Each day that I go out into the field is new, different, and exciting... Seriously, I’m not sure if it’s just my dumb luck or if all primatologists go through the same experiences as Katie and I have while watching monkeys. Take last week for example. We were watching group Odum on a trail that does not always provide the best visibility for monkey viewing; it is a narrow path and the majority of trees around it are covered in vines, which make it easier for monkeys – especially tiny infants – to hide. During one of my focal animal samples on the new infant Teddy Roosevelt, his mother Trotter, who decided that she was fed up with my obsessive constant staring at her baby, carried Teddy into the bushy vines at the top of a tall tree, which was several meters way from the path in the uncleared bush. In this case, the only available viewing area where I could still keep my binoculars pointed towards Teddy was right underneath the tree, at the base of the trunk. Considering I am a relentless monkey stalker (like all serious primatologists should be), I pushed through the spiny bushes and thorny branches and reached the spot where I could continue my focal.
As I continued watching, I noticed that Teddy and Trotter were not the only monkeys in that particular spot; it seemed to be a popular hang-out for the Odum family at the time. In fact, the small viny area was filled with several monkeys, including one of my other study infants Kant, who was relentlessly jumping back and forth between the tree’s branches and the vines. Although I was observing Teddy, I couldn’t help but notice the wild and sporadic way in which baby Kant flailed her body to and thro, clearly having the time of her life. Several minutes went by... Teddy was nursing and inactive, Kant was jumping from branch to vine, from branch to vine, from branch to ... At some point, during one of her leaps, Kant decided that she would not reach for the security of the vines! Rather, she let her tiny body free fall more than ten meters down from the tree and right on top of my head! I remember watching it happen – and for some reason having the reaction time of a senior citizen (no offense to the elderly) – and thinking how beautiful Kant looked soaring through the air. Her little arms and legs were spread out from her fuzzy grey body, giving her the appearance of a sea star. As she plunged towards me, getting closer and closer, Kant swayed from side to side while simultaneously, her body rotated like a pin wheel. When she finally made contact and we collided, Kant let out the saddest little whimper – high pitched at first but quickly became more like a low weak grunt, and it seemed like the impact had knocked the wind out of Kant’s tiny figure.
The last thing you want to do when an ursine colobus infant falls out of the tree – particularly if it falls on top of you - is to stick around to see if the baby is ok. Adult male colobus monkeys have been known to attack humans that happen to be hanging around an infant that has just fallen from the tree. When I finally got a clue and realized what was going on, I turned to Katie who was nearby and yelled, only slightly emphatically, “Run! Run now!”. At this point Katie had no idea what had occurred and in her confusion began making confused circles around the path, unknowing as to which way to go. One direction led away from the monkey group (i.e. away from danger), while the other direction led towards the majority of the monkeys, which included alpha male Gordon. I bolted past Katie in the right direction, away from Gordon (I may not be so dim after all) and told her to “Follow me!", which Katie did. Before any of the monkeys could clue in to what had just happened, we bolted the area, and fast. I’ve never run away from the scene as quickly as I did on that day.
When we returned an hour or so later, all seemed normal; the monkeys were resting and being lazy in a very colobine way, no one suspected us of anything (hehehe), and Kant was back up in the tree jumping around among the vines, clearly planning her next suicidal attempt. I just hope that next time she will not choose to plunge while I am situated underneath her!
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Market Pervert
It seems that since we have been here, Katie has been getting the shorter end of the stick on numerous occasions (i.e. malaria, wasp attack, sprained bones), and last week’s market day (August 17th) was no exception. We had just finished our internet portion of the day, and we were on our way to the Cookie Lady’s stand to purchase our weekly ration of sugary sweets. The Cookie Lady is a tiny, plump woman who finds delicious biscuits and cookies that she thinks obruni girls with a sweet tooth (like us) would enjoy. Close to her stand, a man was urinating in the street without even the decency to turn away from the traffic and majority of people walking. As soon as he saw us and while his junk was still exposed, he began yelling and asking us various questions in Twii, interspersed with some phrases of broken English. Katie and I passed without making eye contact... I did say to him that “No way am I talking to you while you’re doing THAT”. Thinking back to the event now, I probably shouldn’t have said anything at all because it might have given him courage to do what he did next. He approached us at the Cookie Lady’s stand, grabbed and held Katie’s hand in his own hand (which a minute before had been stuffed down his crotch) and began asking her questions about where she was from, her marriage status, and other of the usual prying inquiries that are made by men around these parts. Katie pulled her hand away and uncomfortably tried to end the encounter. I tried to help by politely asking him to leave us alone. At this point he got angry, and out of the blue grabbed Katie’s breast! I couldn’t believe what I was seeing! Katie of course yelled at him to not touch her. I was about to punch him the face, or at least slap him, but decided against it. I’m not sure why I didn’t try to physically fight him, but I was also frightened... I did however began to push him as hard as I could and I yelled at him repeatedly to “Turn around and walk away!” For effect, I also added a few more colourful words in between breaths (wouldn’t you?), which caused him to become angrier. I think my outburst really surprised him because he seemed a bit confused and embarrassed after a few moments. I was still sticking my face in his face, yelling at him and pushing him away from Katie and I, when some people nearby, including the Cookie Lady, pulled the man away and forced him to leave us alone. Minutes later, Katie seemed ok and my adrenaline rush was beginning to fade. I still wish that I would have hit the asshole... How dare he do something like that? Nkoranza is a small place and I only hope we don’t run into the pervert again. If we do, he better watch out because next time I don’t think I would be able to control my anger and I would surely be more violent.
