Among reptiles, snakes are the most adaptive group and there are an estimated 2,900 species in the world. In Costa Rica, there are 139 species of snakes, representing 60% of the reptiles of the country. 22 species are venomous and the remaining 117 species are non-venomous. Snakes are found in almost all regions of Costa Rica, including the low lands, volcanic slopes, and even as high as 9,000 fee...

Source: Wikimedia Commons Warning signs along the Tarcoles River near the Central Pacific coast of Costa Rica will soon advice residents and tourists about the presence of potentially dangerous caimans.   The warning signs specifically prohibit feeding the reptiles, which many people see as an act of good faith, but is in fact a danger to humans. In a recent interview with Radio Col...

  Source: Sea Shepherd The history of Paul Watson and Costa Rica began a new chapter this month, but this time there are no INTERPOL notices or outstanding arrest warrants making the news. As people in Costa Rica were celebrating Independence Day on September 15th, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society published a press release announcing Operation Pacuare, an effort to protect the sea...

A few months ago, The Costa Rica Star published an article that described an unusual situation: Last year, a 40-year old man found himself naked in a lush rainforest of Costa Rica. He was looking for something to eat when he disrupted the habitat of a large terciopelo (fer-de-lance) snake, which he proceeded to kill with a stick. The killing of the reptile, which you can watch here, was filmed by...

  The Whales and Dolphins Festival was a great success this year, and cetacean sightings in the Southern Pacific coast of Costa Rica will continue through October. As you can see from this video recently uploaded by kind blogger Capi, the season has thus far provided plenty of whale spotting opportunities.   http://youtu.be/ybm6VAZsCaI    ...

  Source: Fuerza Publica The canton of Garabito in Puntarenas is home to some of the most eco-friendly police officers in Costa Rica. Two years ago, members of Fuerza Pública (Costa Rica's national police force) who patrol the Jaco Beach and Playa Hermosa communities decided to open their own nesting sanctuary for olive ridley sea turtles. This initiative was prompted by the need to pr...

San Vicente de Paul Hospital in Heredia A young man in Costa Rica who suffered from a malignant tumor in his spinal cord is recovering after a successful surgical procedure that involved the implantation of a penile prosthesis. The surgery was performed at the Saint Vincent of Paul Hospital, a public health facility that serves the community of Heredia. This was the first time a penile implant...

  Source: Wikimedia Commons The city of Armenia in Colombia is located in the heart of one of the most fertile coffee-producing regions in the world. This is where the 25th International Conference on Coffee Science is currently taking place, and there are two topics that attendants are likely to discuss: The sequencing of the coffee genome, which was recently completed, and how this m...

  Source: Ocearch Beamer was a blue shark that used to enjoy swimming in the chilly waters off Montauk, New York. Last year, Beamer began swimming south towards the Caribbean and made it to the eastern Antilles by Christmas. The shark then made a straight swim towards Puerto Limon in Costa Rica; alas, Beamer ended up hooked on  the lines of a commercial fishing boat somewhere between P...

Dear Readers: It has been more than two years since The Costa Rica Star published The Costa Rica Dome and Phytoplankton Treasures, an article that highlighted the importance of the Thermal Convection Dome off our Pacific Coast. Of all the natural wonders of our country, it is crucial that we understand the organisms that the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) calls ...

A project is tested in competition. Source: MICITT On August 17th, the Fifth National Robotics Olympiad of Costa Rica culminated with an awards ceremony and the announcement of the young robotic scientists who will represent our country at the World Robot Olympiad (WRO) in Russia later this year. The theme of this year's robotics competition was Space Exploration, and the winning projects feat...

  Source: Wikimedia Commons During a visit to the Caribbean region of Costa Rica in August, President Luis Guillermo Solis stopped in Puerto Viejo and explained his position on the lionfish (scorpaenid, from the genus Pterois): “This is a very aggressive species that goes after native marine life, which affects the local fishing economy.” According to Fabio Mena from online news daily...

Source: RSN On the final day of August, just hours before people in Costa Rica began preparing for Sunday Mass, brunch, football games, community activities, and family outings, a 5.1 moment magnitude (Mw) earthquake jolted communities from the southern Pacific region down to the border with Panama and up to the Central Valley. The seismic event was detected by the National Seismology Network ...

Source: Wikimedia Commons The most dangerous organism in Costa Rica is probably not the one you are thinking of. Although in the past few years there have been regional warnings issued to eco-tourists about potential dangers related to sharks, caimans and jaguars, attacks by these species are infrequent, and they are not even close to being the most lethal. The most dangerous organism in Costa...

