Costa Rica: Pura Vida - wildlife diversity documentary, Living Zoology film studio

there is a country in Central America which has almost reached the perfection in nature protection Costa Rica the national motto of people in Costa Rica is pura vida it means Pure Life and these two words represent a generally positive attitude to life and nature pura vida is a greeting and farewell pura vida is deeply incorporated in the lives of local people pura vida is everywhere in Costa Rica Pura Vida it is estimated that about 5% of all living organisms live here in 2018 almost one-third of Costa Rica's area was covered by national parks state reserves and private reserves there were 28 national parks which is fascinating because Costa Rica covers only two-thirds of the area of the Czech Republic we travel to this natural eden with the aim to film the amazing diversity of ecosystems and their animal inhabitants there are not many countries with such a positive attitude to the nature protection as Costa Rica the army is not existing here since 1949 and the legislation is full of nature friendly rules moreover the economics of Costa Rica is the strongest in the region and some people call it a Switzerland of Central America despite being a very small country Costa Rica has a vast area of beautiful coasts the Caribbean coast is only 212 kilometers long but the Pacific coast reaches the length of 1016 kilometers the place where the land and the sea meet are full of interesting opportunities for some animals for example the migrating waders use the beaches for feeding and resting before their long journey we are now on the Austrian all beach on the Pacific coast this place is famous is one of the most important nesting grounds of sea turtles in the world from August to December it is possible to observe here the arribada once or twice a month during arribada hundreds or thousands of olive ridley sea turtles come out of the sea and lay their eggs in the sand this individual is one of the last sea turtles from the latest arribada and we are lucky to see it on the beach during the day the turtles usually come out after the darkness for safety reasons females use all their energy to dig a hole and lay from 80 to a hundred eggs inside it she is surprisingly skillful when it comes to camouflaging of the nest when she is finished she returns back to the ocean from now she will be swimming in the water for a year or two and then she will return back to this place her own life has also started here the coastal forests and mangroves grow a little bit more far away from the beach this habitat can be inhabited only by animals which tolerate the changes in water salinity we can often meet here the dragons of Costa Rica the plumed basilisks and green iguanas these big lizards are always staying close to the water and they are ready to jump in it in case of an emergency a raccoon can be a possible threat for them raccoons are very adaptable omnivores if they don't succeed catching prey they are happy to eat for example fruit leftovers from tourists these small carnivores are very social and spend a lot of time with playing and resting with other individuals off their kind they belong to the most common mammals in Costa Rica in the northwestern part of Costa Rica the climate is drier unsuitable for tropical dry forests the vegetation is adapted to the heats and many species have dangerous thorns we can find your animals which don't live anywhere else in Costa Rica Santa Rosa National Park is a remote area of the wilderness and animals are very abundant here thus there is no shortage of rare sightings the canopy is not very dense here so we have a chance to see the monkeys these spider monkeys live their whole lives in the trees and they move like acrobats using their tail as a fifth limb apart from mammals this part is a heaven for reptiles many snakes live in the dry forests and some of them are active only during the rainy season the most common venomous snake in Costa Rica are the pit vipers they are usually perfectly camouflaged and wait and ambush for their prey coral snakes from the elapid family have a very different behavior their bright colors should act like a warning for other animals even though they are rarely much longer than one meter every predator will avoid attacking them because of their strong potent venom the most famous ecosystem of Costa Rica is the tropical lowland rainforest they are covering a big area on the Caribbean and also the Pacific part of the country thousands of species of organisms live here and some of them are confined to some level of the canopy many famous vertebrates can be found in the treetops of the forest giants the big scarlet macaws have almost disappeared from the nature of Costa Rica in the past the reasons were the habitat destruction and export for pet trade today we can see these giants among parrots only in a few places but thanks to the effective protection they are returning back and spreading again they use their powerful beak to open the toughest nuts and they are important seed dispersers the parrots share the canopy with four species of monkeys the biggest monkey Costa Rica is the mantled howler monkey howler monkeys are famous for their strong distinctive call which they use for the protection of their territory it can be heard from a distance of a few kilometers their diet consists mainly of leaves which they digest in their big stomach capuchin monkeys are not so picky they will even eat meat [Music] they are very social and it is common that they share the care of their offspring the young capuchin monkey grows in a loving society and has attention from every adult individual until the age of three months it stays close to adults but then it starts to explore the forest on its own the tight contact and grooming are ways how to make the bonds between the monkeys of the group stronger the second activity also helps these animals to get rid of parasites [Music] [Music] the rarest monkey species in Costa Rica is the common squirrel monkey these tiny clever monkeys are eating almost everything what they find in the branches today we can only find them in a few localities the life of another mammal from the canopy flows in a very different tempo than the life of the monkeys the speed of this animal is very very slow it is so slow that even the green algae grow on its fur the sloth spends most of its day by sleeping and digesting the vegetation which is not very rich in nutrients it is adapted to the life with one purpose save energy as much as possible the sloth defecates only once a week and it is probably the only reason why it goes down from the tree to the ground [Music] many birds like to sit on the top of the solitary