Hippo Trip from Hell
In early August, Katie and I decided that all of our hard work in the past few months had recently been making us sluggish and tired in the field and that an extra day off to do something more fun than go to market and clean data was a good idea. We had both wanted to visit the Wechiau Hippo Sanctuary in the North of Ghana. Wechiau is quite far from where we live; it is almost near the Burkina-Faso border and an entire day’s travelling time is needed to get there and an entire day to get back to BFMS. Our plan was to sleep one or two nights at Wechiau, go on some guided river tours to see the North Ghanaian wildlife, which would have hopefully included hippopotamuses, and return to our monkeys refreshed and ready to tackle on another month of hardcore data collection. I had heard pleasant things about the hippo sanctuary and although we were in the midst of the rainy season (we were unlikely to see hippos during this time because they are better at hiding their giant frames when there is more water in the river) Katie and I were stoked to go. The trip there was incredibly long, sweaty, dusty, and dirty. We left BFMS at 6:00 am, took one tro-tro, then a shared taxi, then a large over crowded bus, and two more tro-tros to get to Wechiau. The last of our tro-tro broke down in the middle of nowhere in the pitch darkness, and while Katie and I waited for another tro-tro to pick us up, we ate a delicious dinner consisting of onion crackers, hard boiled eggs, and Laughing Cow cheese. The starry night sky was amazing from that spot! By the time we finally arrived to the Hippo sanctuary, my skin, hair and majority of my body were caked with the red Ghanaian dirt and soil that had been constantly flying through the open windows of our transport vehicles. I even had red dirt in my belly button... I have no idea how it got in there. I admit that upon arrival, Katie and I were disappointed with the accommodations. I had reasoned that since Wechiau Hippo Sanctuary is sponsored by the Calgary Zoo it was bound to have nicer accommodations than the BFMS Monkey Sanctuary. However, the hippo sanctuary accommodations were by far much more, shall I say, simplistic than what Katie and I are used to. We arrived in the night and since there was no electricity and due to the most numerous mosquitoes I had ever witnessed in one area, Katie and I were not able to pump water and to take bucket showers than evening. Our room was small, with two low beds and make-shift mosquito nets. It was clear that the bedding had not been changed in a while and given the mouse fecal matter that covered our beds, I assumed we weren’t the only occupants of the room. After putting on long pants, socks, and a shirt, after adding a protective layer of deet all over my body (on top of the thick layer of dirt), and after bumming a smoke from two other tourists that were also staying the night (cigarette smoke keeps the mosquitoes away so don’t judge me), I tried to sleep. It was hard to do so however, since our door didn’t close or lock properly and outside the room I had just spotted with my headlamp the eye shine of a fairly large, tall, and fast moving animal. This unidentified mammal had not been afraid by me shining the light in its eyes; quite the contrary, it had been aroused by my presence and it had begun to move closer towards me at a quick pace. My response was to swallow the toothpaste I was using at the time to brush my teeth, turn on my heels, and bolt for our room, closing behind me the defective door.
The next morning after surveying our “camp” in the light of day, I realized that although we had been told that we would be able to cook our own food, there was no stove. There was however, a cute little coal-burning low fire hole. Is it just me, or when someone tells you that people have the advantage of cooking their own meals, you would assume that they would provide means of cooking that is user friendly for tourists and not just for local Ghanaian people who cook their food on small coal-burning devices? In addition, the dishes they provided were still dirty from previous visitors. I found myself struggling to figure out how to start a tiny fire so I could heat up some water for a cup of tea. Forgive me but I haven’t done this as often as I should have while camping in Canada. I usually let other people, usually men, start the campfire. I don’t mean to be sexist but in my experiences camping, it often seemed like men are more eager to take on the responsibility of starting the fire pit. At this point in our mini vacation I was regretting my prior disinterest in starting campfires. After some time, I did receive help in making a cooking fire, from one of the tourist guides. He was also quite embarrassed about the dirty dishes... I guess it was his responsibility to see that the dishes were cleaned. When our own tourist guide arrived (later than he had promised the night before) to take care of our wildlife tours he came with shocking news. The river boat drivers had not been paid the month of July, and in the new month of August they refused to take tourists on any river safaris to see hippos! Katie and I were very disappointed and I was also very angry. We had come all this way... We decided to leave Wechiau immediately and to make the day-long trip back to BFMS. Although we managed to persuade the Wechiau Hippo Sanctuary committee to reimburse some of our money (not all), which we had spent on the room we slept in one night, there was still a lot of money we had spent on the transportation getting there and back. What’s more, I ended up getting a cold a few days later, most likely from a guy sitting next to me on one of our buses, who seemed very ill as he coughed the entire trip.
That evening, we were glad to be back to our home away from home at Boabeng-Fiema Monkey Sanctuary. Although we didn’t get the kind of break we were hoping for, our attempted mini vacation did make us more thankful for the kind of lifestyle we lead here at BFMS. At least we have electricity (most of the time), a little gas stove, and no mice sharing our beds! We were relieved and happy to be going back to the forest and the next few days seemed like a nice vacation compared to our hippo trip from hell.
The next morning after surveying our “camp” in the light of day, I realized that although we had been told that we would be able to cook our own food, there was no stove. There was however, a cute little coal-burning low fire hole. Is it just me, or when someone tells you that people have the advantage of cooking their own meals, you would assume that they would provide means of cooking that is user friendly for tourists and not just for local Ghanaian people who cook their food on small coal-burning devices? In addition, the dishes they provided were still dirty from previous visitors. I found myself struggling to figure out how to start a tiny fire so I could heat up some water for a cup of tea. Forgive me but I haven’t done this as often as I should have while camping in Canada. I usually let other people, usually men, start the campfire. I don’t mean to be sexist but in my experiences camping, it often seemed like men are more eager to take on the responsibility of starting the fire pit. At this point in our mini vacation I was regretting my prior disinterest in starting campfires. After some time, I did receive help in making a cooking fire, from one of the tourist guides. He was also quite embarrassed about the dirty dishes... I guess it was his responsibility to see that the dishes were cleaned. When our own tourist guide arrived (later than he had promised the night before) to take care of our wildlife tours he came with shocking news. The river boat drivers had not been paid the month of July, and in the new month of August they refused to take tourists on any river safaris to see hippos! Katie and I were very disappointed and I was also very angry. We had come all this way... We decided to leave Wechiau immediately and to make the day-long trip back to BFMS. Although we managed to persuade the Wechiau Hippo Sanctuary committee to reimburse some of our money (not all), which we had spent on the room we slept in one night, there was still a lot of money we had spent on the transportation getting there and back. What’s more, I ended up getting a cold a few days later, most likely from a guy sitting next to me on one of our buses, who seemed very ill as he coughed the entire trip.
That evening, we were glad to be back to our home away from home at Boabeng-Fiema Monkey Sanctuary. Although we didn’t get the kind of break we were hoping for, our attempted mini vacation did make us more thankful for the kind of lifestyle we lead here at BFMS. At least we have electricity (most of the time), a little gas stove, and no mice sharing our beds! We were relieved and happy to be going back to the forest and the next few days seemed like a nice vacation compared to our hippo trip from hell.
