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).
Confessions
#1: Although I’ve been a vegetarian for about 11 years, I would consider giving that up if it meant that the world’s most annoying asshole rooster would be gone from the BFMS guesthouse. I dream about personally cutting off his head and eating the damn bird, just to put an end to his daily cockadoodledoo-ing ritual at 5am!
#2: I have a tiny crush on my attractive and charming Ghanaian field assistant. I admire his work ethic, his blunt sense of humor, his ability to chuckle after every third or fourth thing he says, and the fact that he needs Sundays off work to go to church (an all-day ordeal around here). Also, he is quite soothing on the eyes, which makes going into the forest each day just a little bit nicer. He’s like the cherry on top of our monkey cake. Katie thinks he’s hot too, so it isn’t just me this time (my taste in men has been questioned by some people in the past).
#2: I have a tiny crush on my attractive and charming Ghanaian field assistant. I admire his work ethic, his blunt sense of humor, his ability to chuckle after every third or fourth thing he says, and the fact that he needs Sundays off work to go to church (an all-day ordeal around here). Also, he is quite soothing on the eyes, which makes going into the forest each day just a little bit nicer. He’s like the cherry on top of our monkey cake. Katie thinks he’s hot too, so it isn’t just me this time (my taste in men has been questioned by some people in the past).
Ewww ... What is Nietzsche doing? We need a code for that!
Each day in the field I am surprised by the astounding behaviors I see my little monkey friends do! First, I had expected that infant handling in this species would be much friendlier and more affiliative than I have witnessed in the past few months. Although most of the time it is quite nice, as young and adult females frequently hold each others’ babies in a caring manner, I have also seen some very aggressive behaviors preformed by adult males and females towards young colobus babies. On several occasions I witnessed adult females bite the heads of infants! I’ve also seen them cuff, nip, grab and pull harshly, kick, and hit young white and grey infants! Although I’ve seen Don Quixote hold baby Obama gently in his lap for almost a minute, he has also nipped and cuffed another infant (Remus) after which he practically forced Remus’ lactating mother to copulate with him! I know rape occurs in many primates, not just in our own species, it is still quite surprising to witness.
Secondly, although I need to confirm this with a heavy duty Scope lens, I’m certain that I’ve witnessed allonursing behaviors several times in one of my study groups. This is super cool to see as it isn’t all that common! Allonursing is when a lactating female nurses an infant that is not her own.
Thirdly, my ethogram (an exhaustive list of behavioral codes describing everything an observer should expect a colobus monkey to do) seems to lack codes for a few of the creepy and sometimes shocking social behaviors I am seeing:
We need a new code for that!
1. After an adult female aggressively bit the head of one my study infants (my heart stopped each time this ever happened and I wanted to lunge through the bushes towards the mean female … but I didn’t … of course), several juvenile monkeys took turns approaching the baby and licking his head, on the spot where he was bitten. This was sweet to witness but a bit puzzling as there wasn’t any visible sign of blood anywhere on the infant.
SU = Social Lick Head
2. On the other end of the biting spectrum, I have seen individual infant handlers playfully nibble and gently bite the body of young infants. This is cute to witness, but once again, I found I had not prepared a code for this affiliative interaction.
SZ = Social Nibble
3. When adult males jump display and try to show off their muscles and strength to other males, usually during inter-group encounters, infants tend to get incredibly excited. They jump on top of the raging males, waving their tails around like pinwheels and squealing like the pig on Christmas. It’s a strange for infants to do this because you would imagine that they frequently get injured in the process. The adaptive advantage of infants’ involvement in the dangerous jump displays of large males is not apparent to me. I thought that maybe those males that have the most infants to scream and make noise as they display would appear to be the most physically fit and reproductively successful to extra-group males, who may get intimidated by them …?? All in all infants look really dumb participating in this. On one occasion I did see a really funny thing. In between the jump-displaying bout of Gordon, the alpha male of group Odum, a small grey infant named Nietzsche jumped in his lap and began touching his face and mouth to his semi-erect penis. This lasted for several seconds and was repeated a few times by Nietzsche and as I watched with my mouth wide open in complete astonishment at what I was seeing, let alone try to make sense of it, I found that I did not have a behavioral code in my ethogram to describe this behavior.
SH = Social Head to Penis
Secondly, although I need to confirm this with a heavy duty Scope lens, I’m certain that I’ve witnessed allonursing behaviors several times in one of my study groups. This is super cool to see as it isn’t all that common! Allonursing is when a lactating female nurses an infant that is not her own.
Thirdly, my ethogram (an exhaustive list of behavioral codes describing everything an observer should expect a colobus monkey to do) seems to lack codes for a few of the creepy and sometimes shocking social behaviors I am seeing:
We need a new code for that!
