Transcript

2.20.25 · Smithsonian Magazine

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Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye, and to
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day I will be reading the Smithsonian Magazine dated January
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February twenty twenty five. As a reminder, Radio Eye is
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a reading service intended for people who are blind or
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have other disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material.
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Please join me now for the first article titled their
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Adorable and Endangered. Meet the World's smallest monkey, the pygmy Marmoset.
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The cute creatures are chatty, family oriented, and facing a
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shrinking habitat in the remote forests of Ecuador. By Jessica
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Camille Aguiree. It was after midnight in Quito when Stella
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de Latorea came for me, waiting under a street lamp
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next to the black minivan that would ferry us to
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the Amazon to see the smallest monkey in the world.
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I bundled in and we departed, driving through empty streets
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and pitted roads until the blackness around us began to soften.
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The world's smallest monkey is called the pygmy marmoset, and
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it is predictably very tiny, just a little scoop of fur.
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It likes to eat the sticky resin found in tree
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bark known as gum, and is therefore called a gum
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of ore. Captured pigmy marmosets can cling onto the finger
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of a person the way a kowala might hang on
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a tree. I had never seen one before, and the
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notion of a wee gum eating monkey seemed far fetched
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even improbable. Life finds its way, though, and pigmy marmosets
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have developed an elaborate survival system based on talking to
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each other constantly. They are unusually co operative. Infants are
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often borne in pears and nursed by their mothers, carried
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around by their fathers, and watched over by their siblings.
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They live in family groups of around half a dozen
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until the younger adults venture out to find a mate.
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Different groups have distinct dialects, with trills varying by length
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and frequency. As infants, pygmy marmosets babble the way human
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babies do, both to get their parents attention and to
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learn a group dialect. They don't often deign to eat fruit,
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but they do hunt insects, and as they forage, they
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chatter to each other through the trees. Delatore, an ecologist
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at the San Francisco University, in Quito, Ecuador, is arguably
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the world's pre eminent pygmy marmoset expert, and she has
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documented their method of communication. Their brief, high pitched alarm whistle,
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for example, sounds almost like a cricket or a bird,
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and is shriller than the staccato jacalls they use across distances,
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or the trills they use when in each other's proximity.
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Amid the constant roar of rainforest life. It's not easy
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to distinguish, but Delatore, a slip of a woman with
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radiant eyes, has developed exquisitely sensitive ears over a lifetime
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of study. She also helped reclassify the pygmy marmoset into
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two distinct species, the northern Cebuela pigmaea, scattered roughly across
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Ecuador and Columbia, from the Cibuela nivaiventris, mostly found in Peru, Ecuador,
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and Brazil. Within those ranges, pygmy marmosets only live in
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certain concentrated places, and this, along with the fact that
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each is no bigger than an apple, makes them difficult
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to find. Their habitats known as gallery forests border rivers
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in the Amazon Basin that are seasonally flooded, creating flora
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adapted to the constant washing inn of nutrients from river waters.
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Gallery forests proximity to water makes them attractive to people
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who want to build houses with yards that slope down
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to the river. This development, along with agriculture and the
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oil industry, has slow carved into the places where pygmy
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marmosets live. Over the past decade, Delatore has watched her
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research subjects disappear. At one of her study sites on
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the Tiputini River in Ecuadoros Yasuni National Park and Biosphere Reserve,
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near the Field Research Station of the San Francisco University
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of Quito. Delettore observed that of the seven pygmy marmoset
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groups she surveyed in twenty twelve, she could find only
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one group in the same area a decade later. Even
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the protections that preserve the park where Delatore works contain
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exceptions for oil companies and indigenous communities, and wildlife hunting
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is still rampant. In twenty seventeen, three of Delatore's pigmy
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marmoset groups disappeared mysteriously. From one day to the next.
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They simply vanished. Data on pygmy marmosets is not easy
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to come by, and Delatore told me their population size
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isn't known, nor is the extent of the great disappearance,
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she began to document before the COVID nineteen pandemic disrupted
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her field work. Although pygmy marmosets are on Ecuador's Red
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list of endangered species, there is some disagreement among primate
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specialists about what might be happening with their populations in
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other countries. Now, Delttore was heading out to check on
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the remaining monkeys in Ecuador. The car brought us down
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the mountains, where the rising sun traced verdant trees jutting
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at Susian angles, to a motorized canoe, which deposited us
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at a van that brought us to another boat, whipping
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down brown waters as herons flew ahead and swallows darted by.