Theodore Roosevelt Reincarnated
Weeks after two of my study infants (Obama and Remus) were killed by infanticidal males, I was still feeling pretty low. Honestly, I had not expected that I would be this affected by the death of two monkeys (they are only animals after all... but then again, so are we), and I was having a hard time trying to cope with all that I had seen. For a few weeks I had unpleasant dreams about what happened. Even during the day, while running or while following monkeys in the forest, my mind often wandered to flash-back images from those few days; me cutting into Obama’s tiny body with a razor when I collected the tissue sample, watching the infants struggle to hang on to their mothers while travelling, watching them fall from trees, etc. I am actually quite baffled by the extent of my reaction to all of this... Even as I write this blog and I bring back some of those memories (almost a month after the infanticide) my tear ducts are still struggling to remain tearless. How pathetic eh? To use one of Katie’s favourite sayings, “I need to get my shit together”! Lol
In addition to the emotional repercussions, the infanticidal deaths also negatively affected my study. For the purposes of my Masters project, the infanticide had seriously hurt my infant sample size. Without Obama and Remus, I was left with just two smaller grey infants in group Odum (Kante and Nietzsche) and three older black-and-white infants in Wawa (Chomsky, Marx and Imanishi). By late July, no new infants had been born and I was beginning to panic a little bit. However, it seems that the local deity, god Dowarro of Boabeng and Fiema had answered our prayers because on July 30th we found a brand-spankin’ new infant in group Odum. He must have just been born the night before because he was rather pinkish in colour than white, and his eyes hadn’t even opened yet! Katie was the first to spot the little guy. I immediately began jumping around, hugging Katie, and making a lot of unnecessary noise, which likely would have scared all the monkeys away had we been watching a less habituated group, and had I not noticed my irrational behaviour and subdued my ecstatic outburst in time. Since the new infant’s mother is named Trotter, a name starting with the letter T and following the current name theme (spiritual, political, philosophical, anthropological critical thinkers) needed to be chosen for the new baby. Katie suggested Theodore Roosevelt and I always liked the name Teddy, so the new ursine colobus monkey baby was baptised Teddy Roosevelt. We have been collecting behavioural data on Teddy for the past three weeks now. His mother is quite skittish and Teddy is sometimes hard to see because Trotter spooks easily and hides from us more often than other colobus mothers have done in the past. Teddy is already growing so quickly! A bit of his fur has started turning grey (around his mouth, ears, eyes, and on the top of his arms and legs) but he is still predominantly white and – in an extraterrestrial sort of way – he is cute as a button!
In addition to the emotional repercussions, the infanticidal deaths also negatively affected my study. For the purposes of my Masters project, the infanticide had seriously hurt my infant sample size. Without Obama and Remus, I was left with just two smaller grey infants in group Odum (Kante and Nietzsche) and three older black-and-white infants in Wawa (Chomsky, Marx and Imanishi). By late July, no new infants had been born and I was beginning to panic a little bit. However, it seems that the local deity, god Dowarro of Boabeng and Fiema had answered our prayers because on July 30th we found a brand-spankin’ new infant in group Odum. He must have just been born the night before because he was rather pinkish in colour than white, and his eyes hadn’t even opened yet! Katie was the first to spot the little guy. I immediately began jumping around, hugging Katie, and making a lot of unnecessary noise, which likely would have scared all the monkeys away had we been watching a less habituated group, and had I not noticed my irrational behaviour and subdued my ecstatic outburst in time. Since the new infant’s mother is named Trotter, a name starting with the letter T and following the current name theme (spiritual, political, philosophical, anthropological critical thinkers) needed to be chosen for the new baby. Katie suggested Theodore Roosevelt and I always liked the name Teddy, so the new ursine colobus monkey baby was baptised Teddy Roosevelt. We have been collecting behavioural data on Teddy for the past three weeks now. His mother is quite skittish and Teddy is sometimes hard to see because Trotter spooks easily and hides from us more often than other colobus mothers have done in the past. Teddy is already growing so quickly! A bit of his fur has started turning grey (around his mouth, ears, eyes, and on the top of his arms and legs) but he is still predominantly white and – in an extraterrestrial sort of way – he is cute as a button!
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Tragedy in Three Acts
Act I: Deforestation
While Katie and I were watching group Odum earlier this week, we heard loud chainsaw noises coming from the other end of Odum’s home range. Naturally, we went to that area of the forest to investigate, and what we found was devastating. An entire section of Odum’s home range (important food trees and sleep trees) was being cut down! Enormously high, beautiful, old trees were tumbling to the ground and within just a few hours there was nothing left except lumber and scattered wilting leaves... It must have taken those trees many years to grown so majestic. Just like that, there was nothing. You see, this section of trees was not technically part of the main forest. There was a small unpaved road that separated the main forest from these trees, and group Odum did not have trouble crossing from the forest to this smaller fragment to spend days feeding or nights sleeping there. Apparently, the chief of Boabeng and the chairman of the tourism committee promoted this act of deforestation despite them knowing that several groups of monkeys, including one of my study groups, live there. This was done on the basis that the small forest fragment was on private land and it now needed to be used for other purposes... to build a junior high school beside the existing elementary school. Now hold on a minute! Before you say “well people are important too and a school is certainly something that could be worth cutting down trees for”, let me just say a few things. First, there is a lot of free space to build a junior high all around the main part of the school where the elementary grades already exist, and around where the forest fragment was. Second, these people already have several schools for elementary, junior high, and high school students. I’m not sure why they needed another one... kids don’t learn much anyways and they struggle to learn basic English (most don’t speak a word of it). The level of education here is really what they need to spend money on, not on erecting new buildings where students can get more of a bad education. Third, this devastating act of deforestation actually stems from a never-ending rivalry between the villages of Boabeng and Fiema, which I won’t bore you with but which basically causes each of these villages to want to cut down one another’s trees for land development. Good luck to them! If they keep this up, soon they will have no more trees, no more monkeys, no more tourism, and no more money at all to construct schools and other buildings. I know I am speaking entirely from a western viewpoint... I mean, what do I really know about Ghanaian life and about what people really need here? I’m just a spoiled Romanian-born Canadian who knows nothing about lacking basic needs, like many people do here. However, what they are doing is not only very sad for the monkeys, but it bad business sense. People here rely on tourism from the monkeys, but they lack the common sense to think towards the future well being of their main resource. They honestly think that cutting down trees will not affect the colobus or monas at all. “There are plenty of trees” they say... “They will just move to the other ones to feed and sleep”. Local people don’t realize that, having lost places to eat, Odum will soon begin moving into the home ranges of other groups, males will fight, and monkeys may die.
