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Image patterns from the Neo Tropical Rain Forest |
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| Confusion |
The first approach for a neophyte to the Tropical Rain Forest’s inside is a kind of visual chaos: darkness, branches covered with leaves, lianas tagging trees, clomps of moss, termites’ nests and epiphyte plants everywhere in such a way, that this vision suffocates the human’s mind. Nothing seems to be in order nor in a logical disposition. |
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| The main reason for this kind of confusion is that inside a rain forest there are image patterns that we don’t see at all in our daily landscape, so there are no image patterns stored in our mind, after some time of exposition to such condition, the person produce some kind of panic; the lack of familiar image patterns results in disorientation. It’s well known by people from the rain forest that neophytes may get pretty upset and in some cases may feel really bad emotionally if they are overexposed for a long time to a dense forest or jungle –like in a long walk- the remedy for this is quite simple, this person has to be exposed visually to image patterns that its mind recognizes, this simple solution brings back emotional stability to this person, such images will be an open space or ideally a waterfall, this is a very interesting fact that proves how our brain configure our world, for each moment we live, our eyes capture images which are immediately compared to unconscious images patterns in our minds, that’s how we organize our world in a coherent way and this makes us feel confident, secure. |
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| Beyond that, many of these “new” image patterns belong to organisms that use camouflage in this environment as an specific adaptation for survival, that’s why it’s so difficult sometime to see animals in the rain forest. |
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| For a person who keeps visiting the forest, the development and storage of visual patterns start to grow after a while, the confusion is gone and what was chaos becomes an intricate harmony of species in a constant interaction, that’s when we are finally able to understand the concept of an ecosystem. |
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Similar to the observation of tridimensional drawings, there’s a kind of internal anamorphosis vision in persons who live near the rain forest and from where they are able to see what a neophyte isn’t able to observe. |
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| The use of image patterns and the personal security in a Neo Tropical Rain Forest |
| During my nature walks as a naturalist guide in the Neo Tropical Rain Forest of Costa Rica, I have to pay special attention, to the possible existence of a venomous snake in the trail, if you step in one it will react defending itself by attacking you. |
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| Venomous snakes perfectly camouflage into decomposing dead leaves at the jungle floor, this is the main reason why it’s very difficult to spot them, to do so, you have to spend some months or years observing the ground, constantly scanning the leaves while you walk, not trying to spot a snake, but looking for a curve in a continuous sequence of decaying leaves, a abnormal image pattern for a bunch of leaves. |
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| Leaves always have a straight pattern in their central vein or mid vein, -happily for us, this is a law-. Now, because of decaying process in many cases this mid vein bends, so we constantly find curves in bunches of leaves, but this are individual curved shapes, separated, not elongated in a bunch nor in a long sequence forming a semi spiral, if you see any of these, you may have a camouflaged venomous snake in front of you! |
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| You may think this is a learned technique, but I don’t think its completely that way, I believe this is partially learned through experience but its also a kind of instinct, its in our genes, I believe this because in many opportunities where I have had contact with a snake, I stopped walking suddenly and immediately became hyper sensitive and kind of scared without understanding why, to discover in a fraction of a second later, that there was a snake in front of me, my mind reacts previous to my conscious, my unconscious triggers the alert. |
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But it is also true you may spend months visiting the forest without finding any snake. For your protection, if you visit a Neo Tropical Rain forest without a guide that may walk in front of you, the best option is to have a walking stick and keep touching the ground ahead of you, if there’s any snake, it will jump on the stick and not into your legs. |
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But we use image patterns not only for spotting snakes, another very important part of been a successful naturalist guide is to spot mammals in such dense foliage, like sloths that have a cryptic fur that turns greenish due to algae growing in it, and birds like the great Potoo at the forest’s canopy, a bird that looks exactly as a broken branch of a tree, and sits still for long during the day, or an immobile reptile that is as green as the rest of leaves around like in Bassiliscus, funny thing is that all of this has to be done simultaneously and at a certain speed, not to fast nor to slow. |
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Guiding in the rain forest is surely a very challenging job to do, each day we work in the forest; each moment we walk in the trail may produce fantastic visions of unique ecosystem that will be stored in our minds probably forever, till we die. |
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