I have a sickness

instead of working, I watch videos of lemurs playing. 

Other videos here:
http://flic.kr/p/8pwMid

and here:
http://flic.kr/p/8pwkrW

I was spoiled

Looking for monkeys in Panama has reminded me just how spoiled I was by Beza and the ring-tailed lemurs.

In Panama, I'm only doing/piloting/planning survey work on howler monkeys....

But it reminded me that rain forests, in general, can suck. I really like working in wet forests because they are incredibly interesting, but man they're uncomfortable. Too many mosquitoes, you're constantly wet and there are hills. So many muddy hills to climb in rubber boots. Oh, and the monkeys are 20-30 meters up in the trees and like to hide.

For example, while I am not collecting  behavioral data , neither of the situations pictured will ever happen with the monkeys here. Never. Not even a chance. You may be able to take your lawnchair and a paperback out to watch the howlers, but the monkeys aren't going to come down to the ground and sit in front of you.

Instead they will hang out in the trees, maybe 20 meters up where you can barely see them. Maybe you can just see the tips of their tails. Maybe you can see their whole bodies. Or maybe they will sit in little huddles so you can see a black monkey blob but not be to do the one thing that you need to get done with them (in my case, maybe count their nasty bot fly sores). In any case, monkeys in Central & South America aren't too keen on hanging out on the ground (some do come down quite close and maybe do some foraging or play on the ground, but in general, the monkeys here are big fans of staying in trees).

Beza is a dry, flat place. It can get incredibly hot (our max temp for the field season -- and every for Beza -- was just over 47 degree C, so about 117 F -- thanks Ay for the photo) and there are still some nasty plants and horrible wasps, but the lemurs are really cooperative and it makes working with them easy and pretty fun. While we had some days where we couldn't find the group we were looking for [ahem...blue, teal....], the lemurs were pretty easy to find compared to large monkeys that want to hide at the tops of trees, camouflaged as bumps on logs.


Don't get me wrong, hunting for and chasing monkeys in tropical rain forests is still good fun, but it made me a bit meloncholy for the good ol' days of flat forests and animals that would call back to you.


And just for good measure, one more gratuitous picture of me and a baby lemur (Gollum from Green)

Baby Fights!

Ring-tailed lemurs have a very strict dominance hierarchy that regulates most aspects of their lives. Before working with lemurs I was used to primate species where dominance either wasn't all that important or wasn't reinforced on a minute-by-minute basis, like in the ring-taileds. For the RTL's, your place in the pecking order determines when and what kind of food you get to eat, who you can be next to, how often you're groomed, and who will help your baby out when it gets into a pinch. A RTL won't ususally give up the chance to exert her dominance, whether it's by giving a nasty look, making someone get up from their comfy spot, or by smacking them around. Female RTL's like to make sure everyone knows their place. And that they stay there.

Baby lemurs have their own separate hierarchy. In macaques and baboons a kid's dominance status is directly linked to their mom's and their mom's family rank. Not so in RTL's. In the ring-tailed life, it's every baby for herself. You have to fight your way first into your own baby rank and then eventually into the adult ranking system.

This means baby fights. Awesome, adorable, terrible baby fights.


Here's a typical baby fight. Baby A comes up to Baby B. They start playing and wrestling a bit. All of a sudden the wrestling play turns into a fight with the two babies grappling on to one another, growling and screaming and kicking and biting. This little furry ball of baby fury rolls around in the branch for a few seconds until it falls to the ground and both babies get up looking a little dazed and then run off to some adult to groom them reassuringly.

Babies are vicious in sorting out their ranks. Watching the babies figure out their dominance hierarchy was one of the most hilarious times of observation that we had. One of the babies in Orange, i316, earned himself the nickname Bruiser becuase of his sheer tenacity. This baby wanted to be top lemur and wanted everyone else to know it. He had (unfortunately this little guy died at 21 weeks old) a first-time mom (3 years old) of a middle rank who had eyes for the top. Being the kid of a first time mom, Bruiser was smaller than most of the other babies, which made his bullying them around even better.

