Product Description

One hundred and fifty years ago, Charles Darwin asked how a rain forest could contain so many species: What explains the riot? The same question occupies the scientists who toil on Panamas Barro Colorado Island today. Tropical and steamy, these six square miles comprise the best-studied rain forest in the world, a locus of scientific activity since 1923. In THE TAPIR'S MORNING BATH, Elizabeth Royte weaves together her own adventures on Barro Colorado with tales of researchers struggling to parse the intricate workings of the rain forest, the most complicated natural system on the planet. Through the lens of the field station, she also traces the history of modern biology from its earliest days of collection and classification through the decline of the naturalist to the days of intense niche specialization and rigorous scientific quantification. As Royte counts seeds and sorts insects, collects monkey dung and radiotracks bats, she begins to wonder: what is the point of such arcane studies? The world over, rain forests are rapidly disappearing and species are going extinct. While humanizing the scientists in the field, she explores the tension between their research and the reality of a world that may not have time for the answers.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #912101 in Books
• Published on: 2001-08-29
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 328 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Royte, a contributing writer for Outside magazine who has also published in National Geographic, Harper's and Rolling Stone, spent a year with ecologists on Panama's Barro Colorado Island, after an earlier visit (for an article on famed biologist E.O. Wilson) sparked her curiosity about the research being conducted there. The result is this excellent book, a superb introduction to tropical ecology and theoretical biology, as well as original and thoroughly engaging travel writing. By hiring herself out as a research assistant at large, Royte gains intimacy with the professors and students at the island's research station and gradually gains acceptance into their world. She tracks a troop of spider monkeys with a woman whose research on their reproductive cycles holds the promise of being "quietly groundbreaking," spends nights in the tree canopy observing bats that build tents from leaves, and crouches on the forest floor to catalogue the social behavior of leaf-cutter ants. With humor, Royte describes the social hierarchies of the researchers and tourists who visit the island, in terms not dissimilar to those of the ecological studies the scientists themselves conduct. She wrestles with questions about the value of fieldwork amid mounting concerns worldwide about biodiversity and species extinction. This book illustrates how small breakthroughs do in fact occur, making the "mysterious and dim" tropical forest "just a tiny bit brighter." (Sept. 26) Forecast: While this title will be a must-read for professionals and armchair naturalists alike, Royte's winning combination of detail, expertise and engaging humor (along with an author tour) should draw in literate lay readers beyond the adventure set.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
While researching this book, Royte spent a year living and working intermittently with the ardent rainforest researchers on Barrow Colorado Island in the Panama Canal. A contributing writer to Outside magazine, Royte deftly describes these researchers and their work as well as the historical research done on the island and the history of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, which serves as a base camp for researchers on the island. Through stories about spider monkeys, tent-making bats, leaf-cutting ants, spiny rats, innumerable bugs, and even the movement of water in the ecosystem, Royte offers an excellent overview of the need for tropical research. She also discusses the decline of the generalist in the field of biology. Books like Marty Crump's In Search of the Golden Frog (LJ 5/15/00) and Margaret Lowman's Life in the Treetops (LJ 5/15/99) focus on the life-work of one particular scientist (Lowman includes a chapter on her own work on Barrow Colorado), while Royte combines the studies of many researchers, resulting in an introduction to the ecosystem. An excellent book for all libraries. Margaret Henderson, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Lib. and Archives, NY
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Kirkus Reviews
"Intriguing . . . a finely drawn chronicle of fieldwork, with an appealing moral edge."

Customer Reviews

journey of discovery
On the trail of the scientists who make the trails

A journalist follows researchers into the South American rain forest to study the mystery of their devotion

By Diana Muir

Deep in the tropical rain forest, a small fruit-eating bat carefully nicks the veins on the underside of a philodendron leaf, causing the edges to fold down like a miniature tent. The bat curls up under its little tent and goes to sleep. Other bats don't make tents, why do these?
In "The Tapir's Morning Bath," journalist Elizabeth Royte follows field biologists into the rain forest with a similar question: Other people, after all, do not feel compelled to sit up all night being bitten by mosquitoes, ticks, and chiggers. Why do these?

