The wildlife in Nicaragua is spectacular! During your stay in San Juan del Sur you will be likely to witness everything from the quirky Howler Monkey to the iridescent Morpho Butterfly.  If you're lucky you may find yourself swimming next to a turtle.  See below for what to spot & how you can protect these incredible creatures during your stay.

Male howler monkeys use their big voices to defend their turf. Howls by one troop are answered by other males within earshot. Every-one starts and ends the day by checking out where their nearest competitors are. In this way, they protect the food in their territory. It’s an important job because their diet is made up mostly of leaves—not a particularly nutritious food. Finding young, nutritious leaves is a priority. Fruit and flowers are also valued so it’s crucial that the troop stakes its claim on these treasures when they are found.

Despite the volume of their howl, it’s disorienting to try to find a troop of loud howler monkeys in the wild. They hang out in the treetops where younger, greener leaves are abundant. However, if you do find yourself in the rainforest and it seems that an unusually large amount of fruit is falling from above or a fine spray of urine rains down on your head, you will know you are close!

Nicaragua is blessed with several beaches where the Olive Ridley turtles come to lay there eggs. These sea turtles weigh about 45 kg and are spread throughout the world. There are nesting sites in Asia and Africa as well, but despite this dispersion the Olive Ridley population is threatened and in some places endangered with extinction. In Nicaragua there is a fairly big population, but egg harvesting and destruction of nesting sites is having an impact on this population.

The Olive Ridley turtles come to the beach en masse, during so called arribadas in which thousands of turtles arrive at the same time to lay their eggs. This way, the hatchlings will swarm the beach in huge numbers and in doing so they increase their chance of survival.

The toucan's colorful bill gives new meaning to the phrase cool dude. Indeed, that gigantic schnoz turns out to be a radiator the rain forest dweller uses to lose body heat. The bill of the Toco Toucan makes up about one-third of its body length and ornithologists have long wondered about the purpose for the appendage.

Could it be a sexual signal as Charles Darwin once thought? Maybe a special adaptation to peel fruit, suggest the gourmand set.  Perhaps, the defense minded say, a weapon.  Or, at least, a visual warning to other toucans.

Researchers led by Glenn J. Tattersall of Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, discovered that the big beak might have yet another use — cooling.  After all, elephants use their ears for cooling. So do bunnies. So why not toucan beaks?

Whether true freshwater sharks exist or not is still somewhat of an open question. There is no doubt that there are sharks that live in freshwater, but most of these species are really marine sharks that are able to migrate up into freshwater and live out their entire lives there. An example of such a shark is the bull shark which is notorious for wandering into freshwater and has been found over 4200 kilometers / 2,600 miles upstream in rivers such as the Amazon. But fact is that Bull sharks do live in Lake Nicaragua and these sharks are often referred to as true freshwater sharks. Recent studies do however show that even if bull sharks can live for many years in Lake Nicaragua, they do not breed there and they need to return to the ocean to breed.

Frogs and toads are amphibians, animals who begin their lives in the water (breathing with gills) and then, during maturity, live on land (breathing with lungs). The word amphibian means "double life." Frogs and toads are found all around the world, on all continents except Antarctica.
Frogs and toads eat, insects, spiders, small fish, worms and other tiny animals. They catch them with their long, sticky tongue.

Most frogs in Nicaragua are of more or less protective tints--green or brown according as they live among foliage or on the ground. They feed only at night, and they are all preyed upon by snakes and birds.