Ramphastid's Progress. Fauna Cuiabana. Cuiabá Basin Fauna Proect (CPFP) Pages.

I make it a point of asking people their permission before I pass on their details to somebody else (administrators of mobile texting discussion groups take note).

So yesterday when I doorstepped a local television journalist to tell her about a toucan chick I am helping to rear, I knew the chick would not object because it could not. One point to me.

I had seen, met and spoken to this journalist some years previously in the Pantanal. She told me that if I ever had a story, to get in touch.

I have a friend in the UK, Neil. Whenever I am at home we go out for a pint. He tells me that some of the stuff I do out here is unique.  So I told the journalist I would be the only British mature student graduating in my new career soon. I could be wrong.  But I don't think so. I would like to know if I am. Free publicity and all that. If you've got it, flaunt it, as one of my Animal Science lecturers once told me.

More to the point, I told her about the toucan neonate.  It is still alive; indeed thriving.  This is because the vet has got its diet right.  The only problem is that it seems likely that the bird wil be imprinted.

Imprinting is when young animals are reared by humans in the absence of their own kind.  This is not a disaster in my opinion. This bird will serve a useful educational role. I intend to contact my professor to ask him if he minds my passing the info on to the journalist.  He has a clinic so it will be good publicity for him. And I believe that what he has achieved with the toucan's nutrition is almost a first.

Imprinting has been used by Conservation Biologists.  Especially Raptor Biologists. Pink the Mauritius Kestrel, who I knew personally, was an imprint and was conditioned to copulate into a rubber-brimmed hat.  The case was made famous in Douglas Adams' and Mark Carwardine's book 'Last Chance to See'.  So of this toucan...  We believe it is an araçari...   If this araçari turns out to be a male, maybe it can be conditioned to copulate with a hat.  What an interesting blog that would be.