ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 
65 
of reptiles and mammals is past, and that the 
present is the age of man, insects and birds. 
Up to the present time we have recorded 
seventy species of mammals from Kartabo,f 
and yet it would be possible to spend a month 
in careful search and see only a small frac¬ 
tion of these. Many are nocturnal, almost all 
are dull-colored, and their senses of eye, ear 
and nostril are so keen that they are difficult 
to approach. An unusual number of mammals 
has been observed during the first month of 
our stay, owing perhaps to our absence for a 
year, as well as to the fact that many of the 
Indians have fallen victims to influenza and 
the remainder have done little hunting. 
Only a few days after our arrival a herd 
of about forty wild peccaries, the collared spe¬ 
cies, came down within a hundred feet of the 
laboratory, and rooted up fallen logs and 
jungle floor in search of grabs and tubers. Mr. 
Howes found a tree where a hacka was feeding 
on five successive days, and a pair of them on 
the sixth. When alarmed the hacka rushes 
down the trunk, paying no attention to the ob¬ 
server, no matter how close he may stand, and 
dashes off through the jungle. A few days ago 
a splendid black yaguarondi eat trotted past 
me, unhurried and in full view. I do not do 
any shooting within the quarter mile of area 
under close observation, and hence let him go 
unharmed. So again, when sitting on the old 
stelling, when an ocelot came and sat down on 
a rock—we looked at each other and went our 
ways in peace. Three times I have started deer 
near the trail, and at least half a dozen of the 
big rodent agoutis have scampered away from 
their feast of fallen fruit with the commotion 
of a whole drove' of animals. A jaguar has 
been about ever since our arrival. I found an 
aguti partly devoured, and the tracks of the 
big feline show him to be a full-grown animal. 
Every night three families of red howling 
monkeys roar across the river, and fresh-water 
dolphins come close to the shore at high tide 
and sigh as they exhale. Within our own area, 
there are at least two bands of howlers, two 
of cebus and one gang of beesa monkeys. 
Strangely enough we have not seen a single 
opossum this year, but they are here in num¬ 
bers and I occasionally hear them at night on 
the dining room table and running along the 
partitions of the bungalow. A tamandua ant- 
eater was found up a tree just back of the sta¬ 
tion and a great anteater eight feet in length, 
was killed a short time before we arrived. In 
j - Zoologica, Yol. Ill, No. 13. 
the stomach of the tamandua were two hundred 
thousand white ants or termites. Of- course it 
would be impossible to count all these insects: 
Our method is to take ten cubic centimeters, 
and divide it into ten equal parts. In each of 
these there is an average of one hundred and 
twenty white ants, and when this is divided into 
the accurately guaged mass of the remainder, 
the result of two hundred and three thousand 
insects is obtained. When we realize the ter¬ 
rible damage which these insects do to houses 
and furniture, it would seem the wise thing for 
tropical planters to encourage these long-tailed 
tamanduas as much as possible. With a flock 
of tamanduas to keep the termites down and a 
colony of giant marine toads to attend to leaf¬ 
cutting ants, much more success would attend 
tropical agriculture. 
In the pits dug for frogs we have recently 
taken a spiny rat, a rodent normal in appear¬ 
ance until we rub its fur the wrong way, when 
the hairs of the back feel like the spines of a 
porcupine. We keep as pets the beautiful little 
brown and white mice which come to glean 
from our crumbs after dinner. Bats are abun¬ 
dant, and we have captured forty-three of the 
dusky blunt-nosed species in the bungalow, 
only six of which are males. Two other species 
have been shot, one new to us, and vampires fly 
around the tents every night, although no one 
has been bitten. My Indian hunter lias brought 
in agutis, a wild pig and many monkeys for 
food, and a beautiful twenty-six pound margay 
cat. The arboreal character of this animal is 
shown by its food, it having fed upon a Cebus 
monkey, while the skin of the stomach was 
punctured in several places by spines of the 
tree porcupine. 
Thus during the month of March, without 
any especial search, in the course of tramps for 
materials dealing with special problems, we 
have seen twenty species of mammals, with a 
conservative estimate of one hundred and fifty 
individuals, divided as follows: 
Individuals 
Fresh-water Dolphin ... Inia sp. 2 
Great Anteater ....... Myrmecophaga t. 
tridactyla 1 
Collared Peccary ...... Tayassu p e car i 
beebei 40 
Gray Deer ............ Nazama nemori- 
vaga 2 
Agouti ................ Dasyprocta aguti 
flavescens 10 
House Mouse .......... Oecomys guianae 2 
Jaguar ................ Panther a onca 1 
Yaguarondi .... Herpailurus yag¬ 
uarondi uni¬ 
color 1 
