And we're back!

Back to Tulear. K & I were lucky enough to get a ride in with other
researchers. We've spent the last few days at the beach in Sarodrano
and are now in Tulear for the next 5 days or so until K gets on a
plane for Tana and I find a comfy taxi-brousse ride back to Betioky.
So, in the mean time, more blog summarizing and hopefully I can get
some photos up -- but that might have to wait until I get back to
Betioky with its lightening-fast internet connection.

Veloma!

S leaves in 10 days. It's pretty incredible that she's been here for nearly a year and it's been great to have here her. I wish that she could stay for another 8 months to hang out, but I guess she'd like to get back to her life in Arizona, and maybe even work on getting her data written up.

To say goodbye and thank you to everyone here, S organized a going away party for herself. There was a goat, rice, squash, some sugar cane, and lots and lots of rum and dancing. Even though S isn't leaving Beza until 12 Aug we had the party on the 27th so that the other research team that was here could be here for the party. The shenanigans were plentiful and if Flickr will cooperate with me, there will be some photos too.

My field assistant A is also on his way out today too. He's back off to USC to keep working on the samples that he collected while here and we wish him luck.

Whistling through the forest

The tried and true methods for finding primates in the forest are to
1) wander the forest looking around and 2) stop and listen. The most
effective method for me is probably #2 since it's much much easier for
me to hear jumping/grunting/screaming/destructive foraging primate
than to spot them when they're standing still or hiding. There is
another method -- smell them. This is especially useful if you have a
particularly stank species like howler monkeys, Eulemur species, and
gorillas -- all of them odoriferous.

One of the easiest ways to find ring-tailed lemurs is to call to them.
This is one of my favorite things about ring-taileds. They will
typically do their meow-like contact call when encountering other
groups, and it just so happens that we can mimic that call pretty well
with whistles. Our study groups aren't radio collared (the easiest way
to find your animals), so when we're looking for lemurs, a lot of our
time is spent wanderiing the forest, stopping to listen, and then
giving a series of whistles to see if we can get anyone to call back.
Some groups are more talkative than others (Purple doesn't talk much),
and some times of the year are also easier to get them to call,
especially when the kids are starting to roam around on their own. If
we could only get them to answer to their names/number then we'd be
all set for finding our study animals.