The next day, it broke my heart watching the confusion on the faces of the Odum colobus monkeys as they stood in their former forest fragment where they expected to find food and shelter, only to find a catastrophe; a tree massacre...
Act II: Infanticide gets Obama
Since late May, when I began observing the new-born white infants of groups B2 and Odum, I have seen some crazy shit (pardon my French but I feel that this phrase applies perfectly in this case). The most surprising of all the things I have observed, have to do with the high amounts of negative and aggressive infant handling that I have seen females and males perform. Biting, cuffing, nipping, hitting, pushing, grabbing and pulling too hard, kicking etc., and these little guys have endured all, and preserved. I’ve watched my study infants daily over the past few months. From a distance, I have seen them turn from white, to grey, to almost black and white, I have watched them learn how – and with whom – it is appropriate to interact and I have noticed them develop particular personalities and behavioural tendencies. Due to my observations and to my obsessive passion with primatology, I’m aware that I have grown to love Obama, Remus, Nietzsche, and Kante more than any sane human primate ever should. So you can imagine how devastating it is to watch, not just one, but two of these little guys whom I love dearly, die under the circumstances of infanticidal attacks by a colobus male.
Infanticide, which occurs in many species such as lions, is an adaptive strategy that occurs in the ursine colobus monkeys at BFMS. Sometimes, when a new male ousts the old male in a group and takes over as the alpha, he may kill all of the young infants sired by the previous male so that he can mate with the infants’ mothers sooner. Breastfeeding inhibits ovulation, so while a female has a baby that is still nursing, the new male is not able to mate with her and spread his seeds. In a species such as the ursine colobus monkey, in which male-male competition for females is high, the new male doesn’t have time to wait for the females to raise their young, wean them, and then begin ovulating. From an adaptive perspective, it is in the new male’s best interest to kill off the small infants of the previous alpha so that he can have his own offspring faster... otherwise, who knows if he would get the opportunity later on.
The first attack on an infant actually occurred while Katie and I were doing a focal animal sample, which is sort of lucky actually (in a twisted “good for my data collection” sort of way) as such rare events as infanticide are rarely captured during an actual focal sample. Before the attack, Obama (who turned out to be a female and who was named before her sex could be visibly determined) was being held by his mom while also being ‘approached interactively’ (i.e. touched, groomed, peered at) by her bigger brother Oahu. This was an ordinary scene and one that I often observed daily, as Oahu, who is a playful and cute juvenile male, was often interested in interacting with – and in holding – his baby sister. This particular scenario however turned horribly wrong when a colobus male came bounding towards them from the right side of the branch on which they were sitting, snatched Obama aggressively, and bit her tiny body on the back of her head and spine. The male’s entire mouth had literally encapsulated the small figure of Obama; the tiny thing didn’t even have time to squeal. The scene was intensified by the fact that little Oahu, Ophelia (the baby’s mom), and two other adult females who were in proximity jumped on the male’s back and began biting, grabbing, and fighting him, in an attempt to save baby Obama. A second or two later, the male dropped the infant (who fell more than 20 meters to the ground). Seconds after that the male also dropped to the ground as contact fighting from the other monkeys caused him to lose his balance and crash to the forest floor. In a state of what I assume was complete shock and despair, Ophelia jumped down from the tree and went to retrieve her infant, who was still alive but barely. For a few moments Obama looked dead; there was blood all over her back and her tiny head was tilted limply to the side. When she came to, it was evident that although little Obama had not died immediately from the attack she would not make a recovery. Her body was left paralyzed from the arms down, she could only just hold on to her mother’s fur to be carried, and her bite wound was deep (it nearly reached halfway through her torso!).
Katie and I watched Obama for the rest of the day and for 2 days after that continuously (when the forest conditions permitted it). I can honestly say these days have been the hardest for me to endure. I’m surprised Katie could even understand what I was dictating to her during our focal samples, amidst my sobbing and crying! Each focal had some sort of horrifying event. Obama, not being able to move and being left by his mother alone many times (she was annoyingly stupid in how she chose to care for her crippled infant) fell from 30 meter high trees and hitting several branches on the way down. Sometimes she could hang from branches with her tiny hands, but after a while she would get tired and she was too weak to stay like that for long and she would slip and fall! Ophelia tried holding her as much as possible, but it was evident that after a while she was torn between feeding herself (it was hard foraging while holding Obama) and taking care of her completely dependent infant. Ophelia even rejected and pushed Obama away from her once while she was feeding, only to retrieve her baby 30 seconds later when she remembered that Obama was crippled and needed to be held at all times. Allomothering, which could have allowed Ophelia some free time to feed, kind of stopped after the infanticidal incident occurred. Although there was some interest in the baby, no one tried to allomother. I am aware that this is only my own personal interpretation of what I saw, but the others seemed a little freaked out by the crippled baby, who was almost always whimpering and crying. This was the other tough thing to handle; the constant distressed squeals emitted by Obama, which only intensified when Ophelia carried her from place to place. Due to her inability to use her legs to grasp on to Ophelia’s belly, Obama’s little body kept dangling down, off of her mother’s torso, hitting every branch on which Ophelia would walk or jump on.
Katie and I were watching Obama when she died… in her mother’s arms during a peaceful resting session. When it was time for the group to move on to another area of the forest, and Ophelia got up to start travelling, Obama just fell off her torso. The infant hit two branches on the way down. I burst into tears at this point. It was one of the most excruciatingly painful things I have ever seen. Ophelia did not leave her baby for several hours. She kept going to Obama, then moving a bit towards her group, then back down to the ground where her baby was lying. Finally it got really dark and she began to panic and kept fidgeting about the branches of the tree above her baby. She also started to emit these weird noises that I have never heard a colobus monkey make… low, drawn out grunts. In the darkness they had a haunting quality about them that I now wish I could erase from my memory. But I can’t … I will never forget any of this. When it was pitch black, her fear got the better of her and she went to spend the night with her group a few hundred meters away.