giant trees chickens are one of the most famous Birds thanks to their colorful feathers and huge beaks they are related to woodpeckers there are about 600 resident bird species living in Costa Rica and many of them are important pollinators and seed dispersers this chicken uses its big but light B to pick up the fruits maybe it will eat the fruit which deceives and they will go through its guts without being damaged the bird will leave them on some other place in the forest when defecating but maybe it will eat just a part of the fruit and the leftovers will fall to the ground many metres below another animal will find it there such as the agouti this rodent is an important seed disperser of the forest trees these coatis are also trying to find some food on the forest floor they often move in a big family group and will eat various types of food from the fruits to small vertebrates it is quite easy to observe them in the forest because these members of the raccoon family are not very shy animals and they are common in Costa Rica we have seen just a few representatives of the whole biodiversity of the tropical rainforest hundreds of different vertebrae species and thousands of invertebrates live here some insects such as the leafcutter ants play an important role in the ecosystem spike being very tiny they are farmers growing fungi which they cultivate on a medium of the leaf tissue to do that they need to gather a high amount of the plant material the nature protection works in Costa Rica thanks to the existence of both areas protected by the country and private reserves we visited some places from the second category to learn more about the practical aspects of the conservation the local guide Esteban is speaking about the biological reserve called Kirin bina where he works Mina is located in La Villita Sara 50 which it's belong to a problem called our area I mean we're just about like 1 hour and 40 minutes away from San Jose the Capitals capital city of Costa Rica the place a wealthy Divina its biological reserve I mean besides being a hotel I mean it was previously just like research so they turn it into a hotel due to the request of so many people that visit here because they wanted to stay into a biological station and here they actually develop several tools that's a good way to get the funds to keep protecting the tropical rainforest and also to keep doing research and to do environmental education government is not actually like investing their money to protect the area so that in that case Philomena has to do its own kind of things another tool I'll say get the money to protect it so they receive donations they also practice and I'll say ecotourism which is really important to hear physical tourism so it's like basically allowing people to do and run tours inside of the forest they are only using the 10% of the property for this part and so they can get the money to keep protecting the forest do the research and practice an environmental education on the part that is environmental education it's really really interesting because we allowed kids from several schools around this area to come into that arena to do kind of like research which is part of their class so instead of having like you know classes with the closed classrooms they're coming in here okay so one of them a major projects of that even being especially research sports eats with butterflies Lepidoptera so we try to try to see how many different species of butterflies are falling through their research and for that reason this have been working with this for over two years so they wanted to know how abundant they Lepidoptera is until eternity so far the god is to identify over 1,000 of 300 each another good example of the nature conservation in the private land is located in the same Valley just behind a corner my name is Dave Lando my son and I are the orders of Dave and Dave Nature Park Saturday king Costa Rica's in the Northeast rainforest we've had it for 30 years when we purchased it it was a palm plantation there were a thousand hectares of palm in this area for 30 years they went bankrupt and then the bank we're selling small pieces so we purchased six hectares and we've changed the pause and Tatian have it just took all the palms down and then we reintroduce the same trees but native trees to this area over the years it's become more more more plants and keep bringing them in and we're now from almost zero species of birds in the plantation we now have over 230 species and increases increases that's what we've been doing we had an opportunity to help the environment and that's that's what we're doing okay my son came down and he's actually designed this for tourism it was a family project grows like well for the first twenty fourth Oh verse twenty four years now we're equal to earth and venue generating revenues to support our projects in our hummingbird area we have usually five or six species coming in once the forest was taxed flowers were back my son Dave designed an area where you can see them up close and there in their habitat it's actually a view often is melted some gloves of it and we'll have five or six different species coming in white neck jacket it breathes here so we have a lot of those we probably went from zero coming full degrees to throughout the year probably fifteen species coming through they migrate to different elevations they don't leave the country but they different insects different flowers and back down again so at any one time we'll have five or six species they're thriving throughout the property we've planted flowers for them and it's good is just a mattr make a decision to make it's possible for them to regenerate the population the hummingbirds have extremely fast metabolism so they must search for nectar almost constantly they thrive on places like this where they have enough food and then they become more habituated to people some original inhabitants of Costa Rica still live in the traditional way and they realize that it is important to protect the natural resources the forest plays a vital role in their lives [Music] ethnic Anthony was in that year first efficiency he discipline tea watches Perihan soup in today but a subsistence rather than being in otras 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casa en ambiental yes isus se Ament a un collect ow a sonnet REO pelo fer-de-lance orter Co pelo in Spanish is probably the most feared snake in Central America it can be more than 2 meters long it is very common and often comes close to the human settlements this snake has a reputation of an aggressive animal but it is obvious here that when handle calmly even the accounter with fer-de-lance can be a nice one we can even