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Every so often we would pass a cluster of yellow
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or white butterflies on the river banks, and they would
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flutter up together, twirling around each other like dazzling whirlwinds.
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Behind them, the forest rose up, dense and inscrutable, reticent
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to divulge its life. At dawn the next day, we
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made our way from the research station to a canoe.
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We took up river, where we docked and scrambled up
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a hill of mud. After we entered the forest, picking
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our way along a narrow path slicked with leaves and
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framed by fronds, we came upon a clearing and the thick,
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amber colored trunk of a tree that extended above the
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canopy and into the sky. Then we waited. Pigmies are lazy.
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Delttore says they liked to sleep. The sky was gray
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and rain pattered down through the leaves. Pigmy marmosets usually
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head to their feeding tree shortly after they rouse in
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the morning, and then they play in forage. They often
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have another burst of activity around dinner, shortly before sundown.
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Delettore told me that pygmies take longer to come out
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on rainy days, but she heard the babbling of an
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infant somewhere in the trees above us. We are in
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the right spot. Usually the first member of a group
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of marmosets to venture out is an adult male. Delettore listened,
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tracking as the pigmy marmosets made their way from their
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sleeping tree toward the amber trunk, which was pocked with
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their gouges and oozing clear resin. Since the pigmies are
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so very tiny and defenseless, they move quickly, scattering along
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the branches and ducking under leaves. It's quite possible to
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stand under a group of pigmies and never know they're there, unless,
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like Delatore, you can decipher their calls. The pigmies always
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come back to their feeding tree, though, pigmy marmosets use
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their teeth to gouge holes in trees that secrete gum
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or resin, not to be confused with sap, which runs
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through a tree's vascular system. The monkeys consume the starchy
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carbah hydrate rich stuff with their tongues. In this they
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are uncommon. Only a small number of the world's animals,
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including lemurs and tamarins, have similar gustatory proclivities. One strange
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thing about pygmy marmosets, till Littore has documented, is that
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their choice of tree doesn't seem to rely on the
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abundance of its resin. Each group of monkeys has trees
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it returns to every day, and almost none of them
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share the precise set of favorites. It might be that
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the gum preferences of a group of pygmy marmosets can't
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be explained by anything other than taste. The feeding tree
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was a Parkhia Balslev. Although the group had gouged little
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holes in a few other nearby parkias, this trunk was
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thicker than the rest, and its bark was rippled with
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the scars of their gouging. The pygmy marmosets were moving
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toward their feeding tree from the one where they had slept,
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pressed together a pie between the branches, A scampering adult
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pygmy marmoset barely leaves a trace in the leaves and vines.
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Delettore could tell that they were moving, but we couldn't
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see anything, and then joubled knots of vine under the canopy. Suddenly,
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among the leaves, I made out a little tail, fuzzy
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and curled into a hook. From around the curve of
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the tree came the first pigmy marmoset, skimming along the surface.
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Limbs and tails played against the trunk. Its head bobbed
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up and down, and it moved in quick jerks. Another
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marmoset scampered down a branch and stopped suddenly to look
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at us. It was so small and colored so indistinguishably
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from the tree that even sitting a few yards in
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front of us, it was easy to miss. It kept
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its body hunched, and its face was etched like miniature
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porcelain against the halo of fuzz that gathered at its neck.
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In Spanish, the pygmy marmoset is called lioncillo or little
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lion little a Putian lions whose wilde beasts are passing butterflies.
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Then they were there all at once. Now there was
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one on the tree, nuzzling the trunk as it licked
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up the jelly like resin. Now there was another scurrying
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down the side. Two juveniles darted across a branch, and
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the younger female began to hunt flying insects, moving in
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a slow crouch. The adult male is missing, said Ramiro
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san Miguel, our forest guide. It's raining, so he's still
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high up, maybe with the babies. After a few minutes
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we spotted him moving quickly up a skinny tree behind
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the amber one. He was tense, San Miguel observed, and
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he wasn't carrying infants. The marmoset made his way to
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the parquia and jumped onto it, jutting his face into
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the bark to eat. He was thirty feet up the trunk,
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much higher than the others had been. In general, pigmies
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try to stay out of sight of birds of prey.