1. After an adult female aggressively bit the head of one my study infants (my heart stopped each time this ever happened and I wanted to lunge through the bushes towards the mean female … but I didn’t … of course), several juvenile monkeys took turns approaching the baby and licking his head, on the spot where he was bitten. This was sweet to witness but a bit puzzling as there wasn’t any visible sign of blood anywhere on the infant.
SU = Social Lick Head
2. On the other end of the biting spectrum, I have seen individual infant handlers playfully nibble and gently bite the body of young infants. This is cute to witness, but once again, I found I had not prepared a code for this affiliative interaction.
SZ = Social Nibble
3. When adult males jump display and try to show off their muscles and strength to other males, usually during inter-group encounters, infants tend to get incredibly excited. They jump on top of the raging males, waving their tails around like pinwheels and squealing like the pig on Christmas. It’s a strange for infants to do this because you would imagine that they frequently get injured in the process. The adaptive advantage of infants’ involvement in the dangerous jump displays of large males is not apparent to me. I thought that maybe those males that have the most infants to scream and make noise as they display would appear to be the most physically fit and reproductively successful to extra-group males, who may get intimidated by them …?? All in all infants look really dumb participating in this. On one occasion I did see a really funny thing. In between the jump-displaying bout of Gordon, the alpha male of group Odum, a small grey infant named Nietzsche jumped in his lap and began touching his face and mouth to his semi-erect penis. This lasted for several seconds and was repeated a few times by Nietzsche and as I watched with my mouth wide open in complete astonishment at what I was seeing, let alone try to make sense of it, I found that I did not have a behavioral code in my ethogram to describe this behavior.
SH = Social Head to Penis
Don Quixote Shit on My Dictaphone
On one of the first official data collection days that Katie – my wonderful research assistant and new very good friend (we practically spend 24/7 together) – and I had in the field, we spent watching a notoriously hard to locate monkey group, B2. I love this group more than any of the other ones, mainly because most of its members are incredibly fluffy, have really fuzzy face ruff, and the juveniles are very playful. For example, I have seen Guam (a young juvie female) jump display on several occasions. Jump displaying is a “tough” behavior that is mainly performed by males who are showing off how scary and strong they are to other group and extra-group monkeys that are in the vicinity, whereby the monkey will jump with their limbs stiff from one branch to another, shaking leaves and making noise. Although Guam’s jump displays are more like a series of tiny hops that resemble the giddy bounce-bounce of a little Disney cartoon lamb, it was still impressive to see that she at least tried … even if her efforts were amusing rather than intimidating. Guam is also very curious about people. She is always one of the first monkeys to appear around us researchers when we arrive, and she often gazes and sticks around in the trees around us more than any of the other B2 monkeys. In addition to her distinctive B2 fuzzy face ruff, her bubbly brow is also slanted downwards on the sides, which makes her look constantly worried or concerned. She is cute as pie! She is also a very talented little infant handler … well at least she doesn’t drop any of the infants she holds, so that’s good!
On one of these first few observation days, we were in a hard to see area of B2’s range. The monkeys were fairly high up in the trees, right above our heads. I was trying frantically to indentify all of the individuals interacting with the focal infant, to see the behaviors performed and received by the infant, and to catch all of the approaches and leaves done by other monkeys towards the infant, amongst all the overlapping leaves and patches of dense foliage. Eeesh … just describing it makes my eyes squint, and my back, neck and arm muscles hurt as if I am pointing my binoculars straight up! During these first few days I was calling out behavioral codes to Katie while also recording them into my Dictaphone so that we could compare the two methods of data collection later in the evening. At some point during that day I had just completed a focal animal sample and I was trying to ID monkeys, when all of a sudden I felt a hard and slightly painful jab on part of my left hand, which was holding the Dictaphone. Yes, yes… Don Quixote, the new alpha male (a larger monkey with proportionally larger feces) had shit directly above me, his crap splattering all over part of my hand and on my Dictaphone, getting right between all the small buttons and crevices of the machine. Now I don’t mean to anthropomorphize too much, but I swear Don Quixote meant to hit me with his fecal bomb. Right after IT happened I looked up at him, and I thought I saw a glint of sadistic amusement in Don Quixote’s beady little eyes. He knew what he had done and he was pretty damn proud of himself. I only thank goodness he – like all other colobines – is a strict vegetarian; the poop of folivores is less volatile I think… it’s just grass.
