Release of Tamandua

 During the release, she showed all the signs of the independent animal, with all the instincts intact.

 

 

As soon as she disattached herself from me immediately and immediately started looking for ants and termites. Even though we were watching her as quite as we could, she was very alert to any noise that was coming from us and going into the defensive pose

She smelled termites on a cahoon ..

she foraged on the pile of rotten cahoon leaves for some time, checking for termites

considered climbing on a tall and very thick tree..

smelled it, and rejected in favor of thinner trees full of vines and termites

This was the most important thing for us- to see that she would be going high up in the protection of the rainforest canopy, rather than foraging on the ground.

This is how high she climbed

close-up. She is foraging thru the foliage and debrie on the vines high above us.

i started drinking water and made some sound with the bottle that allerted her and she stopped moving, just froze high up on the tree

She was moving at very good pace- showing complete comfort in her new environment, while three of us were sitting on the ground in 3 different locations- that way without moving, at least one of us always had a view of her movement. Each of us had plenty of water and some food in the backpacks, because for the successful observation you must be absolutely quite for a number of hours, sitting on the ground and watching without making any noises.

 This is the type of environment that we picked for the release- big termites nests everywhere around with a lot of termite tunnels going up and down.

 

After 4 hours of observation, we realized that despite our best efforts, we make sounds by moving a little bit in our uncomfortable sitting positions, and any of those noises were scaring her.  Since she showed no signs of distress or panic, we felt comfortable to leave her and return to Caves Branch Lodge.
video taken during the release: Video