God helps those who do the night shift

The curiosity of the night monkey in a small forest fragment in Maranhão. Photo: Adriano Gambarini

Adriano Gambarini
“Gamba, I heard an Aotus yesterday!”
I was on my back when I heard this phrase, which echoed in my ears with the emotion of someone discovering the map of a mythical treasure. It was Benhur, a biologist friend who was on an expedition with me in a forgotten place between Maranhão and Piauí states, in Northeastern Brazil.
— Will you take me there? My response was immediate.
— Gamba, it’s eight o’clock in the evening! And I didn’t see the animal. I only heard it yesterday in a thicket of forest about 400 km from here! The chance of finding it is almost zero!
— Come on, Benhur, it’s an Aotus!
Needless to say, I convinced him to leave where we were at the time, travel that far, go into the bush and look for a small, skittish monkey. And if everything went well, still return the same night to continue the expedition’s work! Not to mention that we were in Maranhão, where the quality of the roads is similar to the accountability of some politicians who live there.
Aotus is the scientific name of the genus that encompasses some little-studied species of the night monkey, the only Brazilian primate with nocturnal habits. It lives alone or in small groups, and the difficulty in finding it is precisely because it is very shy and… nocturnal! But off we went.
Halfway through the trip, it started to rain. We looked at each other, without saying anything, but already thinking that it would be a bad trip. At some point we stopped to fill up with gas when suddenly a policeman approached us.
— Good evening, we need to request your vehicle!
— What? I asked that uniformed figure, looking like a sensationalist news character.
— We were in pursuit of a motorcyclist who ran over a pregnant woman, when on returning with the miscreant to the police station, our vehicle broke down. We ask that you lend us the truck to drive him for investigations.
That dialogue was so surreal that it couldn’t be a lie. We went to the location of said broken car (an old VW station wagon) and there was another policeman with said-who. We ended up borrowing the truck. Knowing that Aotus would be part of my dream as a photographer with a foot in environmentalism and that, deep down, I really wanted to see that monkey! I sat on the curb in the middle of the night in Maranhão, alone, while Benhur gave the police and the criminal a ride. In the following days, we returned to our biological and photographic activities on the expedition, in different places, on the banks of the Parnaíba River.
A week later I encountered Benhur again in the only cafeteria in another small village.
— So, Benhur, shall we go find Aotus? I took a chance…
— Seriously, Gamba? You’re kidding, right?
— Well, why not? We are only 450 km from the bush. You’ll remember where it was, I’m sure! And look on the bright side, it’s only 7 pm now. With luck, we travel, find the animal, take some pictures and come back happy! With no other miscreants to stand in our way!
I think I described that undertaking so simply, that off we went and here’s the photo to prove it. A peaceful animal, with a unique docility in its eyes. How was the encounter with the monkey? Simple. We entered the bush in silence until we heard his vocalization. We found it quite easily, as it was a small forest fragment. I wondered how he survived there with so few resources. I observed more than I photographed. I noticed in his gaze a reciprocal curiosity, the kind you need little to understand. After all, plotting stories only depends on how far our curiosity for life can take us.