Netflix documentary narrated by Barak Obama shows the secrets of the “living fossil” monkey of the mountain, recorded in the biological reserve of the Uach

The streaming service Netflix premiered this week the documentary series “Great National Parks”, in which one of its chapters is dedicated to the parks of Patagonia Chile. The series, narrated by the former president of the United States, Barak Obama, was made in Chile by the production company Wildspace, from the United Kingdom, and began its broadcast on Wednesday.
In what is considered an unprecedented naturalistic milestone, the chapter “Patagonia” shows the life of the mountain monkey, a small marsupial endemic to the forests of southern Chile, a record made under the scientific supervision of Roberto Néspolo, who leads several research efforts at the San Martín Experimental Station, of the Austral University of Chile.
Nespolo and his research team have uncovered unpublished details of the biology of this marsupial, and how its biological cycle is closely linked to the forest cycle. For example, they showed that the monkey experiences a deep metabolic depression or “hibernation”, during the cold season, a period in which it can reduce its energy consumption to 5% of normal (Mejias et al. 2022).
In fact, through mesocosm experiments at the San Martín Station of the UACh, researchers have managed to establish that monkeys regulate their energy consumption based on the amount of food that the forest provides them. They have also discovered new populations of mountain monkey and even a new species. All of this data is summarized in a recent literature review that the team published.
San Martín Station
The San Martín Station is a biological reserve for the research and conservation of the temperate-rain forest. It is owned by the UACh, and has more than 300 hectares of pristine forest that, among other things, has allowed to study the mountain monkey or Gliroides Dromiciops in natural conditions.
Roberto Nespolo is director of Fundo San Martín and expressed the importance of this site being recognized as a place of long-term research in the country.
“This documentary is also relevant as it will present the monkey of the mountain with incredible images and never seen before. The invitation is for them to see the premiere and also learn more about the work we have done for more than 12 years,” he says.
The Netflix documentary premiere will present a unique and emblematic species of the temperate forests of southern Chile such as the mountain monkey, since it belongs to the ancestral group of Australian marsupials, Microbiotheria, explains the researcher at the Austral University of Chile, director of the Millennium Nucleus on the limit of Patagonian life (Lili Nucleus) and Adjunct Researcher at the Millennium Institute of Integrative Biology (iBio).

Original source in Spanish