On a recent Thursday The Panama News paid a visit to Barro Colorado Island, which is maintained as a tropical forest research station by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institution. Because it was rainy season the ticks weren't too bad, and we lucked out by finishing our loop on one of the nature trails just before the rains came.

Above we have a coati mundi looking to bum a meal at the lab. When that wasn't forthcoming (one shouldn't feed the animals on Barro Colorado Island) the coati mundi dug into a nearby rotting log to feast on the termites.

Can you see the spider monkey in the above photograph?

These baskets, designed to catch whatever falls out of the forest canopy, are useful for many lines of biological inquiry, such as studies of how far seeds spread from their parent trees, what the birds, bats and monkeys are eating at a given time of the year, or how much of the forest foliage tends to be eaten by insects.

Because the island is maintained as a study center, many of the trees are labeled with their common and scientific names.

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