- Paul Rosolie is an American conservationist and author. His 2014 memoir, Mother of God, detailed his efforts to protect a tract of forest in Peru through his organization, Junglekeepers.
- In this commentary, Rosolie writes about a recent experience rescuing a spider monkey, which was struggling to stay afloat in a river.
- Rosolie describes the moment as one of profound communication. Through these encounters, he highlights the intelligence, emotion, and vulnerability of wildlife, urging us to recognize our role as stewards of the natural world before it is lost.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
I’ve learned to speak some spider monkey over the years.
As a conservationist working out of the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest, I’ve spent years of my life in the jungle. I sleep outdoors more nights than I do inside, so I see spider monkeys nearly every day. They come and shake branches at me when I walk the jungle trails. They taunt me when I climb the trees with them. I watch them with wonder as they glide, swing, and nearly fly through the canopy, that incredible, big black tail—a prehensile fifth limb—grasping and flinging them with expert ease through the overstory of the Amazon. Their tails are always anchored on a branch, lashed tight—the center of any spider monkey’s high-altitude security system.
But I’ve also gotten to know spider monkeys up close and personal. The people in this region of the Amazon eat monkeys. So, more times than I care to count, I’ve had to rescue baby spider monkeys from loggers or gold miners who killed their mothers for food. These little creatures—these adorable orphans with obsidian eyes—are suddenly alone in the world. Many times, I convince the hunters to let me take the orphan, so I can bring them to experts who can rehabilitate them. When they agree, I take them to my friend Magali Salinas, who runs the only reputable animal rehabilitation center in the region, Amazon Shelter, which specializes in rewilding orphaned and injured animals.
One such experience that drew me into the world of spider monkeys happened in 2019 when I was staying at an illegal gold miner’s camp. The miners had shot the mother as she swung through the trees. The tiny baby had survived the fall. Since they had eaten her mother, she’d been living in the dust beneath the miner’s hut, sleeping in the dark with the chickens and dogs, terrified and alone.
The first time I spoke spider monkey to her, she came out of the darkness, instantly recognizing the sound of her tribe. It’s a lot like what you’d expect—a kind of staccato “Oo-ah-ah-ah-oh-oh-Ochh!”
I whispered this into the darkness, and she came right out of the night and climbed up my leg. When she reached my neck, she curled her tail around me, clutched me tight, and hugged me like her life depended on it. Like the touch of something warm and safe was the answer to a need more painful than hunger. I felt a lump in my throat. I stroked her black fur.
That night, she wouldn’t let go. I brushed my teeth with her on my neck. I took my shirt off around her. I got into bed and slept the whole night, the little monkey clinging to me the entire time. In the morning, I woke on my back, the monkey snoring softly, several pellets of spider monkey poop on my chest. That day, she stayed perched there and refused to budge. I did my work, trekked the trails, and explored the forest—all with a wild-eyed, black little being lodged onto my shoulder. Whenever she was hungry or scared, I’d hear the soft little staccato: “Oo-oo-ah-ah-ah-achhhoo.”
When I spoke it back, she settled, pressing her ear to the skin of my neck.
Over the years, we’ve convinced many loggers and gold miners to let us take orphaned animals to be saved by professionals. As the founder and field director of Junglekeepers, a Peruvian conservation organization protecting over 100,000 acres, our reserve is home to hundreds of spider monkey families—along with countless other species of reptiles, amphibians, birds, and mammals. Jaguars, anacondas, harpy eagles, howlers, ocelots—more animals than I can easily name—inhabit these threatened forests.
But the incident I am writing about happened only recently. And I’m not asking you to believe me. But anyone who spends time in the wild knows—when you’re out there enough, you end up seeing things.
Over the last twenty years working in rainforests across the world, I’ve had my share of mystifying moments with animals. I’ve learned why you can never argue with an elephant and all about the emotional needs of giant anteaters. I’ve wrestled with the unrelenting power of an anaconda’s coils and received eye-opening hunting lessons from a mother cheetah. But what happened two weeks ago was unequivocally one of the most direct and striking moments of communication with a non-human being I have ever had.
It happened on a cool morning this February, deep within the Junglekeepers reserve, on a tributary of the Amazon, when we saw an adult spider monkey drowning.