I know I may sound a bit melodramatic; some might say “they are only animals after all”. However, we are also animals and colobus monkeys are our close relatives. When I look in their eyes, I recognize a bit of myself in them. It is almost like looking at and communicating with another human being. It is clear to me that these monkeys possess a level cognition that is higher than just primal instinct. I know they aren’t human beings and they may not have a consciousness like we do, but they certainly aren’t like dogs, cats etc. There is something more in their intelligence that creeps me out sometimes… they understand things and I even feel like they know me. These tiny infants, whom I love dearly, mean as much to me as any human baby ever has (obviously I do not have children).
In the morning, at 6 am, Ophelia was back with Obama, and this time she was there with the baby’s father (Don Quixote) as well, while the rest of the group was still several hundred meters away. I thought the fact that Don Quixote had joined Ophelia on her return was very sweet. The paternal instinct is always given much less credit that the maternal instinct. Although Don Quixote could have been there for a few other reasons than just to watch over Obama or to provide support for the grieving mother, I chose to believe that he was also mourning the loss of his baby girl.
After more than 20 hours, Ophelia finally left Obama’s body. Katie and I waited another hour or so before we went closer to search for it. I needed to cut in with sterile razor blades and get tissue samples from the thigh muscles so that we could send them to the genetics lab in Iowa where my colleagues are working! An opportunity to get actual tissue from a monkey is very rare, and a chance like this should not be passed. I tried to set aside my emotional mambo jumbo and I managed get what we needed… I am a little scarred by the experience though. Later, we called the Fetish Priest of Boabeng village so that he could take the baby’s body away and bury it in the BFMS Monkey Cemetery as is the local custom. I wonder if he thought that the cuts on either side of the baby’s thigh seemed unusual…
Act III: Infanticide gets Remus
Remus, the other small infant in group B2 was also attacked by an infanticidal male the day after Obama’s attack. Katie and I were not present for it this time. After reading Act II, you are probably not keen on hearing any more details about a dying colobus infant. I will say, that much like Obama, Remus is also paralyzed from the waist down but he seems a bit more mobile. Remus can move her arms and hold on better to her mother Roxy than Obama could with Ophelia. I’m not getting my hopes up or anything; it is unlikely that Remus will live for much longer, although it would be super cool if she survived despite her paralysis and learned to live independently as a crippled colobus monkey for many years. I bet tourism at Boabeng-Fiema Monkey Sanctuary would skyrocket, as everyone would just have to see Remus the Crippled Colobus in action! However, she is still too little and too dependent on Roxy to support herself. Sometimes Remus’ mom is a little smarter than Ophelia was; she places Remus between branches or in the crotches of trees so that she Remus can support herself with her arms and head. Other times Roxy is completely clueless and lets Remus hang there for 15-20 minutes before the baby gets tired, slips, and falls from the tree. Ugh! I cringe even thinking about this. Yesterday, in order to feed without her encumbering crippled infant, Roxy placed Remus on an inclined palm frond. Naturally, as Remus wriggled about and cried she began slipping… she rolled down the palm frond and fell 30 meters to the ground. Roxy freaked out in surprise and retrieved her baby immediately but I wonder how many more times she will do that before a fall will be fatal! The saddest part for me is that I will basically have to wait and find out. I will keep watching Remus as I must continue collecting data until that fateful day.
While Katie and I were watching group Odum earlier this week, we heard loud chainsaw noises coming from the other end of Odum’s home range. Naturally, we went to that area of the forest to investigate, and what we found was devastating. An entire section of Odum’s home range (important food trees and sleep trees) was being cut down! Enormously high, beautiful, old trees were tumbling to the ground and within just a few hours there was nothing left except lumber and scattered wilting leaves... It must have taken those trees many years to grown so majestic. Just like that, there was nothing. You see, this section of trees was not technically part of the main forest. There was a small unpaved road that separated the main forest from these trees, and group Odum did not have trouble crossing from the forest to this smaller fragment to spend days feeding or nights sleeping there. Apparently, the chief of Boabeng and the chairman of the tourism committee promoted this act of deforestation despite them knowing that several groups of monkeys, including one of my study groups, live there. This was done on the basis that the small forest fragment was on private land and it now needed to be used for other purposes... to build a junior high school beside the existing elementary school. Now hold on a minute! Before you say “well people are important too and a school is certainly something that could be worth cutting down trees for”, let me just say a few things. First, there is a lot of free space to build a junior high all around the main part of the school where the elementary grades already exist, and around where the forest fragment was. Second, these people already have several schools for elementary, junior high, and high school students. I’m not sure why they needed another one... kids don’t learn much anyways and they struggle to learn basic English (most don’t speak a word of it). The level of education here is really what they need to spend money on, not on erecting new buildings where students can get more of a bad education. Third, this devastating act of deforestation actually stems from a never-ending rivalry between the villages of Boabeng and Fiema, which I won’t bore you with but which basically causes each of these villages to want to cut down one another’s trees for land development. Good luck to them! If they keep this up, soon they will have no more trees, no more monkeys, no more tourism, and no more money at all to construct schools and other buildings. I know I am speaking entirely from a western viewpoint... I mean, what do I really know about Ghanaian life and about what people really need here? I’m just a spoiled Romanian-born Canadian who knows nothing about lacking basic needs, like many people do here. However, what they are doing is not only very sad for the monkeys, but it bad business sense. People here rely on tourism from the monkeys, but they lack the common sense to think towards the future well being of their main resource. They honestly think that cutting down trees will not affect the colobus or monas at all. “There are plenty of trees” they say... “They will just move to the other ones to feed and sleep”. Local people don’t realize that, having lost places to eat, Odum will soon begin moving into the home ranges of other groups, males will fight, and monkeys may die.
The next day, it broke my heart watching the confusion on the faces of the Odum colobus monkeys as they stood in their former forest fragment where they expected to find food and shelter, only to find a catastrophe; a tree massacre...