The Panama Canal is made up of a channel leading inland from each coast, joined by an immense manmade lake that covers what was once a rain forest. Numerous islands dot the lake. In the 1920s, a group of foresighted scientists managed to have the largest, Barro Colorado, with its nearly intact tropical forest, set aside as a scientific preserve.

In these pages, the present-day researchers of Barro Colorado spring vividly to life. Royte follows a young biologist from UC Berkeley, as the biologist follows a troop of spider monkeys.

Studying monkeys like this entails long days of trailing the agile little creatures as they skitter through the treetops, clambering easily from branch to branch. For an earth-bound researcher, keeping up with the troop entails scrambling up steep ravines, pushing through tangled undergrowth, and skidding down hillsides slick with rain. The early weeks are especially frustrating, as distrustful monkeys shy away from the interloper.

Royte, a New York journalist, is as much an interloper on the island as this scientist is among the troop of monkeys. The scientists, after all, have paid their dues to get here. They have spent years in graduate school, and they reach Barro Colorado only after their laboriously planned studies survive rigorous review to be selected for funding.

But Royte ingratiates herself by offering to help. On the island, these scientists work long hours, and conversation can be larded with arcane jargon incomprehensible to an outsider. She's willing to wade through this - and the muck of mangrove swamps - to hang insect traps on branches and sit on the forest floor counting the number of leaf-cutter ants that march past.

As they whiz across the lake in a Boston whaler, Royte is determined to pursue her subject at full throttle, even as the distinguished biologist perched in the bow tries to net moths without falling overboard. He shares his excitement about the natural world in all its magnificent complexity.

For instance, he tells her, urania moths migrate annually. Some years, however, only a few hundred appear. Other years, several hundred million moths fly past the island. No one knows where they come from or where they are bound. In Royte's retelling, scientific enthusiasm is infectious. Soon we, too, want to know what drives these winged nomads.

Readers will come away from "The Tapir's Bath" with an appreciation of the way narrow research questions become the material from which useful knowledge is constructed. But don't read it for that.

Read it for the thrill of the chase. Will the young researcher from Berkeley who has trudged the forest for three days without so much as a glimpse of a non-human primate ever locate her spider-monkey troop? Will the German biologist whose sophisticated equipment fails manage to contrive an impromptu method to measure the effect of leaf-cutting ants on the trees they harvest? And will the PhD candidate from the University of Michigan astound his professors by synthesizing a new theory to explain why biological diversity decreases with distance from the equator, or fulfill their expectations by failing even to discover why bats make tents?

And just why does a tapir take a morning bath?

• Diana Muir is the author of 'Bullough's Pond,' winner of the 2001 Massachusetts Book Award

An eye opener, entertaining and informative
Elizabeth Royte successfully outlines the mysteries of the tropical rainforest and the plenty of questions it still harbors. A layman who is overwhelmed by the abundance of species gets a glimpse of an understanding of biodiversity and its interdependencies. For me it was impressive how Royte narrows down that each living being is part of that big wonder called nature. Like in a waterfall she is coming down 3 levels from general questions raised by Charles Darwin and S.T.R.I. founder's spirit to the emphatically described individual projects of the scientists on BCI. By watching the scientists at their work in a first place she finally learns that she can not remain out of the loop, but is herself a part of the permanent cycle of life. I was lucky enough to visit BCI for a couple of days only, but immediately felt a deep affection and rememberance during reading. This great book has the potential to make researcher's work more transparent und thus more popular and at the end of the day to have people treating nature with more respect.

I loved it
I absolutely loved every page of this book. As a field biologist who's spent time in remote rainforest field stations, I can say that she very accurately portrays many of the ups, downs and quirks of station life. Not only that, but she gives very honest descriptions of many aspects that biologists aren't as open to acknowledge (like the competitiveness and one-upmanship in wildlife viewing).
The only down point in my opinion, is that many of the scientific names are misspelled, which detracts a bit of seriousness from other information she gives. Then again, I am one of those "peculiar" rainforest biologists, so maybe I take it too personally *grin*
I also very much enjoyed her views on conservation and scientific research. Once again, she presents things from a different angle, with refreshing honesty and bluntness that is often missing in books written by biologists.
I would not hesitate for a second to recommend this book!!