Animals in Costa Rica

A huge variety of wildlife is characteristic to Costa Rica, largely due to its topographic positioning between the South and the North American continents, its neotropical (often known as Neotropics in biology) climate, and last but not at all the least, its massive variety of habitation. In biological terminology, neutropics, refers to one of the primary ecozones in the world, limited not by temperature, but by flora and fauna. Costa Rica alone houses more than 500,000 species, representing almost 4% of the total species calculated worldwide, making Costa Rica become one of the countries having the most biodiversity in the world. Out of these 500,000 bio-species, some more than 300,000 species are insects.

Most remarkable among these are butterflies. It is estimated that almost 10% of world’s butterfly population is found in Costa Rica, who are known for their ability to camouflage, protecting them from predators.

One of the major sources of Costa Rica's biodiversity is due to the fact that the country, together with Panama, formed a bridge over-passing North and South America approximately 3 to 5 million years in the past. This bridge enabled the mixing of the highly different flora and fauna of these two continents resulting in this inexplicable variety in life.

One of the primary attractions of the Costa Rican forests is the three-toed sloth, and the rarely visible two-toed sloth. These are mammals of medium size, belonging to the families of Bradypodidae and Megalonychidae, order – Pilosa, Suborder – Folivora. They are omnivores and may eat small lizards, insects, carrion, though their diet primarily consists of leaves, tender shoots and buds. They have large, specialized and slow acting stomachs having multiple chambers which houses symbiotic bacteria helping in the breaking down of tough leaves. They have adapted themselves to an extraordinarily arboreal lifestyle and they have a lot of economic measures to save energy, since their process of metabolism is very slow.

For the families of monkeys found in the Costa Rican forests, they are collectively ranked as Platyrrhini parvorder, the ones with a flat nose, which consists of Aotidae, Atelidae, Cebidae and Pitheciidae. These monkeys are these days conjectured to have immigrated across the Atlantic to South America on a raft of vegetation, like those of pieces of mangrove, breaking off the African coast.

The Green Iguana, commonly known just as Iguana, is a kind of lizard that treads the Costa Rican forests. Its tall crest is made of a long scales, sickle in shape, which runs from neck to tail, which itself is very long (called the Gorrobo). It has a short head with outstanding eyes and big circular scales at an angle with the jaw. A large skin sac, or a dewlap, hangs from its throat. Usually ranging up to two meters, it is brownish or greenish in color with curvy dark bands along is body and tail. These Iguanas usually inhabit the low sloping wet forests and the edge areas, Pacilic and Caribbean slopes. This is endangered species and is in harmony with conservation practices.

The whale shark and the hammer head shark are two other attractions of the Costa Rican waters. While both of these are endangered, often referred to as endemic species, sometimes they might just grace the visitor by making themselves visible, but one should not be too ambitious of sharing the waters with these beautiful huge creatures. Cano Negro is just the place where you can find a shark slicing the marine water with its trendy fin.

Costa Rica houses almost 150 species of amphibians, including tree frogs which are known to spend their life above the forest floor, the poison-arrow frogs, which are available in a range vibrant color. There are more than 200 species of reptiles, that include

 the Ameiva. Basilisk, etc. the country is home to turtles (14 species inhabiting both marine and fresh water) and crocodiles.

In spite of it being very small in size, the bio diversity that one can encounter in Costa Rica is remarkable and can compete with any given country for the very same.