Page 310 - The Rough Guide to Panama (Travel Guide)

308 CONTEXTS Wildlife
mottled brown wings, to the tiny delicate glasswing, whose translucent wings are
reminiscent of a stained-glass window. Most magnificent of all, is the iridescent blue
morpho, whose drunken zigzagged flight makes it particularly hard to photograph.
Ants can be found in abundance; tiny Isla Barro Colorado alone has 225 species.
Most distinctive are the packed highways of industrious leafcutter ants bearing
enormous segments of leaf to their vast underground complex, where they are pulped
to cultivate a “fungus garden”, which in turn feeds the ants. Also easy to spot is the
enormous black bullet ant; the size of a large grape and prevalent in low-lying forests,
it holds the dubious distinction of causing the world’s most painful insect sting.
Panama also possesses more than a thousand species of spider, a fair proportion of
which are poisonous though rarely lethal to humans. One such is the innocuous-
sounding wandering spider – until you realize its scientific name derives from the Greek
for “murderous” (phoneutes) – which is a hairy arachnid that stalks the forest floor at
night rather than ambushing prey in a web or lair. It is often mistaken for the stockier,
hairier and relatively harmless black tarantula; also a night-time predator, it can be seen
poking out of its lair, in a hollowed-out log or semi-submerged under leaf litter, during
the day. Worth avoiding is the female black widow spider; recognizable by the glossy
black abdomen and red hourglass mark on the underbelly, she has a potent venom with
which to inject her prey. The golden silk orb-weaving spider makes the largest web; a
magical sight on a sunlit morning in the rainforest, it really does glisten like gold thread.

Marine life
With coastlines on two oceans, Panama’s marine biodiversity is impressive, especially where
warm ocean currents and upwellings of cool nutrient-rich waters converge along the Pacific’s
Golfo de Chiriquí. Humpback whales calve in this area (July–Oct) and can also be sighted
off the Pearl Islands and the tip of the Azuero Peninsula. These 15m giants are exciting to
behold though whale watching in Panama is in its infancy. Earlier in the year (Feb–July),
you may be lucky enough to catch sight of the gargantuan but placid whale shark, the
world’s largest fish, as it moves submarine-like through the waters round Coiba.
Hammerhead and tiger sharks are occasionally spotted though white-tipped reef sharks are
more common. The distinctive black-and-white killer whales, or orcas – actually the world’s
largest dolphin – prey on younger and weaker marine mammals, but aren’t as widespread as
bottle-nosed dolphins. From October to December schools of diamond-shaped golden rays
glide like floating autumn leaves, occasionally leaping 2m into the air, as do more solitary
manta rays; boasting a colossal 6m wingspan, one weighs as much as a small car.
In general the Pacific coast boasts a greater number of large fish – blue and black marlin,
amberjack, wahoo, dorado and tuna, to name a few – while the coral reefs on the
Caribbean side, particularly around the archipelago of Bocas del Toro and parts of Guna
Yala, are populated with a greater variety of soft and hard corals. These feed and shelter
aquatic life from sinuous moray eels and spiky sea urchins to delicate sea horses and a
rainbow of dazzling fish. Iridescent parrot fish (30–50cm) are among the most distinctive,
named less for their technicolour coats than for their serrated parrot-like “beaks” that
gnaw algae and coral polyps off the reef. The ground coral is digested and excreted as sand
– up to an estimated 90kg per fish annually – a major factor in the formation of Panama’s
glorious white-sand beaches. The Caribbean’s other mammalian draw is the manatee, or
sea cow, an amiable elephantine herbivore with a paddle-like rudder and flabby fleshy
snout, found in the Humedales de San San Pond Sak in Bocas del Toro.
Five species of marine turtle lay their eggs on both Atlantic and Pacific shores,
roughly between March and October/November – timings depend on species and
location (see box, p.236). In the Caribbean, Bocas del Toro is the easiest place to visit
hawksbill, leatherback and, to a lesser extent, green turtle nesting sites while
loggerheads frequent the shallows. On the Pacific side, Isla de Cañas, off the Azuero
Peninsula, is renowned for the mass olive ridley nesting (May–Nov), though the other
species also deposit their eggs there in smaller numbers.

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