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Adventures in Wonderland

As a child, I dreamed of spending my life in the Amazon, chasing anacondas, giant armadillos, jaguars, bushmasters, and the like. Reptile books by Raymond Lee Ditmars and adventure stories by Frank Howard Buck kept me awake at night as I imagined myself exploring tropical rainforests. As I grew up, I spent every spare minute trying to find all the reptile and amphibian species around where I lived. In doing so, I developed search images for animals that would serve me well in a career that took me to tropical rainforests of Central and South America. Those of us who have had the opportunity to live with the animals we study know how lucky we have been.

During my academic career, I chased lizards across desert sands of the American Southwest, up and down trees in the old South, in Roman quarries of Menorca, across outcrops in the semiarid northeast of Brazil, and the trees and leaf litter of Central and South American tropical forests. I collaborated with many people and published research results in international scientific journals. But that is not what I write about here. Rather, I want to take you on one of my expeditions as more or less a voyeur—a set of eyes hidden in my shirt pocket—during which I not only chased amphibians and reptiles but also found myself immersed in a wonderland of unfamiliar culture.

We begin in Boa Vista, the capital of the Brazilian state Roraima. Roraima is bisected by the north–south Rio Branco. In the south, large tracts of lowland tropical forest blend with forests of Amazonas, whereas in the north, large expanses of savanna extend into Venezuela. This and a few other savannas are known as Amazon Savannas—open areas within the bounds of the Amazon rainforest. Just south of Boa Vista, one can stand in savanna with no trees in sight, except for what appears to be a low wall to the west. The wall is tropical forest, and the transition from savanna to forest is abrupt. Very few lizard species occur in both, making the area of significant interest to ecologists.

When my wife (Janalee Caldwell) and I arrived in Boa Vista in 1991, Celso Morato, a biologist working for the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia, met us and had made arrangements for us to stay in an old Catholic monastery located near the Rio Branco. We had a room with a southwest-facing outer wall, no furniture, and several sets of hammock hooks. After 15 days of exploring and collecting around Boa Vista, an opportunity to travel deep into a Yanomami reserve arose. At the time, one, especially a foreigner, could not simply enter the Indigenous reserves. Apparently, some of the Yanomamis in the Catrimani Reserve held the belief that illegal gold miners had decimated the fauna, making it difficult for the Yanomamis to hunt for food. The local director of FUNAI (National Indian Foundation of Brazil) had contacted Celso about doing a survey to see if reptiles and amphibians had declined in the area.

Of course, nothing is simple in Brazil. In addition to having FUNAI clearance, it was necessary to have the blessing of the local bishop. Our meeting with the bishop at his home in Boa Vista was surreal. First, the house was a mansion by local standards, and it was filled with beautiful furniture, rugs, and other treasures. It was like stepping into another dimension. Second, in his natural environment, the bishop seemed bigger than life, and in some respects, he was. After all, he controlled all missions in Roraima. The meeting went well, he approved of us, and we began making arrangements for the trip to the reserve. (As an aside, several years later we ran into the bishop in the Manaus airport and he appeared to be a very small man!)

We drove from Boa Vista to an east–west road north of Caracarai in southern Roraima. Sharing the Toyota with us was a nun with a Yanomami baby who had been in the hospital in Boa Vista. The road ended at a raging river. The bridge had been removed to protect the Yanomami reserve, which was on the other side. We loaded our equipment and supplies into a small boat and crossed the river, hanging on to a cable strung across it. On the other side, we were met in a pickup by Padre Guglielmo Damioli, a Macushi Indian, and a Yanomami chief. We would be traveling 100 km to Missão Catrimani. Although the road had originally been built as part of the Trans-Amazon Highway, it was a dirt road. Celso and I rode in the back of the pickup, on top of bags of rice, beans, and other supplies, with the two Indians who talked nonstop in Yanomami. As we traveled, several jaguars and mountain lions came up on the road and ran along behind the truck. At one point, a bridge that we had to cross was shaking so violently that it appeared unstable. A large log was caught on the bridge supports, and the raging high water pushing it caused it to vibrate. The Padre and the Macushi climbed down the lattice of the bridge supports to the log, carrying a chain saw, and sawed it so that the pieces would wash away. To us, it appeared extremely dangerous, but for the Padre, it was apparently routine.

About 70 km into the trip, we stopped at a small Yanomami village. Padre Guillermo had what appeared to us as an intense negotiation with one of the Yanomami men. Most of the Yanomamis in this village appeared sick and unhealthy. We learned later that the exchange was over malarial and other drugs, which were apparently in very short supply. One of the Yanomamis showed us an arrow that was about 6 ft long and weighed almost nothing. We asked where he got the arrow, and he led us down to a patch of reeds that were long, straight, and when dried, stiff. His bow was also long, straight, and extremely stiff, made from a black, dense tropical wood. When pulled back, the bow was extremely strong. We would learn later that they used several different tips on their arrows. One for monkeys was thin and straight, sharpened on both edges, and covered with some sort of toxin (probably a plant-derived toxin such as curare); one for fish had jagged edges; and one for warfare was large, flat, and sharpened on both edges. Arrow tips were mounted in split ends of arrows with a string wrapping holding them in place. Tips could be pulled straight out of the arrow’s tip, allowing for recovery of arrows. For example, a monkey hit with an arrow would knock the arrow away, but the tip would remain in it. The arrow would drop to the ground and be recovered by the Yanomami.