What’s really “crappy” (pardon the pun) is that although I had a bit of water to wipe up the mess, I was out of hand sanitizer… then I ate my lunch with my hands an hour later. Oh well… no biggie… apparently you aren’t a real primatologist unless a monkey has shit one you a few times. I admit it has happened to me in the past, but I have never had monkey pooh get on my data collection equipment. Doesn’t Don Quixote know that Dictaphones are expensive!? Next time, he better watch where he aims. Preferably, I would like him to poop directly in front of me (not on me) so that I could collect a fecal sample for genetic analysis. :)
On one of these first few observation days, we were in a hard to see area of B2’s range. The monkeys were fairly high up in the trees, right above our heads. I was trying frantically to indentify all of the individuals interacting with the focal infant, to see the behaviors performed and received by the infant, and to catch all of the approaches and leaves done by other monkeys towards the infant, amongst all the overlapping leaves and patches of dense foliage. Eeesh … just describing it makes my eyes squint, and my back, neck and arm muscles hurt as if I am pointing my binoculars straight up! During these first few days I was calling out behavioral codes to Katie while also recording them into my Dictaphone so that we could compare the two methods of data collection later in the evening. At some point during that day I had just completed a focal animal sample and I was trying to ID monkeys, when all of a sudden I felt a hard and slightly painful jab on part of my left hand, which was holding the Dictaphone. Yes, yes… Don Quixote, the new alpha male (a larger monkey with proportionally larger feces) had shit directly above me, his crap splattering all over part of my hand and on my Dictaphone, getting right between all the small buttons and crevices of the machine. Now I don’t mean to anthropomorphize too much, but I swear Don Quixote meant to hit me with his fecal bomb. Right after IT happened I looked up at him, and I thought I saw a glint of sadistic amusement in Don Quixote’s beady little eyes. He knew what he had done and he was pretty damn proud of himself. I only thank goodness he – like all other colobines – is a strict vegetarian; the poop of folivores is less volatile I think… it’s just grass.
What’s really “crappy” (pardon the pun) is that although I had a bit of water to wipe up the mess, I was out of hand sanitizer… then I ate my lunch with my hands an hour later. Oh well… no biggie… apparently you aren’t a real primatologist unless a monkey has shit one you a few times. I admit it has happened to me in the past, but I have never had monkey pooh get on my data collection equipment. Doesn’t Don Quixote know that Dictaphones are expensive!? Next time, he better watch where he aims. Preferably, I would like him to poop directly in front of me (not on me) so that I could collect a fecal sample for genetic analysis. :)
Going Native or Just Going Whacko?
My work has consumed my life and I am seriously addicted! Ok, this is a bit weird but since my work is all about watching monkeys, I often feel like I am becoming more and more like a colobine as each day in the field passes. Perhaps this is what cultural anthropologists describe as “going native”… except in my case I am turning into a colobus monkey rather than into an indigenous person. Due to the fact that I can recognize individual monkeys in each of the study groups I observe and since I have the privilege of watching each of these individuals live out their daily lives (interacting with other group members, infant handling, being social or anti-social, eating, sleeping, defecating, urinating, copulating, etc.), I sometimes feel like I should stop being a stalker and introduce myself to them. Maybe I would somehow be accepted into their group or I could be their human friend or something … Hehehe Sometimes I wish that I could just climb up into the tree, extend my hand out in greeting to one of the colobus monkeys in a group I am observing, and say:
“Hello, my name is Julia. It is very nice to meet you… officially that is. I’m one of the pale primates living outside your forest, which walks bipedally and makes excessive noise. You’ve probably noticed me staring at you daily for 8 hours every day with my giant bug-eyed lenses (binoculars), as I shout out gibberish codes to the other bipedal primate standing next to me (Katie) who seems to be obsessed with frantically poking the side of a log (Psion) with her fingers. I just wanted to come up here to introduce myself. May I offer you a delicious cabbage, spinach, kale maybe, as a sign of peace and friendship? (colobus monkeys are notoriously folivorous and have trouble digesting anything but green leaves).”
I don’t think such a scenario would end well. Also, who am I kidding? I could never get my ass up into one of their trees, let alone be coordinated enough to extend an arm out while I’m up there and say all that! Oh well… guess I’ll just continue stalking my colobus friends until my field season is over. Did I mention that I dream about colobus monkeys and about collecting behavioral data almost every night?
“Hello, my name is Julia. It is very nice to meet you… officially that is. I’m one of the pale primates living outside your forest, which walks bipedally and makes excessive noise. You’ve probably noticed me staring at you daily for 8 hours every day with my giant bug-eyed lenses (binoculars), as I shout out gibberish codes to the other bipedal primate standing next to me (Katie) who seems to be obsessed with frantically poking the side of a log (Psion) with her fingers. I just wanted to come up here to introduce myself. May I offer you a delicious cabbage, spinach, kale maybe, as a sign of peace and friendship? (colobus monkeys are notoriously folivorous and have trouble digesting anything but green leaves).”