Act II: Infanticide gets Obama
Since late May, when I began observing the new-born white infants of groups B2 and Odum, I have seen some crazy shit (pardon my French but I feel that this phrase applies perfectly in this case). The most surprising of all the things I have observed, have to do with the high amounts of negative and aggressive infant handling that I have seen females and males perform. Biting, cuffing, nipping, hitting, pushing, grabbing and pulling too hard, kicking etc., and these little guys have endured all, and preserved. I’ve watched my study infants daily over the past few months. From a distance, I have seen them turn from white, to grey, to almost black and white, I have watched them learn how – and with whom – it is appropriate to interact and I have noticed them develop particular personalities and behavioural tendencies. Due to my observations and to my obsessive passion with primatology, I’m aware that I have grown to love Obama, Remus, Nietzsche, and Kante more than any sane human primate ever should. So you can imagine how devastating it is to watch, not just one, but two of these little guys whom I love dearly, die under the circumstances of infanticidal attacks by a colobus male.
Infanticide, which occurs in many species such as lions, is an adaptive strategy that occurs in the ursine colobus monkeys at BFMS. Sometimes, when a new male ousts the old male in a group and takes over as the alpha, he may kill all of the young infants sired by the previous male so that he can mate with the infants’ mothers sooner. Breastfeeding inhibits ovulation, so while a female has a baby that is still nursing, the new male is not able to mate with her and spread his seeds. In a species such as the ursine colobus monkey, in which male-male competition for females is high, the new male doesn’t have time to wait for the females to raise their young, wean them, and then begin ovulating. From an adaptive perspective, it is in the new male’s best interest to kill off the small infants of the previous alpha so that he can have his own offspring faster... otherwise, who knows if he would get the opportunity later on.
The first attack on an infant actually occurred while Katie and I were doing a focal animal sample, which is sort of lucky actually (in a twisted “good for my data collection” sort of way) as such rare events as infanticide are rarely captured during an actual focal sample. Before the attack, Obama (who turned out to be a female and who was named before her sex could be visibly determined) was being held by his mom while also being ‘approached interactively’ (i.e. touched, groomed, peered at) by her bigger brother Oahu. This was an ordinary scene and one that I often observed daily, as Oahu, who is a playful and cute juvenile male, was often interested in interacting with – and in holding – his baby sister. This particular scenario however turned horribly wrong when a colobus male came bounding towards them from the right side of the branch on which they were sitting, snatched Obama aggressively, and bit her tiny body on the back of her head and spine. The male’s entire mouth had literally encapsulated the small figure of Obama; the tiny thing didn’t even have time to squeal. The scene was intensified by the fact that little Oahu, Ophelia (the baby’s mom), and two other adult females who were in proximity jumped on the male’s back and began biting, grabbing, and fighting him, in an attempt to save baby Obama. A second or two later, the male dropped the infant (who fell more than 20 meters to the ground). Seconds after that the male also dropped to the ground as contact fighting from the other monkeys caused him to lose his balance and crash to the forest floor. In a state of what I assume was complete shock and despair, Ophelia jumped down from the tree and went to retrieve her infant, who was still alive but barely. For a few moments Obama looked dead; there was blood all over her back and her tiny head was tilted limply to the side. When she came to, it was evident that although little Obama had not died immediately from the attack she would not make a recovery. Her body was left paralyzed from the arms down, she could only just hold on to her mother’s fur to be carried, and her bite wound was deep (it nearly reached halfway through her torso!).
Katie and I watched Obama for the rest of the day and for 2 days after that continuously (when the forest conditions permitted it). I can honestly say these days have been the hardest for me to endure. I’m surprised Katie could even understand what I was dictating to her during our focal samples, amidst my sobbing and crying! Each focal had some sort of horrifying event. Obama, not being able to move and being left by his mother alone many times (she was annoyingly stupid in how she chose to care for her crippled infant) fell from 30 meter high trees and hitting several branches on the way down. Sometimes she could hang from branches with her tiny hands, but after a while she would get tired and she was too weak to stay like that for long and she would slip and fall! Ophelia tried holding her as much as possible, but it was evident that after a while she was torn between feeding herself (it was hard foraging while holding Obama) and taking care of her completely dependent infant. Ophelia even rejected and pushed Obama away from her once while she was feeding, only to retrieve her baby 30 seconds later when she remembered that Obama was crippled and needed to be held at all times. Allomothering, which could have allowed Ophelia some free time to feed, kind of stopped after the infanticidal incident occurred. Although there was some interest in the baby, no one tried to allomother. I am aware that this is only my own personal interpretation of what I saw, but the others seemed a little freaked out by the crippled baby, who was almost always whimpering and crying. This was the other tough thing to handle; the constant distressed squeals emitted by Obama, which only intensified when Ophelia carried her from place to place. Due to her inability to use her legs to grasp on to Ophelia’s belly, Obama’s little body kept dangling down, off of her mother’s torso, hitting every branch on which Ophelia would walk or jump on.
Katie and I were watching Obama when she died… in her mother’s arms during a peaceful resting session. When it was time for the group to move on to another area of the forest, and Ophelia got up to start travelling, Obama just fell off her torso. The infant hit two branches on the way down. I burst into tears at this point. It was one of the most excruciatingly painful things I have ever seen. Ophelia did not leave her baby for several hours. She kept going to Obama, then moving a bit towards her group, then back down to the ground where her baby was lying. Finally it got really dark and she began to panic and kept fidgeting about the branches of the tree above her baby. She also started to emit these weird noises that I have never heard a colobus monkey make… low, drawn out grunts. In the darkness they had a haunting quality about them that I now wish I could erase from my memory. But I can’t … I will never forget any of this. When it was pitch black, her fear got the better of her and she went to spend the night with her group a few hundred meters away.
I know I may sound a bit melodramatic; some might say “they are only animals after all”. However, we are also animals and colobus monkeys are our close relatives. When I look in their eyes, I recognize a bit of myself in them. It is almost like looking at and communicating with another human being. It is clear to me that these monkeys possess a level cognition that is higher than just primal instinct. I know they aren’t human beings and they may not have a consciousness like we do, but they certainly aren’t like dogs, cats etc. There is something more in their intelligence that creeps me out sometimes… they understand things and I even feel like they know me. These tiny infants, whom I love dearly, mean as much to me as any human baby ever has (obviously I do not have children).
In the morning, at 6 am, Ophelia was back with Obama, and this time she was there with the baby’s father (Don Quixote) as well, while the rest of the group was still several hundred meters away. I thought the fact that Don Quixote had joined Ophelia on her return was very sweet. The paternal instinct is always given much less credit that the maternal instinct. Although Don Quixote could have been there for a few other reasons than just to watch over Obama or to provide support for the grieving mother, I chose to believe that he was also mourning the loss of his baby girl.