We continued on to the Missão Catrimani, a Catholic oasis in an ocean of forest. When we arrived at the mission, we were given a small room with a screen front. The next morning, we looked out from our hammocks to see our screened window filled with faces of Yanomamis peering in at us. To us, it was like going back in time 10,000 years, and I’m sure that to the Yanomamis, we were aliens from an unimagined future. The Yanomamis had golden-brown skin and jet-black straight hair. For decoration, both adult women and female children had three sticks through their lower lips, which they could move with their tongues. They were adorned with beaded necklaces and wristbands. Beaded bands worn on their upper arms were accented with leaves or flowers. Some women wore earrings constructed of leaves. Women wore only a scant waistband and carried babies in what appeared to be a caiman-derived leather strap across their shoulder. Some women had red pigment spread in two wide lines across either side of the face. The pigment is derived from crushed seeds of the urucum (Bixa orellana) plant. It was also smeared on the upper arms of some men and women. Urucum and other medicinal plants are used to treat many ailments, including fevers, muscular pains, and stomach aches.

We stayed two weeks, spending most of our time searching for reptiles and amphibians. Much of the time, we were followed around by Yanomamis. We had set up tables outside to process and preserve specimens and to photograph each species. An old and wrinkled Yanomami, naked except for the string holding his penis erect, would stand in front of the table where my wife was working, watching for hours. We never did figure out whether he was really interested in what we were doing or was just an exhibitionist.

One day during our second week, several teenaged kids came running and shouting about something. The Padre translated to us that there was a snake in a tree. When we got to the tree, we could not see a snake. However, high in the tree we could see a bird flailing around. As I climbed the tree, I still could see no snake. When I approached the bird, I realized that it was being held in the mouth of a 5-ft Green Vine Snake (Oxybelis fulgidus) that was nearly invisible against the leaves. I carefully grabbed the snake (they are somewhat venomous), and it dropped the bird. I wrestled the snake into a cloth bag while hanging on to the tree. I had not paid much attention to the bird, but when I got to the ground, I realized that the Yanomamis were not interested in the snake—they wanted the bird to eat!

Several days before leaving the mission, I had remembered reading about how some Indigenous peoples were tuned in to the animals and plants around them. We set up a makeshift exam to see what the Yanomamis knew about reptiles and amphibians. They claimed that their chief was the best naturalist, so he became our guinea pig. Because we had many preserved specimens, we set up a lab exam. At each station, we had a reptile or amphibian, and we asked a brief set of questions, such as what is it, is it dangerous, where does it live, what does it eat, and so on. We also placed several dupes to see if his answers were consistent. We relied on translation by the Padre from Yanomami to Portuguese and then Portuguese to English by Celso. We discovered that the chief believed that all snakes, lizards, and frogs were venomous; banded snakes were coral snakes; tadpoles had no relationship to frogs or toads; blindsnakes (smaller species) were the same as roundworms, and they entered your body if you sat on the forest floor; upon death, your soul would enter the body of an animal, and if you were a bad singer in life, you would become a toad; and finally, that the chief knew very little about reptiles and amphibians. Whether this reflects the group knowledge is anyone’s guess.

The day before leaving, Celso and I turned over several stacks of roofing that were lying around one of the buildings. The first thing I saw was a 3-ft Golden Tegu lizard (Tupinambis teguixin), which I put my foot on as it tried to escape. At the same time, Celso and I were trying to grab several small microteiid lizards. In the end, we collected an Ocellated Tegu (Cercosaura ocellata), six Underwood’s Spectacled Tegus (Gymnophthalmus underwoodi), and the Golden Tegu underneath the last piece of roofing. As Celso and I were grappling for lizards, I felt a breeze as my wife Jan jumped out of the way. Wondering what had caught her attention, I looked down to see a huge tarantula next to where she had been standing. Jan was so transfixed on the spider that she never saw the Golden Tegu, even though it had run right under her! Little Miss Muffet… .

By the time we left, we felt as though we had gained many new friends and maybe even connected with our own distant past as human beings. Children played games, chased each other around, and played jokes on each other, while adult men hunted and women tended simple gardens. The Yanomami were curious, observing with great interest as we collected and processed animals. They even collected some animals for us. What initially seemed otherworldly to us, impressed us more and more as time went on. The Yanomami, isolated for thousands of years, were surviving in a complex and often unforgiving tropical lowland forest in much the same way that our ancestors did. Their most important priorities (child care, hunting, agriculture, safety) appeared no different from ours. As they did in North America 400 years ago, political and economic pressures are forcing the Yanomamis to enter a complex modern world while fighting to keep the lands to which they and their ancestors had adapted.