I don’t think such a scenario would end well. Also, who am I kidding? I could never get my ass up into one of their trees, let alone be coordinated enough to extend an arm out while I’m up there and say all that! Oh well… guess I’ll just continue stalking my colobus friends until my field season is over. Did I mention that I dream about colobus monkeys and about collecting behavioral data almost every night?
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Monkey IDs and Bush-Babies
The past few days have been very productive in terms of my research project. While she is teaching the field school, Eva has had a few days available to go to the forest with me to work on recognizing individual monkeys in my 5 study groups. For her PhD, Eva has worked here for 16 months altogether, so she knows all of the monkeys really well. Actually, ID-ing monkeys is what makes my work so much fun! When you can recognize individuals, watching them becomes way more interesting because you can see differential relationships developing between monkeys as individuals grow, mature, have their own infants which they raise, wean etc. You get to watch families live their lives basically; it get to be there every day to witness their good times and their really bad times! My field work appeals to me a lot because I basically get to watch soap operas all day, every day, for several months… only instead of people I watch monkeys live out their dramas.
So far, my time spent in the forest with Eva has been really helpful. I had been panicking a little bit lately, thinking that I may be in over my head with my project. I started doubting my ability to remember the faces, eye brows, and physical appearance of approximately 120 different monkeys by early June; monkeys that virtually all look the exact same to everyone but some of us U of Calgary researchers. Spending time confirming my monkey ID-ing abilitites with Eva is putting my heart at ease. I can do this! hehe
In addition to the daytime monkey watching, the field school students also get to look for and census a third primate species that lives at BFMS, the nocturnal bush-baby or galago. These guys are tiny bodied, eat mainly insects that they hunt for at night, and have huge eyes that shine in the night when you point a source of light directly at them. Indeed, this is how we find census the bush-babies at BFMS, by walking the trails and shining our headlamp lights towards the trees and bushes. Also, we detect bush-babies when we hear their distinct calls and trills, which Eva thinks sound like a wind-up toy. I have seen them only a few times; they are quite shy and are scared easily by human noise. Eva has been trying to incorporate bush-baby night walks as part of the BFMS eco-tourism experience, which I think is really cool. In addition to viewing the diurnal primates at BFMS (Mona and colobus monkeys) tourists would also pay to see the bush-babies.
However, in order to successfully have night tours, we would have to find a local guide that would actually be willing to walk around the forest at night. This will not be easy as Ghanaian locals are terrified of the dark… I’m not really sure what they think might be lurking in the forest at night, but they should know that they’ve hunted out all of the dangerous predators that might have lived at BFMS. A few tiny wild cats (civets?) that are about the size of domestic felines might still be found in the forest here, but they hide all the time and are incredibly frightened of people. It’s sad but the biodiversity here at BFMS is generally non-existent. At least we still have some endangered primate species, but who knows how long they might be around. Local people here don’t seem to make the connection between preserving the forest and the monkeys’ well-being. For now, the small forest that is left is protected but who knows what might happen in the future if people decide that cutting down trees for farmland may be worth-while. Also, the tourist guides insist on feeding and provisioning the wild monkeys because they may get larger tips from tourists if they can get the monkeys closer to them. The guides don’t understand (or they don’t care) that these are wild animals and that they should be respectful of their habitat and natural way of life.
So far, my time spent in the forest with Eva has been really helpful. I had been panicking a little bit lately, thinking that I may be in over my head with my project. I started doubting my ability to remember the faces, eye brows, and physical appearance of approximately 120 different monkeys by early June; monkeys that virtually all look the exact same to everyone but some of us U of Calgary researchers. Spending time confirming my monkey ID-ing abilitites with Eva is putting my heart at ease. I can do this! hehe
In addition to the daytime monkey watching, the field school students also get to look for and census a third primate species that lives at BFMS, the nocturnal bush-baby or galago. These guys are tiny bodied, eat mainly insects that they hunt for at night, and have huge eyes that shine in the night when you point a source of light directly at them. Indeed, this is how we find census the bush-babies at BFMS, by walking the trails and shining our headlamp lights towards the trees and bushes. Also, we detect bush-babies when we hear their distinct calls and trills, which Eva thinks sound like a wind-up toy. I have seen them only a few times; they are quite shy and are scared easily by human noise. Eva has been trying to incorporate bush-baby night walks as part of the BFMS eco-tourism experience, which I think is really cool. In addition to viewing the diurnal primates at BFMS (Mona and colobus monkeys) tourists would also pay to see the bush-babies.
