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Wildlife of Costa Rica

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Wildlife of Costa Rica

Costa Rica is in a unique position, as a land bridge between two continents. Although only 185 miles wide, it has 4 mountain ranges between its two coasts. These factors combine to give Costa Rica an amazing variety of wildlife. Much of it is hard for a casual tourist to see, but we did see lots of beautiful birds and unusual looking lizards. Here are a few of my favorite animals from Costa Rica.

There are four kinds of monkeys in Costa Rica.

• Small white-faced monkeys, who eat mainly insects.
• Howler monkeys, known for the amazingly loud noises they make.
• Spider monkeys, with long prehensile tails, who can leap up to 30 feet.
• Tiny squirrel monkeys, who live in bands of up to 30 strong.
  

Of course we didn't see a jaguar, but it's exciting just to know they are out there somewhere.

The only toucans we saw were in the zoo, but they are such incredibly colorful birds that we watched them with wonder.

Sloths have a wonderful nickname in Spanish. They are called osos perezosos which means "lazy bears." We amused ourselves calling each other oso perezoso. We caught a few glimpses of sloths in the rain forest.

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