Back in 1979, I was looking for gibbons in Khao Yai National Park in Thailand. There in front of us, about 30 feet away, was a large tiger lying in the middle of the trail.
When I was a young boy growing up in New York, my mother, a German immigrant and housewife who loved animals, would frequently take me to the Bronx Zoo. On one of those early trips in the late 1950s, I saw an unusual animal that would heavily influence my career.
Russell A. Mittermeier with giant baobabs in the background in South West Madagascar in 1993. A baobab is a genus of tree and this stretch is known as the"Avenue of the Baobabs", and is found near the town of Morondava, Madagascar.Both of these esteemed gentlemen had mentioned the bizarre uakaris, but had only seen them as pets and food items in villages, and never in the wild.
Mission accomplished, another primate added to my list, and a foundation laid for future conservation efforts. We were a little cautious because this was tiger country, and we'd been told a tiger had mauled a girl a couple of months earlier and killed a ranger the year before. But that didn't stop us. We began our search early in the morning, and to our delight found a gibbon group very quickly. But a short while later we were stopped dead in our tracks.
That day, I achieved one of my lifetime goals – one that began in the ruins of Tikal so long ago—and I hope others are inspired to do the same. It's not necessary to become a primatologist to become a primate-watcher and see as many primates in the wild as possible.
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