However, in order to successfully have night tours, we would have to find a local guide that would actually be willing to walk around the forest at night. This will not be easy as Ghanaian locals are terrified of the dark… I’m not really sure what they think might be lurking in the forest at night, but they should know that they’ve hunted out all of the dangerous predators that might have lived at BFMS. A few tiny wild cats (civets?) that are about the size of domestic felines might still be found in the forest here, but they hide all the time and are incredibly frightened of people. It’s sad but the biodiversity here at BFMS is generally non-existent. At least we still have some endangered primate species, but who knows how long they might be around. Local people here don’t seem to make the connection between preserving the forest and the monkeys’ well-being. For now, the small forest that is left is protected but who knows what might happen in the future if people decide that cutting down trees for farmland may be worth-while. Also, the tourist guides insist on feeding and provisioning the wild monkeys because they may get larger tips from tourists if they can get the monkeys closer to them. The guides don’t understand (or they don’t care) that these are wild animals and that they should be respectful of their habitat and natural way of life.
23 on 20
It is May 20th and I have turned 23 years old today. Coincidentally, I have also been in Ghana for one entire month today. It seems like a really long time since I was last in Canada, but it also feels like this month has passed by super fast. I think it is strange how time feels to us sometimes. Time is constant in its passing but it often feels too slow or too fast depending on our emotions, which are always changing, fluctuating, and are never consistent or reliable.
Today, Eva and the field school students went on a field trip and I stayed here at BFMS. I watched monkeys for a large part of the day. Mid-day I started getting antsy and fidgety so I went for a longer than usual run. This antsy state often happens when I start thinking too much, or worrying… It’s like I am situating myself too much in my head and in my thoughts or something. I’m not quite sure how to explain it but it’s like an anxious, panicky feeling I get. This is the best part about running; it completely gets rid of this feeling and makes me feel calm and comfortable. Tonight I anticipate that we are going to eat fufu (!!) made by Bea, a lady who cares for the guest house here. Fufu is the traditional Ghanaian food that people here eat with every meal. It is made of yam, mashed up and pounded with water until it turns into a thick dough-like ball. The taste is similar to mashed potatoes. Fufu is eaten with your hands; you dip pieces in groundnut paste and swallow them directly like you would eat an oyster. I love love love fufu, but it certainly is something that Westerners either adore or totally dislike. Each time I have fufu I eat so much (my record is 4.5 balls) I get a “fufu belly”! lol After dinner we are going to Constance’s spot for some giant Ghana beers. Mmmm… Castle Milk Stout …
Next Day: I realized that I have celebrated my birthday here in Ghana for the past 3 years! This birthday was one of my best ever. We did indeed have fufu and groundnut sauce, made by Bea and Alfred last night. Yummmmmy! I only had 2.5 balls this time, although if there had been any left I would have certainly eaten more. You can’t let fufu go to waste! Also, Bea gets sad if we don’t eat ALL of her food. Whenever people eat her cooking, she always comes by right as we are finishing up and says “Finish all!”. Then she gives a typical Bea cute and hearty chuckle, which makes you want to finish all just so you don’t disappoint her. For us researchers working at BFMS, Bea and her husband Alfred are like our parents away from home. During dinner I also received gifts (camping instant Neapolitan ice cream and choc chip cookie mix, as well as chocolate covered digestive cookies) and a funny card from Teresa and Eva. Since one of my staple foods here is canned beans (I eat a can every day for lunch), they joked about how they also wanted to give me a can of beans for my birthday, but it seems I already bought all of them from the obruni store in Nkoranza because they were all sold out. Hehehe
After dinner we went to Constance’s Spot in the nearby village of Fiema for beers and dancing. The scene at Constance’s is always a bit surreal and awkward at first when we, the obrunis go there. We are usually greeted by at least 50 screaming and excited local children who shake our hands and pet our arms as we walk in. When we sit down to order, tons of Ghanaian locals agglomerate around the windows and doors of the bar to peer inside, stare at us, and giggle at our unusual facial features, clothing, hair styles, and chubby bodies. Constance then turns on the music (a remix of traditional Ghanaian, rap and techno melodies) super loud and we all start dancing. As things heat up, a select few local men and women are allowed to enter the bar to dance with us, while the rest of the people watch from outside. This is how it was on my birthday and it was great. I think the field school students had a good time, and I enjoyed it particularly because I love to dance! Last night I won the most “African-Like Dancer” award … apparently. Lol
Today, Eva and the field school students went on a field trip and I stayed here at BFMS. I watched monkeys for a large part of the day. Mid-day I started getting antsy and fidgety so I went for a longer than usual run. This antsy state often happens when I start thinking too much, or worrying… It’s like I am situating myself too much in my head and in my thoughts or something. I’m not quite sure how to explain it but it’s like an anxious, panicky feeling I get. This is the best part about running; it completely gets rid of this feeling and makes me feel calm and comfortable. Tonight I anticipate that we are going to eat fufu (!!) made by Bea, a lady who cares for the guest house here. Fufu is the traditional Ghanaian food that people here eat with every meal. It is made of yam, mashed up and pounded with water until it turns into a thick dough-like ball. The taste is similar to mashed potatoes. Fufu is eaten with your hands; you dip pieces in groundnut paste and swallow them directly like you would eat an oyster. I love love love fufu, but it certainly is something that Westerners either adore or totally dislike. Each time I have fufu I eat so much (my record is 4.5 balls) I get a “fufu belly”! lol After dinner we are going to Constance’s spot for some giant Ghana beers. Mmmm… Castle Milk Stout …
