Brazil takes pioneering action — and a vaccine — to rewild howler monkeys mongabay.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from mongabay.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Rio de Janeiro’s Tijuca National Park has become a laboratory for the reintroduction of locally extinct species. A study shows that, of the 33 species of large and medium-sized mammals that used to occur in the park area, only 11 remain today.
May 14, 2021
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) Some have claimed she’s indulging a forbidden romance. More likely, loneliness compels her to seek company at Rio de Janeiro’s zoo.
Either way, a blue-and-yellow macaw that zookeepers named Juliet is believed to be the only wild bird of its kind left in the Brazilian city where the birds once flew far and wide.
Almost every morning for the last two decades, Juliet has appeared. She swoops onto the zoo enclosure where macaws are kept and, through its fence, engages in grooming behaviour that looks like conjugal canoodling.
Sometimes she just sits, relishing the presence of others. She is quieter – shier? more coy? – than her squawking chums.
Reintroduction to the Wild
Other macaws of her species could be reintroduced into the wild as part of a recent zoo project, allowing Juliet the opportunity to travel with friends and maybe find love. They re social birds, which means they don t want to live alone, whether in the wild or in captivity, says the author. They need company, said Guedes, who is also the project coordinator for a macaw testing project in urban areas. Juliet very likely feels alone and goes to the enclosure to chat and bond as a result.
Blue and Yellow Macaw
According to Marcelo Rheingantz, a scientist at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, the last sighting of a blue-and-yellow macaw flying free in Rio was in 1818 by an Austrian naturalist. (The Spix s macaws featured in the 2011 animation film Rio are endemic to a separate part of Brazil and may be extinct in the wild.)