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Here come the coatis!

At our resort in Mexico along the pathways to the beach it was quite common to find wild coatis.  Though wild, they are obviously habituated to humans and will often scrounge the tables after people have eaten or, more simply, beg for food from those who have it.

The full name of this mammal is “Coatimundi” and they are relatives of the raccoon.  Unlike raccoons, though, they travel in large packs - as many as 40 coatis in a pack.  The baby coatis travel with the parents - as you can see in the picture above.

As evidenced above, they are quite friendly with people.  However care must still be taken because they are wild animals.  Technically, you are not supposed to feed them but it was quite difficult to resist.  In the picture above Nelya is feeding them a fruit smoothie out of a cup while Nathan looks on.  Not in the picture is Eitan - who was afraid of the coatis and was quite upset that we were feeding them.

While I would be very hesitant getting this close to a raccoon (though I have in the past - as Tom can attest to) coatis are a bit less fearsome - though they contain a very sharp pair of incisors in the front of the mouth.

Like raccoons they are very smart and will beg for food in a similar manner to raccoons.

As I had so many opportunities to photograph coatis, I used a variety of lenses.

Canon EF 180mm f3.5L Macro - I used this for the shot above and the coatis were tame enough to let me get some closeups of them.  Of the three lenses, I like the bokeh effects of this one the most.

Canon 70-200 F4.0L IS - The shot at the beginning of the post used this lens. It offered the best range and was the most natural lens to use - but I prefer the shots taken with the 16-35 and the 180L

Canon 16-35mm 2.8L II - The nice thing about this lens is it can get quite close - which lead to some interesting effects.

The baby coatis in particular were adorable and had no problems getting close, as is evidenced by this one who decided to test my minimum focus distance on the 16-35!

Here’s another shot I got with my 180 of an adult coati begging.

In general the resort had quite a bit of wildlife - both wild and constricted.  I had long wanted to see coatis in the wild and had hoped that I would fine one on my Peru vacation - but coatis that truly live in the wild are much more skittish.

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Tags: coati, coatimundi, mexico, photography, riviera maya, Travel