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Josefa is an adult female coati who arrived on the first of July of this year from Lima city.
Josefa lived for years in a police station in Chorrillos district.
She survived by hunting rats and mice and also receiving the leftovers from the policemen.
The Wildlife organizations found out about her case and presented it to the ecological police.
They called Pilpintuwasi to find out if there was space for her. We agreed to take her because we have a group of coatis that we hoped would be the perfect family. Now she is back in the Amazon where she belongs.
After Josefa arrived, the process of adaption started. In the beginning, she lost a lot of weight and we even considered returning her to Lima. As she had been kept as a pet and fed strawberry yogurt, marmalade, and egg yolks, she had forgotten to behave like a coati and did not take to her new diet of worms, bananas, boiled chicken, mandarines, etc.
We decided to introduce her to one of our female adult coatis to see if she could teach Josefa how to behave like a coati, and it worked!
Eventually, she adapted to her new diet and is now starting to regain weight and even digs for worms and insects. This gave hope to everybody because we didn’t want to send her back.
Now Josefa is a healthy coati who searches for insects, fish and eats a healthy diet for coatis enjoying her time in the rainforest!
