Rain forest trees are, in general, tall, straight, and branchless until near their tops, 100 to 150 feet above the ground. There they send out a rich profusion of branches and foliage. This foliage is like a thick, rough, continuous green blanket held up by tall posts, like a net below trapeze performers in a circus tent. The top of the blanket is a place of intense sunshine. Light grows dimmer and dimmer as it penetrates the leaves and the branches. Finally, on the jungle floor, there is only about a fiftieth as much illumination as on the surface of the canopy. In the canopy four or five kinds of monkeys take the place of man on earth as the most intelligent and adaptive animals. Primates from the beginnings of the race—the weird, squirrel-like animals of the North American dawn age forests fifty million years ago—have been semi-arboreal. Most abundant in the tree-land are the pretty, playful, curiosity-driven, humanlike spider monkeys who play tag and throw sticks at each other in the lower branches. Best known, although less likely to be seen, are the big, black, Satanic-looking howlers. Both of these species, in the long process of adapting themselves to high jungle life, have made third hands out of the ends of their tails. With these highly sensitive prehensile organs they not only clutch branches but sometimes carry out rather delicate manipulations. Weirdest are the black-and-white striped, woolly-furred night monkeys. These little racoon-like creatures live in holes far up in the treetops. They come out only at night and are seldom seen. They have enormous eyes which shine like live coals among the leaves when the light of a flash lamp catches them. Probably the most dangerous single animal of the canopy is the tamandua, or golden anteater. It is exclusively a treetop creature, about the size of a rabbit, with golden-yellow, soft, silky fur. It lives almost exclusively on termites which it harvests by sticking its long tongue, covered with a sticky saliva, into their nests. A progressive relative of the sloth, it remains motionless apparently for days at a time and is a slow, clumsy climber. But woe to anything—jaguar, ocelot, big howler monkey, even man—that runs afoul of it. It strikes suddenly and fast with its long, curved scimitar-sharp claws, and always aims at the stomach which it rips open. No other creature will venture near a tamandua, except by accident. Probably it is voiceless, although natives have attributed to the sinister little anteater a peculiarly weird cry heard in the moonlit jungle. This now is believed to be the call of a bird.