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If he had left the infants somewhere, they would be nearby.
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The rain kept pattering down, and the pygmies began to
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call each other in a long chirrup. A few minutes
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later we found them again in the crook of a
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climbing branch that wrapped around a nearby vine covered tree.
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They were huddled together, at least five of them, their
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bitty heads clustered and their bodies pressing against each other.
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When the rain cleared and they dispersed into the tree
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canopy to hunt, a golden mantled tamarin monkey came ambling
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down to their feeding tree and ate some of the resin.
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Tamarins are smaller than a common house cat, but compared
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with the pygmy marmosets they looked imposing. Resin is not
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the tamarinds preferred food, but in the absence of other things,
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as during dry seasons, they'll make dew with what's available.
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The Tamarin's steel, Delettoree told us it's a problem. Delettore
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has a recurring dream of falling out of a canoe
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into the Amazon and being surrounded by black caymans alligators
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that can reach mythological proportions. In the dream, she is frightened.
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But when she was on an actual trip once and
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encountered a gargantuan anaconda in a lake where she and
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her sister were paddling, she insisted on swimming in the
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water so that she would not be afraid. She feeds
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neglected dogs and keeps bees, and gives stray cats a
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place in her home. When Delatore began her doctoral work
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in the mid nineteen nineties at the University of Wisconsin
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Madison under the renowned primatologist Charles Snowden, she thought she
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would study how tamarin habitats affect their vocalizations, but she
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soon switched to pygmy marmosets. Their smaller home ranges, often
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less than two point five acres, made it easier to
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collect data. Over the course of her field work, Delatore
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observed the way pygmy marmoset groups developed specific dialects that
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were learned by the infants, and that depended in part
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on the ambient noise of the surrounding forests. Scientists unaffiliated
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with Delatore recently used artificial intelligence to determine that marmosets,
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a larger cousin of pygmy marmosets, use vocal cues for
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each individual in a group, akin to calling each other
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by name. That proclivity for conversation is useful in such
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a species whose feeding habits depend on making collective use
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of a tree. Delatore told me that in her years
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of studying pygmy marmosets, she has never seen one display
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aggression toward another member of the group. They are very clever,
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and they are cute, and the sense that they have
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these very nice behaviors between each other, like grooming and playing.
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She said, they are more co operative than other primates,
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and I sometimes wonder if this extreme co operation is
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something that is not necessarily benefiting them in the current time.
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Largely defenseless and forests of potential predators, the monkeys occupy
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a dietary nish that makes them vulnerable to the incursion
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of oil companies and settlers on their riverside habitat Delettore
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told me that groups try to survive by eating the
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resin of less desirable trees and expanding their home ranges,
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but that they often can't outrun the encroachment. Once exposed.
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Living in fragmented forests close to humans, the monkeys can
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more easily come into contact with diseases, including human ones.
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Malaria could kill them, Delettore said, Denge probably covid as well.
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Yellow fever is known to kill them. Herpes is known
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to kill them. She suspected that a yellow fever outbreak
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might have been the culprit for the mysterious disappearance of
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her study groups. If we don't first of all, find
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out what is really going on with them, and then
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if we don't do things to preserve their habitats and
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to try to reduce our impact, I'm really scared that
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they will at some point be gone from here. After
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an interlude, two juveniles came prancing down the vines, hopping
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along to a light on the parkia. They began to
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chase each other, darting in and out among the leaves,
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quick as a passing shadow. Finally, the adult male made
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his way down to the elbow of a descending bough
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to survey us. His delicate cheekbones were high and widely set,
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although his face was barely bigger than a thumb print.
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As he kept wuide, some of the others darted along
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the amber trunk, and after some time he joined them.
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When they had finished, Delatore heard the golden mantled tamarins
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returning through the canopy. We watched as they appeared on
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the amber trunk one by one, catlike and resplendent in
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their orange coats. When the tamarins were done eating, one
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of them appeared in the tree where the pygmy marmosets
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had been playing. With its face pointed downward, it let
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out a disc. There was a stillness in the air.
