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Trying to decide which delicious Brazilian dishes to try first.
At the animal rehab center, we meet an anteater.
View from our hotel.
We toured the UNIDERP university campus.
A visit to grade school in the countryside.
Ricardo Soares, an expert on Pantanal birds, was one of our UNIDERP guides.
Dusy roads outside, but cool and comfortable inside our air conditioned van.
New friends. UNIDERP team helping us included a botany expert, bat expert, insect specialist, research station staff, tourism students and our driver.
On a truck safari, we see both the wildlife and the different types of vegetation in the Pantanal.
Even if we don’t see the animal, we’ll find tracks. This is a tapir.
A plaster mold makes a permanent record of tracks.
Brittany provides scale to demonstrate the size of a termite mound.
The strangler fig squeezes the life from other trees, then takes their place.
No sandals allowed! Poisonous coral snakes in Brazil have different banding pattern from US species.
Setting up mist nets, hoping to snare a bat. Leggings protect from snakes and other critters.
Checking the nets at half hour intervals. Looks like we’ve got one.
A beauty. It will be taken to the lab, weighed and documented, then released again.
Bat expert Larissa examines a bat, along with colleagues Marcelo and Cintia, while Dustin, Mike and Brittany watch.
They look alike, but Larissa shows how to tell the species apart. Only she handles the bats, since she’s had her rabies shots.
The lab also contains preserved specimens. Easy to see why bats are in the order of “Hand-Wings”, or Chiroptera.
A boat trip on the river provides a new view of the Pantanal.
Capybaras rest in the shade of the bank.
A caiman, cousin to the alligator, notes our passing.
This tiger heron thinks if it sits completely still, we can’t see it.
The varied aquatic plants are home to many species of insect.
A wood stork feeds in the shallows.
We’re going in there? But isn’t that a caiman?
Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to seine we go…
The fish are more abundant away from the vegetation.
One more species of fish, this one bright red.
OK, it’s really fun ­ the caimans are more scared of us than we are of them.
Back in the lab, the catch is identified with the help of a microscope.
Saddling up for a horseback safari. Mike looks like an old hand at this.
The horses don’t slow down when they get to the water.
We run into cattle, as well as wildlife, since this is a ranching area too.
The horses let us explore areas too shallow for the boats and too wet to go on foot.
Back at the corral, the hyacinth macaws have arrived for their evening snack of palm nuts.
The IPPAN research station sits in the midst of the wetlands.
In the afternoon tea-drinking circle, the tereré, everyone shares the day’s events.
Dustin learns the tereré rituals from José.
A dip in the pool feels good after a hot afternoon.
A barefoot pick-up soccer game with a group of Brazilians can be a real challenge.
In the evening, there are opportunities to listen or dance to the traditional Brazilian music.

Brazilian Wetlands

In May, 2005, Associate Professor Pam Moriearty took Tropical Ecology students Michael Early, Dustin Gordon and Brittany Ott to visit our partner university, UNIDERP, in Campo Grande, Brazil. The group spent almost a week in the Pantanal wetlands at UNIDERP’s research station there. <Click photo to view larger image>