Next Day: I realized that I have celebrated my birthday here in Ghana for the past 3 years! This birthday was one of my best ever. We did indeed have fufu and groundnut sauce, made by Bea and Alfred last night. Yummmmmy! I only had 2.5 balls this time, although if there had been any left I would have certainly eaten more. You can’t let fufu go to waste! Also, Bea gets sad if we don’t eat ALL of her food. Whenever people eat her cooking, she always comes by right as we are finishing up and says “Finish all!”. Then she gives a typical Bea cute and hearty chuckle, which makes you want to finish all just so you don’t disappoint her. For us researchers working at BFMS, Bea and her husband Alfred are like our parents away from home. During dinner I also received gifts (camping instant Neapolitan ice cream and choc chip cookie mix, as well as chocolate covered digestive cookies) and a funny card from Teresa and Eva. Since one of my staple foods here is canned beans (I eat a can every day for lunch), they joked about how they also wanted to give me a can of beans for my birthday, but it seems I already bought all of them from the obruni store in Nkoranza because they were all sold out. Hehehe
After dinner we went to Constance’s Spot in the nearby village of Fiema for beers and dancing. The scene at Constance’s is always a bit surreal and awkward at first when we, the obrunis go there. We are usually greeted by at least 50 screaming and excited local children who shake our hands and pet our arms as we walk in. When we sit down to order, tons of Ghanaian locals agglomerate around the windows and doors of the bar to peer inside, stare at us, and giggle at our unusual facial features, clothing, hair styles, and chubby bodies. Constance then turns on the music (a remix of traditional Ghanaian, rap and techno melodies) super loud and we all start dancing. As things heat up, a select few local men and women are allowed to enter the bar to dance with us, while the rest of the people watch from outside. This is how it was on my birthday and it was great. I think the field school students had a good time, and I enjoyed it particularly because I love to dance! Last night I won the most “African-Like Dancer” award … apparently. Lol
Copulation, Copulation, Copulation!
I have a gift. Seriously … I think that if primatology were a form of superhero-ism, this would probably my one and only special ability; my “super power”. Somehow, during observations on colobus monkeys, I’m often present during, and I’m frequently able to spot, monkey sex! I know, I know. It is incredible! Before you pin me as some kind of a weird pervert, let me explain a bit. Seeing monkey sex is not as common as one might think; they are usually rare events! Seeing copulations in the ursine colobus at BFMS is quite exciting for any researcher working here. Also, I don’t just see the odd ‘sexual present’ and ‘attempt mount’. I am often a witness to all the exciting stuff. It all started two years ago when I was an undergrad on my field school. I saw several sexual acts in the colobus monkey groups I was watching. Each time I would yell out to everyone excitedly “Copulation, copulation people, copulation!”. Apparently I had done this so many times back then and with so much gusto that even years later the local Ghanaian guides who annually help out with the field school still make fun of me for it (endearingly of course). Lol
A few days ago I was watching groups Wawa and Splinter during an inter-group encounter (that’s when two separate groups meet on the boundary between their two home ranges and contest – sometimes aggressively but often peacefully – over the area). During this time, I saw the mother of all copulations. It was like a massive foursome (or fifthsome (?) depending on which individuals you count in). I saw ET, a young Splinter male, leave the core of his group to approach Haleakala, a young Wawa female. She sexually presented to him, he mounted and her and thrust several times. I even saw the ejaculate when the deed was completed (ET was sort of messy I guess…). Of course that I announced what I was watching to all of the field school students and Ghanaian field guides in the immediate area “Copulation, copulation, copulation!”. Right after this first sexual act, Glassjaw, the alpha male of Wawa, in an attempt to keep ET away from his female, attacked ET and chased him off violently. There were branches breaking and grunts and screams and all. Several minutes later ET went for Haleakala again and the process was more or less repeated. Then, Wolverine, the alpha male of Splinter approached Haleakala, mounted her, and thrust several times. This time, a young juvenile male from Wawa approached the two monkeys doing the deed and proceeded to harass them (i.e. making lots of vocalizations, pulling their tails, and jumping on their heads and backs). After finally clueing in, Glassjaw, who is apparently not the brightest monkey in the jungle, attacked Wolverine and the two fought aggressively, as if they had both been trained in street style boxing or dirty Mafia fighting! After all that, Wolverine didn’t give up, because several minutes later, he went for Haleakala again. They had a short monkey love session, which was interrupted again by Glassjaw, who tried a little harder this time to coerce Haleakala back with the rest of the group. The whole thing was fascinating to watch and incredibly exciting Ad lib data.
