Considered one of the most beautiful birds in Mesoamerica, the resplendent quetzal, Pharomachrus mocinno, lives exclusively in the cloud forests of Central America. Anyone caught killing a quetzal was once given the death penalty, and its feathers were more valuable than gold. In ancient Mesoamerican culture the quetzal symbolized fertility, abundance, and life.
The male quetzal measures just over a foot in length, but its outermost tail feathers can trail as long as three feet. Their iridescent colors vary with the light - turning golden, blue, and emerald - in contrast to the quetzal's red breast.
The great curassow, Crax rubra, inhabits the untouched tropical rainforests and is the largest member of the Cracidae family in Mexico. The courtship of the curassow, who mate for life, is spectacular. The male preens himself and struts before the female, his body feathers puffed and his tail raised to show off his white under-feathers.
At the same time, he throws back his head to emit a deep-throated lowing that often startles first-time human observers.
Swinging from long arms and legs and a prehensile tail, spider monkeys, Ateles geoffroyi, are star acrobats high in the forest canopy. When frightened, they can swing from branch to branch as fast as a human can run. A troop is formed of many families, comprising from 10 to 40 monkeys.
Their complex communications system consists of vocalizations, facial expressions, body postures, and odors.
The spectacular blue morpho butterfly, Morpho peleides, flies through the forest, searching for places of contrasting sun and shade. The tops of its wings are a brilliant iridescent blue, but the undersides resemble foliage and provide perfect camouflage in the forest. Flying with slow wing beats, the brilliant blue top is only occasionally flashed.
As a result, predators find the butterfly difficult to track against the backdrop of leaves. When sleeping at night, blue morpho butterflies fold their wings tightly together, displaying only the foliage-colored undersides. In the dark, this makes them nearly invisible. Blue morpho butterflies feed on rotting fruit and fermented sap.
The jaguar, Panthera onca, hunter par excellence of the Mesoamerican jungles, is perhaps the animal that holds the most fascination for native peoples on this continent. The frequent appearance of the jaguar in pre-Hispanic art, the imitations of its roar and postures in the dances and rituals of many Indian peoples,
its presence in folk tales, and strong link to shamanism all denote the jaguar's importance as a totemic animal.
No one knows exactly why the toucan has such a large beak. Perhaps it is an adaptation for reaching fragile berries or tender shoots that would not otherwise support the bird's weight. Or perhaps it functions as an identification of its species and its mate. Although the toucan's beak looks heavy and seems to obstruct flight, it is actually very light, made of fine corneal scales with large air spaces in between.
Toucan's voice sounds rasping and somewhat metallic. One species of the Toucan family, the Collared Aracari, Pteroglossus torquatus, lives in the tropical lower regions of the El Triunfo Reserve, while the Emerald Toucanet, Aulacorhyncus prasinus, inhabits the rainforest.
The tapir, Tapirus bairdii, is the largest mammal in the tropical jungles of Mesoamerica. Despite its size, the tapir is astonishingly agile when moving through thick vegetation, as well as a strong swimmer and diver.
A relative of the equine and rhinoceros families, the tapir looks like a strange, short-legged horse with a long nose, which allows it to distinguish the aromas of the plants it eats from a distance. Because the tapir's totally vegetarian diet consists of leaves, shoots, fruits, flowers, and the bark of hundreds of different trees, the tapir is also a noted scatterer of many plant species.
The horned guan, Oreophasis derbianus, known by the striking coral-colored horn protruding from its forehead, is listed in danger of extinction. At present, it lives exclusively in the Sierra Madre forests of Chiapas and in Guatemala.
The horned guan's nest and eggs were unknown to science until 1982, when a nest of roots and epiphytic plants was first discovered. Surprisingly, the nest was found at a height of 85 feet and contained two white eggs, which classified the bird as a member of the Cracidae family.
The grison, Galictis vittata, is nocturnal and challenging to spot. A member of Mustelidae family, and relative of the weasel, the grison has a diet that consists mainly of small mammals, such as rodents, which it manages to catch by forcing itself inside its preys' burrows. The grison also eats small birds, their eggs, and large insects.
With webbed feet the grison is a strong swimmer and lives close to rivers, where it hunts alone or in pairs. Building its burrows in caves or hollow trees, grison usually breed a couple of offspring.
