Amazing Animals in Costa Rica (By Lorelei)

Hi! This is Lorelei, and I'm going to tell you about the amazing animals we saw in Costa Rica! This is my first time out of the country, as well as being in a tropical rainforest. As soon as we got to the first bits of forest, I started seeing wildlife! Each of the animals we saw in Costa Rica are unique, and I'm going to tell you a bit about each of them! The chart below shows which animals we saw the most of, as well as where we saw them. As you can see, we saw a LOT of crabs. They were everywhere!

There were many "Animal Crossing" signs on the roads near the rainforests with pictures of exotic animals like armadillos, coatis and agoutis.

A few pictures of the animals we've seen:

These two snakes are Eyelash Pit Vipers. They get their name from the ridge of pointy scales on top of their eyes! The ones in the pictures are yellow and green, but these snakes can come in many different colors, including brown, grey, black, and even purple!

These are Red-Eyed tree frogs, one of the more well known species of frogs in Costa Rica. As you can see, they get their name from their large red eyes. These frogs are diurnal, and as their name suggests, spend most of their time in trees.  

 

This is a Strawberry poison dart frog, a tiny frog that is famous for being poisonous to the touch. They get their name from the way that the native people of central and south America would rub darts along these frog's backs, to aid them in hunting. We mostly saw these in La Fortuna and Monteverde, but there were a few in other parts of the country as well.

One of the most beautiful birds we saw on any of our hikes was the Ornate Hawk Eagle, which is a predator bird that feeds on other birds (like the Cooper's Hawks back home). According to our guide, this one is a female that has a nest nearby. People on the trail often see her perched atop a tree, looking for prey to feed to her chicks. 

Definitely the most iconic Costa Rican animal, the sloth was commonly featured in souvenir shops. Even though they are supposedly threatened, we saw many sloths hanging from the trees during out hikes. In Costa Rica, there are two types of sloths. Two toed sloths, and Three Toed Sloths. They get their name from the number of claws they have on their front feet. 

My dad's favorite, for sure, was the Coati. I think they look like weird long raccoons, but everyone's entitled to their opinions i guess. They acted like raccoons too, and came up to us asking for food, and scavenged around hotel. It probably didn't help that the hotel owners kept feeding them!

When we were driving we stopped to see the "crocodile river", which is a very unimaginative name. In all, we counted over nine crocodiles under the overpass, and one of them looked to be over eight feet long! I was definitely freaked out, and it didn't help that we were standing on a very narrow strip of sidewalk with semi-trucks barreling past us.

As I said in the beginning, crabs were by far the most common sight in Costa Rica. Out of the many different species we spotted, my favorite is the hermit Crab. The most I saw in one place was then we went to Cano island. There you could barely step on the beach without seeing ten of them scurry away. We found a few wild coconuts and so we cracked one open for the crabs. Within a minute, there were ten hermits on each one! 

 

Biggest insects on the trip. Cicadas in La Fortuna and massive cockroach-looking thing in Quepos. Both about three inches long!

 

I know that dogs aren't the most rare sighting, but this is Jack and he's one of my favorite animals I saw this trip. In our first hotel, he would sit by our table with us, like he was our dog. (I know he just wanted food, but he was SO cute) Don't tell my mom, but I tossed him a few pieces of ham. 

In the beginning of the trip, I thought I wasn't going to see monkeys! Well, you can see how wrong i was. Multiple mornings I woke up to them banging on the door and trying to unlock it so they could get in and steal all out stuff. This one was on the balcony doing just that, but ran away when dad came to the window.

Finally, the cave animals... These were by far the most creepy animals we saw on the entire trip. The spiders were everywhere, and each of them were over four inches in diameter. The crickets were even worse! Why would an animal need to have legs that are five times the length of their body?? The Scorpion Spider, the one in our guides hand at the end, was not that bad though. He kinda just minded his own business. I named him Bobby. (It fits, right?)

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed learning about some of the amazing animals we saw in Costa Rica. I know I did!