see its Long Fangs fer-de-lance has an important role in the ecosystem as a predator of rodents and prevents their populations from growing too large and destroying the crops another famous venomous snake in Costa Rica is the eyelash pit viper it lives on the trees and has incredible color variability the most striking is the yellow color morph these snakes sometimes sit on the Heliconius and other flowers and wait for birds which will come to drink the nectar the pit vipers are the most abundant group of venomous snakes in Central America and in Costa Rica they live in almost every ecosystem there are more than 130 snake species living in Costa Rica and most of them are not venomous the biggest snake diversity is in the tropical rainforests some non-venomous species are mimics of the venomous coral snakes and they try to avoid the predation in this way Boas are the biggest snakes of Costa Rica boa constrictor can grow up to more than 3 meters the forest is full of various species of amphibians the tiny poison frogs are famous for their poison which they have thanks to their food consisting mainly of ants they're active during the day so they're warning coloration is well visible the savages thin toad frog is big but there is an even bigger frog living in Costa Rica that cane toad for many people the most beautiful frogs of the country are the tree frogs these elegant beauties move efficiently in the canopy thanks to their adhesive disks on their fingers the redeye tree frog is the most photographed frog species in the world [Music] apart from frogs there are also interesting salamanders in the rainforest the tropical climbing salamanders don't have lungs and breathe just with their skin they don't live only on the ground but can climb to the canopy and even jump from one leaf to another in the higher altitude the tropical rainforests are replaced by the mountain cloud forests the weather is dramatically different in 3,000 meters above sea level the cold and humidity is not a problem for the birds many bird species are well adapted to the harsh conditions and they live only here we can find here a variety of groups from trojans and woodpeckers to hummingbirds and tanagers the Emerald to canet is interested in the wild avocado but it is not the main consumer of this fruit during the right season the resplendent Quetzal feeds almost exclusively on the wild avocados the Quetzal belongs to the most beautiful birds on the planet and in the past the Maya rulers use the feathers of the species to decorate their headdresses this is the biggest member of the trogon family only the males have the elongated tail feathers but many of them are not able to keep this beautiful trait in a good condition it is possible to observe the quetzals mostly in the morning and late afternoon when they feed on the fruits for the rest of the days they are hidden deep in the forest there is another ecosystem above the cloud forests only the toughest animals can survive on the top of the mountains there are still active volcanoes in Costa Rica it was near the summit of one of them irazu where we first observed the negative influence of the massive tourism to the animal behavior some species have lost their fear of humans they eat garbage and can even be aggressive in this case it is the Curia Scottie before the tourists were feeding the coatis and other animals but today it is prohibited in the whole country [Applause] there are even safely locked garbage bins on most of the problematic places [Applause] the problem of the massive tourism is highly visible in the most famous places like Manuel Antonio National Park this place doesn't look like a pure wilderness anymore is rather a fun park where the main attraction are animals the capuchin monkeys adapted well to the crowds and it is almost possible to touch them the raccoons are clever and steal fruit from people while they are swimming in the sea another big attraction are the crocodiles of the river Tarkas around the bridge above the river there are many shops and restaurants and the bridge itself is usually full of people [Applause] not everybody is respecting the rules so the crocodiles are being fed from time to time [Applause] it is very important to know that the ecotourism must be organized in a respectful way to nature to many people can easily break the fragile balance of the ecosystem we are back at the beach in Ostia Nall at the Pacific coast the last hired sea turtle returns to the ocean but she doesn't have an easy time here because of the American black vultures gathered around and they are trying to tear flesh from her body at the exposed parts this is a very natural situation which happens often and the turtle finally goes into the water without being severely injured but sadly her eggs are not safe there are stray dogs moving on the beach and they will look for the turtles nests they dig into the sand and eat every egg they find the vultures are able to join the feast thanks to them despite the situation the ostian all Beach belongs to the most secure nesting grounds of sea turtles in the world during the first three days of arribada people collect the eggs from the nests and they take them somewhere else because the later arriving turtles will destroy them the amount of clutches is so huge that some are simply left for stray dogs or pigs the story of this nest didn't end well but in general this place is a haven for sea turtles and every year thousands of fresh hatchlings go to the ocean from this Beach Costa Rica is an Eden for both animals and nature lovers in this documentary you saw just a fraction of the full diversity of ecosystems in this country the rainforest is full of life also after darkness and many organisms are just living hidden from our eyes a visit to Costa Rica is a must for anybody who sincerely loves nature and every living thing it is not surprising that most of the visitors returned regularly to this country there is no other way how to say goodbye to Costa Rica just water Evita [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Living Zoology

Views: 56,029

Keywords: animal, costa rica, living zoology, matej dolinay, pura vida, america, wildlife, wild, environment, protection, ecotourism, sea turtle, ostional, monkey, toucan, macaw, parrot, bird, mammal, coati, sloth, raccoon, snake, terciopelo, fer-de-lance, oropel, pit viper, boa, frog, amphibian, quetzal, santa rosa, sarapiqui, documentary, biodiversity, wildlife documentary, costarica, kostarika, fauna, vertebrate, tropical paradise, rainforest, travel, nature, animal planet, wild documentary, america travel, wildlife film

Id: YhNdOimxyeQ

Length: 46min 44sec (2804 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 07 2019