  Source: Virgin Galactic It was only a matter of time before the burgeoning aerospace industry in Costa Rica expanded to include the tourism sector. Terranova Diseño de Viajes (Terranova Travel Planning) recently became Central America's first Accredited Space Agent (ASA), a designation bestowed upon by Virgin Galactic, which belongs to British billionaire Sir Richard Branson's Virgin...

Source: Wikimedia Commons The few, critically endangered hawksbill sea turtles that still arrive in Costa Rica during nesting season may stop coming here altogether due to climate change. In the 21st century, hawksbills have barely arrived on the beaches of the Pacific coast. On the Caribbean shores, the number of Eretmochelys imbricata nests at the Cahuita National Park has been dwindling ove...

Source: Wikimedia Commons In Santa Cruz, province of Guanacaste, residents of the small town of Ortega will spend a significant portion of Good Friday pursuing a member of the Alligatoridae family of species. To this end, members of the community got together on Palm Sunday to start construction of a large artificial pond where they will keep the cayman for several hours before taking it back ...

Source: Wikimedia Commons Swimmers and surfers beware: Several whitetip reef sharks, Triaenodon obesus, have been sighted, photographed and filmed over the last few days in both Playa Langosta and Playa Avellanas, both part of Costa Rica's Gold Coast in the province of Guanacaste. Although sharks are known to swim in the “Barco Hundido” (Shipwreck Alley) underwater spot between Langosta and Av...

Source: CNFL Twitter Relentless wind speeds reaching 90 kilometers per hour in the populous Central Valley of Costa Rica and the surrounding mountain ranges kept Red Cross workers, paramedics and public utilities crews on their toes this week. Two delivery trucks in the municipality of Santa Ana were nearly crushed by uprooted trees, people were injured by flying debris and several communities...

Source: Flickr CC The recent grand opening of the Park and Museum of the Stone Spheres and the extensive recovery and curation work of the Guayabo National Monument are the two most significant events that represent the current boom in archeological and anthropological research in Costa Rica. One of the highlights of the administration of President Laura Chinchilla has been her insistence t...

Source: Flickr CC Residents of Costa Rica know that the dry season brings a scarcity of rain and an abundance of birdsong. This is when the lovely yiguirro (Turdus grayii or clay-colored American robin) mates and breeds, which means that males will melodically sing from before sunrise until after sundown. The yiguirro is just one of dozens of songbirds that make Costa Rica their permanent or m...

Source: Pinterest Since 2003, the International Institute of Wildlife Management and Conservation (Spanish acronym: ICOMVIS) has been installing infrared cameras in various national parks in Costa Rica for the purpose of monitoring the nocturnal behavior of species. It all started at the Corcovado National Park, and the project has recently extended to Barbilla, Santa Rosa and Tortuguero. The ...

Source: Flickr In March 2013, daily tabloid La Teja featured a story about a farmer in Talamanca and the giant yuca (cassava, Manihot esculenta) he unearthed from his backyard. This tuber, which originated from a single stem transplant that grew into a sizable shrub, yielded 17 yucas weighing 09 kilograms. The keys to this massive harvest were: Patience and the ultra-fertile soil of Costa Rica...

Source: WIDECAST The Wider Caribbean Sea Turtle Network (WIDECAST) and Latin American Sea Turtles (LAST) are asking marine conservationists to vote for them at the European Outdoor Conservation Association (EOCA) so that they can get funding to continue their noble -and unfortunately dangerous- mission in Costa Rica. Conservation of green, hawksbill and leatherback sea turtles in the Caribb...

Shark fin soup on the menu of a restaurant in Singapore Environmental conservation groups today asked the government to sanction a new shark finning practice, which consists of unloading the gutted carcasses of elasmobranch species. This practice, according to marine conservationists, violate international regulations against poaching and abuse of marine resources. A press release recently ...

Source: Wikia Fans of the Jurassic Park universe -created by the late Michael Chrichton- were ecstatic to learn that the production team of the upcoming sequel Jurassic World recently placed a casting call for extras in New Orleans. Many people know that the original Jurassic Park is located in the fictional Isla Nublar of Costa Rica, and some footage of the original 2001 movie was filmed here...

Source: Amazon As NASA Hall of Fame astronaut Franklin Chang Diaz was recently being honored with the Buzz Aldrin Quadrennial Space Award in New York City, an author in the United States was accumulating accolades for his science fiction novel about a botanist stranded in Mars. The engine, so to speak, that propels Andy Weir's novel The Martian is VASIMR, the revolutionary space propulsion sys...