A few days ago I was watching groups Wawa and Splinter during an inter-group encounter (that’s when two separate groups meet on the boundary between their two home ranges and contest – sometimes aggressively but often peacefully – over the area). During this time, I saw the mother of all copulations. It was like a massive foursome (or fifthsome (?) depending on which individuals you count in). I saw ET, a young Splinter male, leave the core of his group to approach Haleakala, a young Wawa female. She sexually presented to him, he mounted and her and thrust several times. I even saw the ejaculate when the deed was completed (ET was sort of messy I guess…). Of course that I announced what I was watching to all of the field school students and Ghanaian field guides in the immediate area “Copulation, copulation, copulation!”. Right after this first sexual act, Glassjaw, the alpha male of Wawa, in an attempt to keep ET away from his female, attacked ET and chased him off violently. There were branches breaking and grunts and screams and all. Several minutes later ET went for Haleakala again and the process was more or less repeated. Then, Wolverine, the alpha male of Splinter approached Haleakala, mounted her, and thrust several times. This time, a young juvenile male from Wawa approached the two monkeys doing the deed and proceeded to harass them (i.e. making lots of vocalizations, pulling their tails, and jumping on their heads and backs). After finally clueing in, Glassjaw, who is apparently not the brightest monkey in the jungle, attacked Wolverine and the two fought aggressively, as if they had both been trained in street style boxing or dirty Mafia fighting! After all that, Wolverine didn’t give up, because several minutes later, he went for Haleakala again. They had a short monkey love session, which was interrupted again by Glassjaw, who tried a little harder this time to coerce Haleakala back with the rest of the group. The whole thing was fascinating to watch and incredibly exciting Ad lib data.
Busy Week With The Field School
The guest house has been super lively and fun since the U of C students came to stay. At first I think many of them were a bit apprehensive about the idea of living here for a whole month. Personally, I love the life style and living conditions at BFMS … key word is SIMPLE. However, not everyone feels the same as me from the get-go. As the days progressed and students started getting used to taking bucket showers, constantly having 1000 mosquito bites evenly distributed across their skin, eating lots of starchy foods, and waking up early to spend several hours in the forest watching monkeys, then going to bed early exhausted, they have started seeing BFMS from my perspective: peaceful, relatively worry-free, quirky and – for lack of a better word – simple. I think everyone (even those people that are already convinced that field work is not for them) is genuinely starting to enjoy the “primate” life. I can tell people are having a positive experience here when all they can talk about is monkeys. Meal times are constantly being filled with lively re-tellings of what their monkey study groups did; how cute the Monas were eating human food out of a tin can thrown away by the villagers, how intimidating the colobus alpha males are when they grunt and display above your head, how cute infants are when they are nursing or being allomothered, and how scary it was the time when a colobus infant fell from a tree (but still remained unharmed). Then again, I guess when all you do is collect behavioral data on monkeys, what else is there to talk about at the end of the day? Well actually, after monkey talk, poo is the next most popular topic of conversation, but that is usually initiated by Teresa who is collecting fecal samples for her project … all she ever thinks and talks about these days is feces … “beautiful precious colobus poo”. On the mobile phone one evening, I was telling my best friend about Teresa’s field work here. Simply put, Teresa bought a bicycle so that she could commute to many smaller forest fragments that surround BFMS, in order to collect fecal samples from the colobus monkeys there for DNA analyses. To clarify things, my best friend repeated what I had told him in a much more concise manner: “So basically, just to clarify, Teresa rides her bike for several hours each day, doing strenuous exercise in the infernal African sun and humidity, to get poo?” The answer to that is yes … that is what she does and she’s damn proud of it! Lol
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Field School Arrives
The University of Calgary Primatology Field School 2010 has arrived at BFMS. Personally, I am very excited about spending the next month with these people. There’s something so totally awesome about sharing in the experience of brand new ‘Africa Virgins’ to Ghana. As a Program Assistant and fairly experienced Ghana traveler, I can act as a guiding light, a security net, a safety blanket… I get to reassure them that the scorpions in the grass will not harm them unless they get too close, that the geckos in the students’ rooms are good as they actually act as predators for their other major concern, the bugs, and that although it’s sort of gross that the monkey situated right above their head urinated on their arm, they will likely not get any strange zoonautic disease from it. More importantly though, my role as Program Assistant is to help teach them about the forest and about behavioral data collection (scan sampling, focal animal sampling, etc.). For many of these people, I get to be there for their first monkey watching experience in the wild! Through them I practically get to re-live my own awe inspiring moment when I first watched nonhuman primates roaming freely in their natural habitat. So great!
