82 | february-march 2008
photograph by Beth Perkins
different question: “¿Dónde está el hotel de turista?”
There was no tourist hotel, but there was a rough
camp down by the river where visiting Indian traders
occasionally slept. They set up there, and Wright hired
a local hunter as a guide. But she still didn’t find any
monkeys. After two weeks, Wright was frustrated. She
had heard that familiar clicking sound near a canopy
of trees, but hadn’t managed to see the Aotus. Her guide
didn’t want to come back the next night, so she took
matters into her own hands. “I left James and Amanda at
camp and went off into the dark,” Wright recalls. “I was
following a tiny stream, trying to get back to this tree.
Then I got lost. I’m standing there in the pitch black, with
nothing but jaguars and fer-de-lance and bushmasters
for company, starting to panic, when I heard that familiar
clicking sound.”
She heard more than one. They were in the trees
around her. It was too dark to see, and she didn’t want to
chase them off with her flashlight, but she could tell by
the landing patterns of falling fruit that there were four
of them. She spent most of the night listening, always
on the edge of panic. Around 4 am, she heard a loud
shuffling headed her way. Wright knew wild bush pigs
were among the animals in the forest most likely to kill
you, so she scrambled up the nearest tree. It was a spiny
palm with long thorns that cut deep into her flesh. Then
the first drops of urine hit her face. In the tree above her,
very angry to have company, were two owl monkeys. “It
was my first sighting of Aotus in the wild, and they were
pissing on me. I’ve never been so happy.”
Wright spent six months following those four monkeys
and in 1978 published “Home Range Diet and Ranging
Patterns of Aotus” in the journal Folia Primatologica. By
then, she’d gone back for a PhD, studying at City College
of New York with her newfound mentor, Warren Kinzey.
Graduate school was the end of her marriage; James left
the first week. There was no money for babysitters, so
Wright on the grounds of her
house in New York.
5-year-old Amanda came to all of Wright’s classes.
Wright brought her daughter back to the Amazon and
did her doctoral dissertation at Peru’s Manu National Park—both the encyclopedias. There are those blessed with the ability to always ask the
earth’s most biodiverse site and one of the most remote national parks right question and those with the steadfast patience to work through
in the world. It was there that she began to answer the questions that the wrong ones. Every now and again, a researcher arrives on the scene
were raised after Flower was born, to uncover why the male Aotus with the knack for doing what was thought impossible. After her work
took on so much parenting. To avoid predation and food competition, with Aotus, doing the impossible became Wright’s calling card.
owl monkeys had become nocturnal. During the day, the fruit trees are
That’s why Elwyn Simons hired her out of graduate school. A senior
packed with monkeys—many of them significantly larger than Aotus. biologist at the Duke Primate Center, Simons is about as close to Indiana
There were also raptors in the sky, eagles and hawks that liked nothing Jones as evolutionary primatologists get. Besides being one of America’s
better than a primate snack. But being nocturnal means you have to premier explorers, according to many who know him, he is also a keen
deal with big cats. The energy required to manufacture milk, carry a judge of talent. “I could see her doggedness right away,” recalls Simons.
baby, and avoid a jaguar at the same time is considerable; because “Most people find ways of talking themselves out of doing things that
males didn’t have this combination of responsibilities, they took on the are difficult and uncomfortable—Pat displayed an unusual willingness
heavier workload of child rearing.
to go anywhere and do anything to achieve her goals.”
It had taken almost a decade, but Patricia Wright had started finding
Simons sent her to Borneo. The situation was somewhat familiar.
answers.
Wright was asked to track down the tarsier, another secretive
primate about which there was very little data. Of course, there
The best scientists develop reputations. Some are known for wild, were plenty of intriguing, unanswered questions. But again, Wright
intuitive leaps; others for being able to recall facts better than a dozen brought back the answers.