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It took a moment to see just a few feet
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down the trunk one of the juvenile pigmies frozen and
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peering up at the tamarin's white and black face. They
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stared at each other. Then the tamarin departed, loping through
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the leaves. After a moment, the pygmy marmoset crept toward
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the spot where the tamarin had been, and we saw
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a few droplets of its urine pattered down into the undergrowth.
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There is no want of ostentatious life in the rainforest
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among the wide winged macaws alighting in the overstory and
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the militaristic millipedes clambering underfoot. But it is a strange
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thing to see a pigny marmoset. They're curious in the
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way of primates, and the younger ones especially can't seem
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to help but make inquiring overtures to interlopers, even as
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they dart up and down branches and poke their strawberry
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sized heads around the vines. They so perfectly match their
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surroundings that they can appear nearly like lumps on a branch.
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One very much gets the impression that they might prefer
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to not be seen at all. Philatore had heard that
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a group of pygmy marmosets she followed in the territory
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of the indigenous Secoya community had vanished, but that there
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might be other groups across the river. After driving through
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miles of palm plantations, we arrived at an area where
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the community had decided to try to preserve the forest.
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An old friend of De la Toes named Cesar Piaguahe
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picked us up in his canoe and took us to
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his house, where his family greeted us. Then we went
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out to a tree where a pigmy marmoset that Piaguah's
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daughter had kept as a pet established a family after
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he returned to the forest. It was once popular to
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make pigmy marmosets into pets, but they often die in captivity,
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and the Sokoya community recently did away with the practice.
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Juvenile pigmy marmosets liked to venture out to the edges
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of their family's home ranges, in part to explore, but
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also to try to find a mate and establish a
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new group. Families vary in size, but when the juveniles
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can't find mates, they stayed before behind. As more and
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more babies are born, the family group near Piaguay's house
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had reached fifteen members. Piaguahey led de Lattore to the tree,
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where she gathered data on the marmiset's preferences using a
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tool called a derometer, which measures hardness. Then Piaguaheye took
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her farther along through bamboo stands near the river banks.
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I think they could be here, he said, machete swaying
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through the brush. But what would they be eating. He
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stopped in front of a vine covered trunk. A few
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months ago, I saw them in this tree. After that,
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I never saw them again. It's worth checking once in
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a while because it is possible they could come back.
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Delettoree said, I could come in the mornings. Piaguaye said, nodding.
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The four or five trees that I measured aren't producing
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resin they are dry. Delettoree said this that the pygmy
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marmosets would have nothing to eat. Later, delettore and Piaguayey
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went together to check on spots along the river where
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people had reported seeing pigmy marmosets, but there was nothing conclusive.
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Aside from a group Piaguahey had found near his son's house,
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it wasn't clear where any other group might be found.
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Sitting in the shade of Piaguayes lodge, I asked him
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about the monkeys. He was proud they were there. His
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part of the community hadn't given in to palm oil planters,
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and his granddaughter belonged to a recently formed group of
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forest guardians who patrolled to stop settlers from other parts
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of the country from felling the forest to build housing
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compounds and plant palm. Piaguaye told me that, according to
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Soekoya mythology, in the beginning, the creator made a pair
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of beings who didn't want to have much to do
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with any one else. They weren't yet people. They weren't
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yet fully formed, and so the creator decided that these
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beings would be pygmy marmosets, living among themselves. Tiny and
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quick footed, the reticent pygmy marmosets could have the privacy
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they so cherished. When we returned to the amber colored
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Parkia tree, the pygmy marmosets were still talking. The male
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came back to the tree, slinging an infant on its back.
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The infant big enough to walk and eat resin, would
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soon be too large to be slept. From here to there.
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It babbled in the tree, making twittering exclamations interspersed with
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imitations of different adult calls. Eventually the family would move
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together to the tree, where they would sleep nestled together
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in their group of seven. We left the tree and
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traveled on crossing the fragmented forest, visiting places where phygmy
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marmosets had once lived in places where they still did.
