Animals

Barking bucketloads of happy dogs roam the hills at this enormous outdoor shelter for 750 to 800 homeless dogs in Costa Rica.

At the Refugio Herpetológico animal sanctuary in Santa Ana, the wards often have heart-breaking histories, but occasionally they are successfully released.

There are 925 species of birds in Costa Rica, representing almost 10 percent of the species in the world, and tourism officials are hoping to cash in on the rising market of tourists interested in watching them.

New Dino Park at Blue River Resort in Guanacaste will sink its teeth into your inner child.

This is the Corcovado model: Animals everywhere, so habituated to human contact that they simply ignore the humans, neither fleeing nor approaching.

It's one thing to know that sea turtles have been laying eggs on beaches for tens of millions of years. It's quite another to go to Tortuguero and watch it happen.

On the black sands of Playa Hermosa, just below Jacó on the Central Pacific Coast, turtle-hatching season has begun again. And from an ideal vantage point on the beach, the Sandpiper Hotel on Hermosa's northern end stands as a symbol for the conservation efforts taken to help get as many baby turtles into the sea as possible.

Neo Fauna in Jacó gives visitors a peek into what it's like to house and care for wounded or misplaced animals, before they're (hopefully) returned to the wild.

A Monteverde hotel cat takes a walk on the wild side and kills a bird. Bad kitty.

If you don't like spiders and snakes, you don't have what it takes to love this.