Monkey Memoirs

The primatologist and naturalist Thomas Defler decided to make a home in the Colombian Amazon in a country known for drug trafficking and guerilla violence. He managed to survive and thrive there for 17 years, surrounded by pristine tropical rainforest, while somehow holding at bay the turmoil that converts Colombia into a difficult place to live a life. Surrounded by an untouched ecosystem, spending days at a time with many wild primate troops, as well as raising 25 free-ranging orphan monkeys with hopes that they might learn to be independent, kept Defler and his wife busy learning about this place for far longer than Richard Spruce and Henry Wallace Bates managed to survive in the same forest. Of course, he was determined to spend the rest of his life at his primitive research station. While the many obstacles of such a life (malaria, leishmaniosis, lousy food, a nearby gold strike, failing finances, loneliness, robbery, FARC guerillas, and drug traffickers) did not deter him from living his forest life, some of these obstacles finally became barriers for a continuation of his life´s dream.

The author lived a determined life he had prepared for with concentrated study, academic degrees, conservation activities, outdoor living in Colorado and Colombia, and an intense love for the natural world. He nurtured these elements that helped make it the climax of his life´s experience, to stand in the middle of a dense, primitive, and unstudied part of the Amazon rainforest and feel the intense joy of being a part of it all. This book describes the many primates that Defler studied and the orphan monkeys that came his way and grew up, themselves having learned again that the forest was for them, as well as the students that Sara and Tom hosted so they could live their own Amazonian experience. But he also describes the tragedies of trying to raise many orphan monkeys free while surrounded by an intact ecosystem containing all the natural predators: jaguar, puma, ocelot, margay cat, harpy eagle that naturally prey on the smaller mammals in that forest, and he describes the relationships that he and his wife shared with these small animals and how the two naturally learned to love and respect the monkeys as individuals. Then, too, he relates their encounters with some of the people who impinged on their lives. Some made their lives easier and enriched their experience. In contrast, others contributed to the difficulties that finally caused their exit from the forest.

Defler´s years in the Colombian Amazon were the most critical years of his life, and this book describes some of his experiences and why they were so important to him. He hopes to move others to an appreciation and love for this remarkable forest and the many animals that live there so that it will all survive.