Bruiser started fights whenever he could, but there was one little lady that finally started giving back to him as good as he gave out. The fights between him and i368 were amazing. They'd wrestle and growl and bite and then break up and then run back at each other and do it all over again. On one occasion Bruiser's mom (316) was so concerned over the fight that she actually stood by, sniffed, and put her hand out at the two warring babies while they duked it out (this was completely out of character for this mom).

Baby smackdown only lasted a couple of weeks, but it was a great couple of weeks while it lasted. Scoring behavior during this time was a challenge -- as much as for what the lemurs were doing as for trying to record data while laughing.

research update

Maybe a little update on how work is actually going? The answer--
better than I could have imagined.

The past 2 months I've had 2 teams of people watching different groups
of lemurs. It's been great being able to monitor 2 groups at once and
collect twice as much data during this period of development. The kids
are really exploring, eating tons on their own, and are incredibly
independent. I wasn't expecting this level of independence so soon in
their lives. It's great. They're like real lemurs now. Just tiny
versions.

Mortality from this birth cohort is low so far. However, we're coming
to the time of the year when a lot of babies start disappearing. I
just lost another of my 1 year olds, which isn't so good. Last year's
birth cohort now has over 80% mortality. Tough times in lemur land.

We're also collecting more fecal samples than I know what to do with.
We'll have well over 3000 fecal samples by the time we wrap things up.
We're just too good at it now. This is actually more than I have
supplies to collect it with, so we will end up getting creative for
ways to store all of these fecal samples so we can get them back for
hormone analysis.

A little note about my field assistants. They are awesome. Incredible,
and I'm really lucky to have them around. They have been collecting
incredible amounts of data, make me laugh constantly and only complain
softly at the amount of beans and rice that they're eating. The Beza
Ecological Monitoring Team has been great and without them things
wouldn't be going as smoothly as they have been. I've been fortunate
in all of the people who I've worked with so far and hope that I can
continue working with them all.

Anakao, Tulear, Defenses

I'm just finishing up a little Tulear/Anakao time and itching to get
back to Beza.

I've been here for a little over a week now. Originally the plan was
to come into Tulear for a couple of days, see my friend J defend his
PhD dissertation (he did a great job -- highest honors) and then roll
back to Beza with another researcher who will be there for 3 weeks or
so.

This was the plan. It's not how it happened.

Ay and I came out with another research team just before New Year's
eve. We left C & P back at Beza -- P is leaving in the next 2 weeks
and they are on their way out today for a little holiday before he
returns home to the UK and C comes back to the lonely life in a tent
(sorry C -- we've all been there).

We left with M&F's research team -- they had finished up all of their
work early and were going for a little holiday at Anakao, a small
fishing village with some nice resorts on the west coast (not too far
from us). They were really generous letting us tag along in the car so
we could get Ay to the dentist (and I got an unplanned trip to the
beach!). We had a great NYE dinner and rang in the new year at one of
the bars down the beach, dancing and drinking THB. It was pretty great
and a welcome change of pace from beans & rice and forest life.

And Ay came down with a nasty toothache. It was bad enough that he
wanted to come to Tulear to see a dentist. This must have been bad,
because i know I wasn't so excited at the idea of a Tulear dentist
poking around in my mouth. So, because of Ay's bum tooth, we ended up
leaving Beza and having a short beach break before coming back to
Tulear.

On the way to Tulear from the beach though we broke an axle on the
Landcruiser. Woops. This didn't make anyone so happy because it meant
we had to stay a night in Betioky (not that bad, and in a hotel that
was nicer than the others I've seen. However, use the word 'nicer' in
its most general and comparative context). Since the car was FUBARd we
had to find a new ride to Tulear that could fit 7 people and their
gear. This ended up being a tiny Peugot truck with most of us piled
into the bed for the drive from Betioky to Tulear. It wasn't a bad
ride in the back and since we had benches to sit on and a relatively
large amount of room (compared to the taxi-brousse), we got to Tulear
in style.

