Sunday, April 4, 2010

Margays

They look cute, but these small cats from the jungles of Central and South America are fiendish tricksters:

While making field observations at the Reserva Florestal Adolpho Ducke in Brazil, the researchers spotted a group of eight pied tamarin monkeys (Saguinus bicolor) which had settled down to feed at a fig tree. There was a margay close by, but rather than rush the primate group the cat made calls mimicking those of pied tamarin babies. The monkey which was on lookout duty did not know what to make of this. It climbed up and down the tree in an attempt to find out what was going on, making calls of its own to alert the other monkeys that something suspicious was going on. After a few minutes, the strange calls stopped, but about ten minutes later the remaining four tamarins scrambled to get away from their feeding spots. Coming towards them across a liana connected to the feeding tree was the margay, although by this time there was no chance of it catching one of the monkeys.

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