After more than 20 hours, Ophelia finally left Obama’s body. Katie and I waited another hour or so before we went closer to search for it. I needed to cut in with sterile razor blades and get tissue samples from the thigh muscles so that we could send them to the genetics lab in Iowa where my colleagues are working! An opportunity to get actual tissue from a monkey is very rare, and a chance like this should not be passed. I tried to set aside my emotional mambo jumbo and I managed get what we needed… I am a little scarred by the experience though. Later, we called the Fetish Priest of Boabeng village so that he could take the baby’s body away and bury it in the BFMS Monkey Cemetery as is the local custom. I wonder if he thought that the cuts on either side of the baby’s thigh seemed unusual…
Act III: Infanticide gets Remus
Remus, the other small infant in group B2 was also attacked by an infanticidal male the day after Obama’s attack. Katie and I were not present for it this time. After reading Act II, you are probably not keen on hearing any more details about a dying colobus infant. I will say, that much like Obama, Remus is also paralyzed from the waist down but he seems a bit more mobile. Remus can move her arms and hold on better to her mother Roxy than Obama could with Ophelia. I’m not getting my hopes up or anything; it is unlikely that Remus will live for much longer, although it would be super cool if she survived despite her paralysis and learned to live independently as a crippled colobus monkey for many years. I bet tourism at Boabeng-Fiema Monkey Sanctuary would skyrocket, as everyone would just have to see Remus the Crippled Colobus in action! However, she is still too little and too dependent on Roxy to support herself. Sometimes Remus’ mom is a little smarter than Ophelia was; she places Remus between branches or in the crotches of trees so that she Remus can support herself with her arms and head. Other times Roxy is completely clueless and lets Remus hang there for 15-20 minutes before the baby gets tired, slips, and falls from the tree. Ugh! I cringe even thinking about this. Yesterday, in order to feed without her encumbering crippled infant, Roxy placed Remus on an inclined palm frond. Naturally, as Remus wriggled about and cried she began slipping… she rolled down the palm frond and fell 30 meters to the ground. Roxy freaked out in surprise and retrieved her baby immediately but I wonder how many more times she will do that before a fall will be fatal! The saddest part for me is that I will basically have to wait and find out. I will keep watching Remus as I must continue collecting data until that fateful day.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Katie’s Bad Luck Streak (or Katie is “La Chevre”)
In the forest today (June 28), Katie got attacked by a swarm of wild wasps. This happened while we were both trying to locate Gangster’s feces, a juvenile male monkey in group B2 who had just defecated at the base of a tall tree, which apparently was home for a hive of wild African wasps. Evidently, Katie and I have no twisted desire to look for colobus crap - we need Gangster’s pooh for fecal samples which we can later analyze in the genetics lab. As we searched blindly for a tiny brown blob amongst a blanket of wilted brown leaves and brown dirt and brown twigs, in poor light conditions (yes, the old expression “it’s like looking for a needle in a hay stack” applies here) Katie began shaking her head, flailing her arms around, and screaming like a crazy person – or like someone who was being stung by angry wasps. As we both fled away from the bee-hosting-tree as fast as our obruni legs would take us, the monkeys above our head were equally shocked at the sudden outburst. They panicked, we panicked, the wasps panicked, and several minutes later I was trying to pick out the remaining wasps out of Katie’s hair and watching the spots where she was stung get redder and more swollen by the second. She later told me that she could hear their buzzing around her head and that they all began to sting her when she tried swatting them away.
The strange thing is that I wasn’t stung once by the angry bees… Either I have very good luck or Katie has incredibly bad luck (first she sprained her ankle at the post office, and then she had malaria and now this “incident”). Maybe she’s like the guy in that French movie “La Chevre” who only has horrible luck in everything he does, with comical results and hilarious consequences. At least Katie can laugh through it all and continue to stay positive each day. Pretty admirable I think!
The strange thing is that I wasn’t stung once by the angry bees… Either I have very good luck or Katie has incredibly bad luck (first she sprained her ankle at the post office, and then she had malaria and now this “incident”). Maybe she’s like the guy in that French movie “La Chevre” who only has horrible luck in everything he does, with comical results and hilarious consequences. At least Katie can laugh through it all and continue to stay positive each day. Pretty admirable I think!
Market and Eggs and Malaria … Oh My!
In the past few years, many of the researchers that have worked at BFMS for more than a few months at a time have gotten malaria at some point during their stay, despite taking antimalarial medication. Local people here seem to have malaria often – I think it’s like their equivalent of our seasonal flu or cold, except when one has malaria your whole body is in excruciating pain, your guts feel like they are being ripped out of your body, your joints are inflamed and achy so that you can’t move, and the idea of death starts seeming like a sweet finale… or so I’ve heard from people who have had malaria in the past.
You may be wondering from the title of this blog post what malaria sickness has anything to do with eggs or market day (the jolliest time of the week). I’ll get straight to the point and fill in the details after. Katie, the best research assistant in the world, got sick with malaria. Her symptoms (all of those wonderful things I mentioned above) manifested themselves in the tro-tro, on our way back from market last Tuesday. As I write this post and as I search for the words to describe the events that occurred just a few days ago, I am baffled by the ridiculousness of the whole scenario. As usual, the actual shopping part of the market was stuffy, smelly and hot. Katie and I did our groceries for the week, we ate some baked yam from a lady selling them on the side of the road (eating street food can be ‘sketchy’ but baked yams are usually ok), we used the internet for a few hours, and then got on a tro-tro heading back to the villages of Boabeng and Fiema. A few minutes into the incredibly bumpy ride, in the tro-tro packed with way too many sweaty people, a few of the eggs I was carrying in my shopping bag broke and made a giant mess, dripping on people’s legs and clothing the entire way home. A lady in front of me started shouting in twii, telling me I have to wash her skirt. As I was frantically apologizing for my mess and reassuring her that I would personally wash the tiny spot on which some of the egg juice had stained her skirt, Katie began vomiting in her backpack. She was so quiet about it that I didn’t even notice until a minute or so after she began puking. Assuming Katie was car sick, I immediately began shouting and bickering with the tro-tro driver to slow down and to stop driving like a mad man. “Yes, yes” I told him, “I know there is a soccer game on in a few minutes, but my friend is feeling very sick”! He did not slow down. Katie kept vomiting and laughing in between each hurling bout. Katie did not stop vomiting - although she did stop laughing when she got too exhausted – for several hours.