We got Ay to a dentist that actually wasn't so scary. Gloves, masks,
and the appearance of sterilization. He even had the dentist's
standard giant mouth/tooth models and huge toothbrush (I know I felt
comforted). Luckily there wasn't anything wrong with his tooth--
dentist thought he had food stuck between his teeth. The dentist told
him to brush better, gave him some mouthwash and sent us on our way.

By this time we had been in Tulear for a few days. J's defense was set
to be the next day, so we had some time to kill. The hotel we've been
staying at has wifi, so this isn't too hard for those of us who don't
get to check email/facebook/wikipedia/internets all that often. This
is also prime movie and tv show watching time for Ay & I.

I was supposed to head out yesterday, but our car wasn't ready. Then
it was leaving today at 7. Nope. Not happening. In fact we have a new
car coming from Tana today, which hopefully will be able to take N & I
back to Beza tomorrow. I hope so. I'm getting tired of Tulear. It's
time to get back to my tent. It's been nice to have relaxing and tasty
meals with good people, see a colleague accomplish his goal, celebrate
with cold beer, and check back in with the world and loved ones, but
it's time to get back to the babies, poo collection, and unfortunately
the wasps that have started to come out.

One reason why I love my job...

Today one of my favorite infants decided that he would be my friend.
His name is i171 -- he belongs to one of the cheekiest of the females
who comes into camp and has a particularly bold older sister (her name
is Bumps). I haven't been able to think of a name that will stick to
the little guy yet, so suggestions are welcome.

I was sitting on the cement floor of the thatched shade structure in
camp and saw his mom lie down just behind me. I heard a lemur walking
up behind me, then saw a tail out of the corner or my eye. He decided
to slink underneath my legs, and up against my calf like a cat and
then sit down between my shoes. His hands were on my shoe and he sat
and stared up at me for a few minutes. He just wanted to hang out I
guess. After a little while he went under the other leg and walked
over to check out what his mom was doing and hopefully get some milk.
After getting denied a prime nursing opportunity he came back to me,
stood up on his back legs, put his hands on my arm and gave me a
pleading look.

This made my day. I think it's the closest that I'll get to have one
of the babies crawl into my lap, but I'll take it. Man, habituation is
great.

Cicadas everywhere

The cicadas have emerged.

The noise that they make is amazing -- they are so loud that I can't
hear my watch beep to tell me to collect data. They have been on every
tree, Flying randomly, ricocheting off of the tree trunk, us, each
other. One of their more pleasant aspects is that they pee when they
take off, so at any given moment if you kick up a bunch of cicadas you
are rewarded with a lovely bug misting. Just make sure you keep your
lips closed.

The upside is that everything is eating them. The birds, lemurs, and
people. The crested drongos snatch the little beasts off of trunks or
in mid-flight then make off with the angry cicada. It's great to hear
the enraged cicada, buzzing for its life gradually get softer as the
drongo flies away to land on a branch and eviscerate it. On the whole,
the lemurs are pretty bad at catching cicadas. The really good ones
watch a cicada fly off and land and then POUNCE on it. The bad ones
would just grab impotently at flying bugs and come up empty handed.
Some groups are better at catching them than others, and the groups
that live in the center of the reserve (prime cicada territory from
what I can tell) are the best at it.

The people may be the most entertaining to watch catch cicadas. They
started in small groups of 3-4 people, spearing the cicadas (one
advantage of always carrying a spear), pulling off their wings, and
dropping them into a bucket. When the cicadas finally emerged in huge
numbers groups of almost 15 people were wandering the forest, hunting
for this noisy, pork-rind tasting delicacy. Most of the people weren't
sure about what to do when they saw us in the forest -- do they run or
do they carry on with their business all nonchalant-like. Since I'm
pretty sure they aren't supposed to be hunting anything in the
reserve, the smaller groups ran away, but the bigger groups of teenage
boys just seemed to be too cool for school and would wander on by,
check out what we were doing, spear another cicada and move along.