That morning, I was traveling with a team of Junglekeepers rangers, directors, and scientists. The river was brutal and swift. We could feel it shove and bully the boat as we raced downstream. Normally, this river is a tiny upper tributary of the Amazon Basin, a lazy artery running through an endless forest. But in February—the height of the rainy season—the current churns with forty-foot whirlpools that can hurl a thirty-foot boat ninety degrees to shatter on the bank. Entire trees, a hundred feet long and as thick as a school bus, barrel downstream like battering rams.
It was cold when we started at dawn. We were coming down after visiting our most remote ranger station. As I mentioned, my organization protects over 100,000 acres of pristine Amazonian forest—land under dire threat from illegal logging, gold mining, and an ever-metastasizing network of roads lacerating Amazonia. This is the burning edge of the fight to save the wildest parts of the Amazon Rainforest.
That morning, I was wearing a rain jacket for warmth. Half-asleep, air pods in, I barely noticed when Juan Julio Durand (who we call JJ, an indigenous conservationist and one of the co-founders of Junglekeepers) sat up straight. He has the eyes of a guy who grew up native in the Amazon. He pointed out across the river.
It was a spider monkey, and she wasn’t doing well.
For some reason, she had tried to cross the river at an especially wide and perilous section. Her little black hands were paddling, her lips skyward, gasping for air as the current dragged her down.
JJ gave a quick command to the boat driver, and we turned toward her, coming in fast. There was little time to think.
“Paul, you should help her,” JJ said.
I looked at him. Really?
“Go quick! She’s drowning!”
I chucked the jacket, checked my pockets, grabbed a paddle, and dove in.
The rest is instinct. The river’s force was instant, gripping me in a current that reminds you of your mortality. The kind of no-joke hydraulic savagery that can throttle and drown even the most experienced swimmers. So I didn’t waste time.
It was fascinating how a few sounds had such a profound effect on her. She understood. She knew I meant help. I suppose it’s like hearing your own language after weeks in a foreign country—comforting, familiar, instinctively right.
She looked me straight in the eyes, seeming to calm and accept the help I was offering. Then she clung to the paddle, allowing me to lift her out of the water. She was far more comfortable hanging by her tail and hands, though she kept glancing back at me as I carried her to the river’s edge. There, she scampered off into the jungle, leaving me panting and amazed—however briefly, and however simply, we had communicated.
That’s not how it usually goes. Most of the time, animals run from us, as they should. We are the dominant force on the planet. The apex predator. The one species with the tendency to ruin it for everyone else. The two-leggeds who are always fighting with each other, always destroying the balance for the four-legged, the winged, and the finned.
And yet, there is such magic in the glow of a coyote’s eyes in the cold, starry night. There’s a deep comfort in knowing there are fish between the river’s ancient rocks. Some of us live for these encounters, large or small. A hummingbird stopping at eye level to scold you away from its nest. Watching geckos hunt moths in the glow of a porch light.
I could rattle off the statistics and figures. I could remind everyone, with a loud and frantic voice, that the WWF’s Living Planet Report shows we’ve lost 70% of the wildlife on this planet in the last several decades. I could issue urgent warnings about the destruction of tropical forests, the fires in Amazonia, and the relentless advance of roads into the wild. After all, I see it every day. I could remind you that when we bulldoze forests, dam rivers, and carve highways through the wilderness, it doesn’t just erase landscapes—it erases lives. Entire worlds are lost for wild animals. The suffering is vast, individual, and immeasurable.
But I won’t. Not here.
Because if you’re reading this, you already know.
You know how special they are. How much smarter, more emotional, and more connected than we give them credit for. You know how sacred a single tree can be. That the delicate shell of a bird’s egg holds the future of a forest. And that if you truly see the world through an ecological lens, then you already understand: we are the protectors. The guardians. The keepers. That’s our job.
And the wild will thrive, as it always has—as long as we don’t destroy it. As long as we don’t burn, hunt, or drive these creatures to extinction. As long as we don’t delete them from reality.
The truth between the trees is that all eyes speak the same language.
And if the animals could speak, they wouldn’t ask for much. Perhaps just to remind us that they were here long before we were—transporting pollen, ferrying seeds, shaping the ecosystems we depend on for life.
And maybe, just maybe, they’d remind us that now, more than ever, they need us on their side.
Hear Paul Rosolie interviewed on Mongabay’s podcast about the conservation successes of his Junglekeepers organization, listen here:
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This story first appeared on Mongabay
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