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At the end of the week, I took the car
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back up to the highlands with delatory. As I headed
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toward the airport, passing glacial lakes and volcanoes, I was
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suddenly struck with awe at my fortune, at being one
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of the bizarre fruits life has borne along with the
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pygmy marmosets, and at having been a part of their conversation,
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however fleetingly next, Martin Van Buren created America's partisan political system.
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We're still recovering the eighth president of the United States,
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the so called Little Magician, saw political parties as the
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key to achieving power by Ted Shineman. When Martin Van
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Buren arrived in Washington to be sworn in as a
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senator in eighteen twenty one, he told a friend he
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planned to build up a party for himself. It was
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an odd time to be party mongering, and Van Buren
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an unlikely party bonger. Republican James Monroe had run unopposed
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in the eighteen twenty presidential election, and every politician in Washington,
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with varying degrees of enthusiasm, was calling himself a Republican,
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writes James N. Bradley. In Martin Van Buren America's first politician.
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A lively and illuminating new biography of our eighth president,
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the first to be born a U. S citizen absent
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a strong opposition party, Van Buren lamented that politicians were
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appealing less to ideals and more to personalities, and wished,
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as he put it in an eighteen twenty seven letter,
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to unite citizens through party principle rather than personal preference.
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Born in seventeen eighty two to a tavern keeping family
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in Kinderhook, New York, Van Buren had little schooling but
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made himself a lawyer, rising to the heights of power
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despite his lack of military experience or strong family ties
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to ensure patronage. At five foot six, he was considered
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notably short, and friends and foes called him the Little
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Magician for his outsized political talents. He proceeded swiftly from
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senator to Secretary of State, vice president, and president, and
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though he failed to win a second term, Bradley says
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he built and designed the party system that defined how
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politics was practiced and power wielded in the United States.
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We are living in the world van Buren created. In
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the first decades of the Republic, leaders had generally called
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themselves Federalists or Republicans, but few imagined that parties would
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be a permanent feature of the nation's political life. Bradley rights,
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they expected parties to disband once the Republic was more
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secure and its great issues settled. Van Buren plowed ahead
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with the thoroughly modern view that parties were not a
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regrettable necessity, but a revolutionary means of achieving and using power.
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With Andrew Jackson, he co founded the Democratic Party in
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eighteen twenty eight, canonly banking on Jackson's personal appeal to
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win that year's election. Van Buren became Jackson's vice president,
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and the Democrats dominated politics until eighteen sixty. He didn't
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think that politics should be a hobby for gentlemen to
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practice in their spare time. Bradley says a party had
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to have an organization, a structure, a personality, and it
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should be run by professionals. As early as eighteen nights eeeen,
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Van Buren had called slavery a moral evil, but he
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appeased its partisans frequently. There was a dark side to
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Van Buren's ascendancy, Bradley wrights. The Democratic Party became a
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vehicle for the expansion of slavery, the forced expulsion and
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dispossession of Native peoples from the eastern United States, and
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imperial conquest of the West. Indeed, Van Buren helped professionalize
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the use of race in different and effective ways as
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a wedge issue in elections and political debates. Bradley says
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these practices are still very prevalent today. The main difference
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Van Buren never could have conceived of a party system
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where big money plays such an enormous role. Still, Bradley says,
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in many ways, today's politicians are using Van Buren's playbook. Finally,
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asked Smith, nian you've got questions, We've got experts from
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Thomas Connor, Cincinnati. What kinds of creatures evolved into dinosaurs?
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The answer is from Matthew Krano, Curator of Dinosaurs, National
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Museum of Natural History. The first dinosaurs evolved alongside several
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other closely related reptile lineages that give us some idea
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of what the ancestors of dinosaurs were like. One form, Lagosuchus,
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was a small bipedal carnivore around three feet long. Silosaurids,
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long legged quadrupeds, were between three and ten feet long,
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with carnivorous and herbivorous forms. Remains of these early dinosaur relatives,
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including footprints, have been found around the world, indicating that
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they were widespread. Even so, there were only a small
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component of their ecosystems, which were dominated by larger non
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dinosaur reptiles such as phytosaurs, etosaurs, paphosaurs, and early relatives
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of crocodilian. This concludes readings from the Smithsonian Magazine for today.
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Your reader has been Rebecca Shore. Thank you for listening,
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and have a great day.