Aside: This is one of the things Katie and I have in common; we both laugh during 90% of all situations, even during the most inappropriate of times. The way I see it, it’s either laugh or cry and I prefer to seem crazy laughing, than pathetic crying. Let’s just say I did a lot of laughing the rest of this day.
We later tried to figure out how many times she puked in 8 or so hours and we counted between 16 to 20 times! The entire tro-tro ride, Katie puked inside her backpack. Many of our vegetables were covered in partially digested yam, but we cleaned these off and still used them for cooking that week. LOL The entire 15 minute walk, Katie puked every few minutes on the side of the road. For a few hours at the guest house, Katie puked on the ledge of the stone deck by the stairs. Katie vomited so much that she turned green and began sweating to the point where she looked like she had just walked out of a swimming pool. Well, you can imagine that by this point I was pretty worried (yup, I’m a bright one), and I decided to charter the brand new/used BFMS van to rush Katie to the hospital in Nkoranza. When I say rushed, I mean Ghana time rushed. We still waited for the driver to get dressed, come down to the guesthouse, do some random repairs on the “new” van and fill various tubes with water and oil etc. All the while I was laughing like a psycho, which I could tell was making the Ghanaians around me quite uncomfortable, but at least Katie understood.
I considered that maybe the yam she ate was bad but I had 2 pieces and she had 1 and I was fine and dandy. I know I have a well trained and durable Romanian stomach but given her state I thought that I should at least have some indigestion… a bit of gas or something… So my next thought was “maybe Katie has malaria” … and she did!
After waiting several hours in lines full of sick Ghanaian people while Katie continued to vomit her guts out, after Katie being diagnosed with having gastrointestinal malaria, and after arguing with the doctor about not wanting IVs (we are both worried about re-used needles and AIDS, which is fairly prevalent all over Africa) we finally got the medications necessary to treat her strain of malaria. Back at the guesthouse that night, Katie managed to keep down her pills and to get some much needed sleep - for a few hours at least because she vomited a few more times late in the night.
All I can say is that she was very, very brave. What a good sport! Just a few days later she is feeling much better, and she is back in the forest with me, watching monkeys. I am very impressed with Katie. I only hope that I could deal with malaria as well as she did, if ever were I to catch it in the future (knock on wood).
You may be wondering from the title of this blog post what malaria sickness has anything to do with eggs or market day (the jolliest time of the week). I’ll get straight to the point and fill in the details after. Katie, the best research assistant in the world, got sick with malaria. Her symptoms (all of those wonderful things I mentioned above) manifested themselves in the tro-tro, on our way back from market last Tuesday. As I write this post and as I search for the words to describe the events that occurred just a few days ago, I am baffled by the ridiculousness of the whole scenario. As usual, the actual shopping part of the market was stuffy, smelly and hot. Katie and I did our groceries for the week, we ate some baked yam from a lady selling them on the side of the road (eating street food can be ‘sketchy’ but baked yams are usually ok), we used the internet for a few hours, and then got on a tro-tro heading back to the villages of Boabeng and Fiema. A few minutes into the incredibly bumpy ride, in the tro-tro packed with way too many sweaty people, a few of the eggs I was carrying in my shopping bag broke and made a giant mess, dripping on people’s legs and clothing the entire way home. A lady in front of me started shouting in twii, telling me I have to wash her skirt. As I was frantically apologizing for my mess and reassuring her that I would personally wash the tiny spot on which some of the egg juice had stained her skirt, Katie began vomiting in her backpack. She was so quiet about it that I didn’t even notice until a minute or so after she began puking. Assuming Katie was car sick, I immediately began shouting and bickering with the tro-tro driver to slow down and to stop driving like a mad man. “Yes, yes” I told him, “I know there is a soccer game on in a few minutes, but my friend is feeling very sick”! He did not slow down. Katie kept vomiting and laughing in between each hurling bout. Katie did not stop vomiting - although she did stop laughing when she got too exhausted – for several hours.
Aside: This is one of the things Katie and I have in common; we both laugh during 90% of all situations, even during the most inappropriate of times. The way I see it, it’s either laugh or cry and I prefer to seem crazy laughing, than pathetic crying. Let’s just say I did a lot of laughing the rest of this day.
We later tried to figure out how many times she puked in 8 or so hours and we counted between 16 to 20 times! The entire tro-tro ride, Katie puked inside her backpack. Many of our vegetables were covered in partially digested yam, but we cleaned these off and still used them for cooking that week. LOL The entire 15 minute walk, Katie puked every few minutes on the side of the road. For a few hours at the guest house, Katie puked on the ledge of the stone deck by the stairs. Katie vomited so much that she turned green and began sweating to the point where she looked like she had just walked out of a swimming pool. Well, you can imagine that by this point I was pretty worried (yup, I’m a bright one), and I decided to charter the brand new/used BFMS van to rush Katie to the hospital in Nkoranza. When I say rushed, I mean Ghana time rushed. We still waited for the driver to get dressed, come down to the guesthouse, do some random repairs on the “new” van and fill various tubes with water and oil etc. All the while I was laughing like a psycho, which I could tell was making the Ghanaians around me quite uncomfortable, but at least Katie understood.
I considered that maybe the yam she ate was bad but I had 2 pieces and she had 1 and I was fine and dandy. I know I have a well trained and durable Romanian stomach but given her state I thought that I should at least have some indigestion… a bit of gas or something… So my next thought was “maybe Katie has malaria” … and she did!
After waiting several hours in lines full of sick Ghanaian people while Katie continued to vomit her guts out, after Katie being diagnosed with having gastrointestinal malaria, and after arguing with the doctor about not wanting IVs (we are both worried about re-used needles and AIDS, which is fairly prevalent all over Africa) we finally got the medications necessary to treat her strain of malaria. Back at the guesthouse that night, Katie managed to keep down her pills and to get some much needed sleep - for a few hours at least because she vomited a few more times late in the night.
All I can say is that she was very, very brave. What a good sport! Just a few days later she is feeling much better, and she is back in the forest with me, watching monkeys. I am very impressed with Katie. I only hope that I could deal with malaria as well as she did, if ever were I to catch it in the future (knock on wood).
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