What I have learned speak spiders

I have learned to speak spiders over the years.

As a conservationist who works from the Peruvian Amazon rainforest, I spent years of my life in the jungle. I sleep more nights outdoors than I do inside, so I see spider monkeys almost every day. They come and shake me onto branches when I go on the jungle tracks. They mock me when I climb the trees with them. I am amazed while gliding, swinging and almost flying through the canopy, this incredible, big black cock – a fifth link founded – which she begins and hurled with experts through the shoals of the Amazon. Her cocks are always anchored on a branch that is whipped tightly the middle of the high security system of a spider monkey.

But I also got to know spider monkeys up close. The people in this region of the Amazon Essen Essen. So I had to count more often than I want to count, I had to save baby spiders from wooden fellers or gold mines who killed their mothers for food. These little creatures – these delightful orphans with obsidian eyes – are suddenly alone in the world. I often convince the hunters to bring myself with the orphan so that I can bring them to experts who can rehabilitate them. If you agree, I take you to my friend Magali Salinas, who runs the only renowned animal rehabilitation center in the region, Amazon Shelter, which specializes in resumption of orphaned and injured animals.

Such an experience that brought me into the world of spider monkeys took place in 2019 when I lived in an illegal gold mining camp. The miners shot the mother when she swung through the trees. The tiny baby had survived the fall. Since she had eaten her mother, she lived in the dust under the miner's hut and slept in the dark with the scared and sole chickens and dogs.

When I spoke Spider Monkey for the first time, she came out of the dark and immediately recognized the sound of her tribe. It is very similar what you would expect-a kind of stakkato “oo-ah-ah-eh-oh-oh-ochh!”

I whispered in the dark and she came straight out of the night and climbed my leg up. When she reached my neck, she rolled her cock around me, clung to me and hugged me when her life hung away. Like the touch of somewhat warm and safe, the answer to a need was more painful than hunger. I felt a buddy in my neck. I stroked her black fur.

She didn't let go that night. I brushed my teeth with her on my throat. I took my shirt around her. I came to bed and slept all night, the little monkey clung to me all the time. In the morning I woke up on my back, the monkey snoring quietly, several pellets of spider monkeys poop on my chest. That day she stayed there and refused to move. I did my work, wandered the paths and explored the forest alles with wild-eyed, black little little, which was on my shoulder. Whenever she was hungry or scared, I heard the gentle little staccato:

When I spoke back, she settled down and pressed her ear onto the skin of my neck.

Over the years, we have convinced many lumberjacks and gold minister to be saved by experts. As the founder and field director of Junglekeepers, a Peruvian nature conservation organization that protects over 100,000 acres, our reserve houses hundreds of spider monkeys – together with countless other types of reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals. Jaguars, Anakondas, Harpyadlers, howlers, ocelots – more animals than I can easily call – in these endangered forests.

But the incident I write about has recently taken place. And I don't ask you to believe me. But everyone who spends time in the wild knows – if you are out there, you will see things in the end.

In the past twenty years that have worked in rainforests around the world, I have had my share of mystifying moments with animals. I have learned why they can never argue with an elephant and everything about the emotional needs of huge office. I wrestled with the relentless power of the coils of an anaconda and opened on eye openings chopped by a mother. But what happened two weeks ago was clearly one of the most direct and most striking communication moments with a non -human that I have ever had.

It happened on a cool morning in February, deep in the Junglekeepers Reserve, on a tributary of the Amazon when we saw an adult spider mane drown.

That morning I traveled with a team of Junglekeepers Rangers, Director and Scientists. The river was brutal and fast. We could feel how the boat pushed it and bullyed when we ran downstream. Usually this river is a tiny upper tributary of the Amazon basin, a lazy artery that leads through an endless forest. But in the February culmination of the rainy season hikes the current hikes with forty feet, which a 30-foot boat can hurl by ninety degrees to break on the shore. Whole trees, a hundred meters long and as thick as a school bus, barrel downstream like ramp tracks.

It was cold when we started at dawn. We came down after visiting our remote ranger station. As I have mentioned, my organization protects over 100,000 acres of flawless Amazon forest land under poor threats from illegal logging, gold mining and an ever metastatic network of streets that have constricted Amazonia. This is the burning edge of the fight to save the wildest parts of the Amazon rainforest.

That morning I wore a rain jacket for warmth. Half sleeping, I was hardly noticed when Juan Julio Durand (whom we call JJ, an indigenous conservationist and one of the co -founders of the young people) were sitting on each other. He has the eyes of a man born in the Amazon. He showed on the other side of the river.

It was a spider monkey and she wasn't doing well.

For some reason, she had tried to cross the river in a particularly wide and dangerous section. Her little black hands paddled, her lips snapped after air when the current dragged her down.

JJ gave the boat driver a short command and we turned to her and quickly came in. There was little time to think.

“Paul, you should help her,” said JJ.

I looked at him. Really?

“Go quickly! They drowned! “

I brought the jacket, checked my bags, grabbed a paddle and dived in.

The rest is instinct. The power of the river was immediately and grabbed me in a current that reminds her of her mortality. The type of hydraulic wildness without joke, which can throttle and drown even the most experienced swimmers. So I didn't waste time.

It was fascinating how a few noises had such a profound influence on them. She understood. She knew I meant help. I assume it is like hearing your own language after weeks in a foreign country – it is instinctively correct.

She looked directly into my eyes and seemed to calm down and accept the help I offered. Then she clung to the paddle and allowed me to lift her out of the water. She was much more comfortable on her tail and hands, although she kept looking at me when I carried her to the edge of the river. There she scuffled the jungle and let me panting and amazed – and we had just spoken.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dky8aqmzckg

It usually doesn't work that way. Most of the time, the animals run from us how they should. We are the dominant force on the planet. The APEX predator. One way with the tendency to ruin it for everyone else. The two -legged people who always fight together and always destroy the balance for the four -legged, the wings and the flakes.

And yet there is such a magic in the cold, starry night in the light of the eyes of a coyot. There is a deep comfort in knowing that there are fish between the old rocks of the river. Some of us live for these large or small encounters. A colibri that continues at eye level to swle them away from his nest. Watch as Gecko's moths chasing a veranda light.

I was able to scratch the statistics and numbers. I was able to remind everyone with a loud and hectic voice that the Living Planet report of the WWF shows that we have lost 70% of the animal world on this planet in the past few decades. I could issue urgent warnings of the destruction of tropical forests, the fires in Amazonia and the relentless advance of the streets to the wilderness. After all, I see it every day. I could remind you that when we carve forests, dam flows and motorways through the wilderness, not only deletes landscapes – it deletes life. Whole worlds are lost for wild animals. Suffering is huge, individual and immeasurable.

But I won't. Not here.

Because if you read this, you already know.

You know how special you are. How much smarter, more emotional and networked than we give them recognition. You know how sacred a single tree can be. That the sensitive shell of a bird ice keeps the future of a forest. And when you really see the world through an ecological lens, you already understand: we are the protectors. The guards. The kinders. This is our job.

And the game will thrive, as it always has – as long as we don't destroy it. As long as we don't burn, hunt or drive these creatures to extend out. As long as we don't delete them from reality.

The truth between the trees is that all eyes speak the same language.

And if the animals could speak, they wouldn't ask for much. Perhaps only to remind us that they were here long before us – transport pollen, track seeds, form the ecosystems that we rely on for life.

And maybe, just maybe you would remind us that you need us more than ever on your side.