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.