlet Macaw’s nesting and habitat selection from a scientist named Dr. Boris. He focused a lot on the functional aspect of science (researching in order to conserve nature) which I found very exciting! Aside from a wealth of knowledge about the Scarlet Macaw, he also gave us a lot of good advice on being a researcher and the difficulties it sometimes presents.

Also, I figured out pretty quickly that you need to keep an eye on where your walking at night, as leaf cutter ants are nocturnal and we saw a few large lines of them hard at work right across our path! Snakes are also a good thing to keep an eye out for late at night.

After dark, we got to go on a night tour at the zoo! Here I was able to meet a Tapir named Indy (who loves carrots).

We also saw a lot of predatory cats which was super cool! Since it was night (and our guide Carlos had chicken livers) they were very active. We met a jaguar, that had been trained to roll over, as well as an ocelot, puma, and margay.

I also saw the first individual from my jungle taxonomic group today, a tiny brown moth I had no hope of identifying! I am looking forward to seeing more moths/butterflies over the next week that I will be able to identify (and I’m sure many I wont!).

– Ava