Source: Twitter Pictures of a ghostly white blue marlin caught and released by anglers getting ready for the the third stage of  Los Suenos Triple Crown Tournament in Costa Rica have achieved viral status and caused quite a bit of commotion after being published by numerous websites. There is no question as to the achromatic aspect and rarity of the fine specimen; however, the International Ga...

Source: RainSaucer As the high tourist season approaches its apex in Costa Rica, water shortages in Guanacaste are becoming more frequent. Waking up to hear the dismal gurgling sound of a faucet running dry is something that many residents of Guanacaste are currently dealing with. The situation should improve once the green (rainy) season begins, which would be a perfect time to explore rainwa...

Guaria morada in the wild. Source: INBIO. In March of last year, police officers patrolling the Upala sector in the northern region of Costa Rica made a botanical arrest. A man was caught with 112 members of the Orchidaceae family that he was furtively trying to smuggle. The suspect attempted to confound the Fuerza Publica (Costa Rica's national police) officers with flowery speech; alas, he w...

Residents of Playa Coyote in Santa Cruz, province of Guanacaste, have always enjoyed massive arrivals of the equally massive leatherback sea turtles during nesting season. In 2014, however, the gentle giants have mostly ignored this quiet beach community in Costa Rica; a situation that has neighbors and conservation activists extremely worried. According to Pablo Rojas of online news daily CRHo...

Crater Dome at Poas Volcano. Source: RSN Volcano tourists rejoice: The Central American portion of the Ring of Fire is currently on fire, and volcanoes in Costa Rica and Nicaragua are showing off their natural beauty and power with sulfur emissions, red-hot glowing walls, phreatic (ground water eruptions), and even seismic events from deep within. The colossi in question are the Poas and Turri...

Their cute, lovable, masked furry faces seem to smile beatifically, and are fast reaching celebrity-status in Costa Rica. In a country full of exotic wildlife, sloths are one of the most well-known animals, and one of the most asked about by visiting tourists. A great way to see these extraordinary and fascinating animals up close is at the Sloth Sanctuary of Costa Rica. Located just south of L...

A little more than four years ago, Ticos preparing to go to the polls in early February noticed that the skies above the Central Valley were crisscrossed by contrails (condensation trails, those fluffy white lines that airplanes leave behind). Claudia Calvo, a resident of Curridabat in the eastern suburbs of San Jose used her mobile phone to capture video of the sky along with her observations abo...

The hospitality and tourism industry of Costa Rica welcomes a diversity of tourists. From surfers to eco-tourists and from science researchers to language learners, Costa Rica loves them all –even sexual tourists, as long as they do not engage in garish behavior in public. There is, however, one special interest tourist group that Costa Rica should strive to attract for various reasons: Birdwatche...

Trash buildup and waste go uncollected in Playa Ocotal, Guanacaste, Costa RicaTrash and littering is still a major problem in Costa Rica, contradicting the self-proclaimed, ecological, diverse and clean reputation of the country. Tico littering mentality is combination of a number of factors, with short sightedness and laziness topping the list. Many in Costa Rica believe that someone else should...

“Dogs barking after midnight,” remembers David, “the dogs went crazy every time a humpback whale blew or there were whales breaching right at Rincon Bay”. Those are the memories of David Herra Miranda, who was born and raised in Golfo Dulce. Now, more than two decades later, he is a research associate with CEIC, Centro de Investigación de Cetáceos Costa Rica (Cetacean Research Center Costa Ric...

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society’s high-speed trimaran, the Brigitte Bardot has returned from its first successful patrol assisting the Guatemalan Department of Fisheries in its anti-poaching enforcement operations. Asked by Fisheries officials to help battle poaching in Guatemalan waters, Sea Shepherd is helping to lower the impact of illegal fishing of billfish by commercial fishermen. T...

Source: Wikimedia Commons Guanacaste is the aquaponics capital of Costa Rica and perhaps of Central America. This agricultural discipline has been lauded for the way it integrates principles of sustainability. The most basic aquaponics systems involve raising aquatic animals and growing plants in a way that is symbiotic for all species, but the complexity of these systems can be increased for ...

Puma hunting howler monkey in Guanacaste, Costa Rica. Photo by Professor Rob Pringle of Princeton University.A recent series of amazing photographs by Professor Rob Pringle of Princeton University show a tenacious Puma concolor (a cougar or puma) climbing the tall branches of a torchwood tree looking to make a meal out of an Alouatta palliata (howler monkey) at the Santa Rosa National Park, provin...