Description

Experience the magic of the rainforest at night! Boots on, headlamp and a guide leading, discover unusual creatures that remain awake and active during the night. A great opportunity to acquaint with amphibians, insects and other wonders of this hidden, tropical world. Nocturnal animals rely on very developed senses of hearing, sight, and smell to be armed against predators, and look for food in the dark. Depending on the species, some senses are highly developed compared to others. In this tour, you will be invited to fully use your senses and try to understand certain of their behaviors. You will even turn off lights at a certain point to get your eyes adapted to the dark and find the glow of both flora and fauna in total obscurity.Octopuses, owls, crocodiles, and cats all have an optimal night vision, which means they have special adaptations to see at night. However, not all the nocturnal animals have such a sight capacity to the darkness. Others rely on different developed senses to remain awake and active during the night, like the skunk that has excellent smell sense and a sharp hearing ability which is specially adapted to compensate its very poor vision. In the twilight and night hours, those who are not endowed with eyesight in the absence of light, use different interesting instinct technics to camouflage, find their way, mate, hunt and flee from predators. To roam in the dark more effectively, animals pick up and track scents better when lingered in the air at night. To locate prey, they also use their hearing sense as sometimes the latter flees over fallen leaves and twigs. In the animal kingdom, the evolved body and physical traits of other animals have unique features who enable them to make noise, use echolocation, smells and even bioluminescent to survive t the darkness. In this diverse and unique ecosystem, learn about anthropoids, reptiles and mammals’ sensory receptors and their role to find food at night, observe mushrooms glowing and learn interesting statistics of the forever-alive Osa Peninsula.The trails are located by a stream in the wetland rain forest, but also not too far from a breeding site, perfect for master hunters to rule the roost and snag their prey. Now, the big question, what will you see?
Animals are free in the wild, which means we can’t guaranty they’ll be exhibiting the day of your night walk. The moon affects the animals’ behaviors, you might have more chances to see animals during the new moon, but in revenge, you may have more chances to see them mating with the full moon. Seasons affect them as well, frogs are happy in the rain, cats want to hide, and snakes escape their flooding cave, so you must watch every step. That being said, no matter when you take the tour, you have big chances of seeing several types of spiders, frogs, and lizards, maybe one or two snakes, birds and may be a mammal. Tapirs, pumas, kinkajou, and opossum live in this forest. Tracks are often encountered, but you’ll need the luck to see these mammals as they’ll see you before you do and run away.