3 Days Later
The poor monkey body is still stuck in the tree, and at this point, due to the extreme level of putrefaction that can already be seen, the only thing I would be willing to do once it falls is take photos … if necessary. The good thing is that Eva (a PhD student working with my supervisor) is here now at BFMS with the annual field school students. If she really wants the monkey’s DNA for her project, then she will have to get it herself because I’m fairly certain I would pass out if I tried to cut inside it!
Also, the dead monkey is now becoming quite a tourist attraction. The guides have actually incorporated the decomposing body in their daily tours! You can imagine how that goes … “Up ahead you will see a great big strangler fig that is believed to be hundreds of years old. On the left you can see a group of playful Mona monkeys, right next to the monkey cemetery. Finally, next to that big mahogany is the rotting corpse of our dead black-and-white colobus monkey, which is stuck in the Wawa tree. Please notice the swarm of flies and horrible smell of this part of our tour.”
Also, the dead monkey is now becoming quite a tourist attraction. The guides have actually incorporated the decomposing body in their daily tours! You can imagine how that goes … “Up ahead you will see a great big strangler fig that is believed to be hundreds of years old. On the left you can see a group of playful Mona monkeys, right next to the monkey cemetery. Finally, next to that big mahogany is the rotting corpse of our dead black-and-white colobus monkey, which is stuck in the Wawa tree. Please notice the swarm of flies and horrible smell of this part of our tour.”
Another Dead One
Today (May 7, 2010) was a very sad day at BFMS. Brace yourselves for a semi-gruesome story that may not be suitable for those with weaker stomachs.
A female colobus monkey in one of my study groups (Wawa) died an excruciating-looking death, either last night or early this morning. This time the cause of death doesn`t appear to be human related. One of the colobus female`s hind limbs seems to have gotten stuck in the nook of large tree branch in one of the most immense trees in the forest; a Wawa (the type of tree that the dead female`s group is named after because they hang out in them a lot). The manner in which her limp body is still hanging down from the branch approximately 40 meters high indicates that she must have broken her leg trying to jump off the branch while her foot was stuck. She may not have been able enough to brace herself back on top of the branch to free her leg. It looks as though she died upside down, struggling to get free! I can only imagine the terrifying squeals and screams she must have emitted, or the panicked reactions of the other monkeys in her group. When I got there mid morning, group Wawa had moved on and left the female`s hanging corpse to hang there… I bet I will have nightmares about this for weeks. Each time I close my eyes I still see her contorted figure covered in flies and butterflies that are attracted to the juices that drip from her body. Neither Teresa nor I can identify the young female because due to the intense Africa heat and humidity, by mid morning her face and head had already begun decomposing and her facial features were no longer recognizable. The smell was really bad… I spent some time watching Wawa in the afternoon to see if I could figure out which monkey is missing. However, Wawa was in an area of dense vegetation in the `Sacred Grove`. Poor visibility, combined with Wawa`s large group size (more than 30 monkeys) have made it difficult to figure out the ID of the dead monkey until I spend more time with them.
If you can imagine this, the next step for Teresa and I, once the monkey`s body falls to the ground (maybe by tomorrow), is to do a muscle or organ tissue biopsy! Yes, we will take pictures of the body and go in, cut into the flesh where the tissue`s DNA will be least contaminated, and take a thin strip of tissue that we will store in a special solution for genetic testing in the lab. Of course, both Teresa and I will wear something around our mouths and noses, and we will be dressed in clothes that will be burned afterwards. I am also planning to bathe in a tub of vodka or gin.
Once we do this thing, the body will be taken to the monkey cemetery (not by us, thank God!) in the BFMS forest. Since the monkeys here are scared to the local people, custom has it that the young monkey will be given a sacred burial ceremony by Nana, the fetish priest of Boabeng. The monkey cemetery is one of the main attractions for tourists who come to BFMS. The monkeys buried here have make-shift tomb stones with their age-sex class and date of death, so it`s kind of nice actually.
A female colobus monkey in one of my study groups (Wawa) died an excruciating-looking death, either last night or early this morning. This time the cause of death doesn`t appear to be human related. One of the colobus female`s hind limbs seems to have gotten stuck in the nook of large tree branch in one of the most immense trees in the forest; a Wawa (the type of tree that the dead female`s group is named after because they hang out in them a lot). The manner in which her limp body is still hanging down from the branch approximately 40 meters high indicates that she must have broken her leg trying to jump off the branch while her foot was stuck. She may not have been able enough to brace herself back on top of the branch to free her leg. It looks as though she died upside down, struggling to get free! I can only imagine the terrifying squeals and screams she must have emitted, or the panicked reactions of the other monkeys in her group. When I got there mid morning, group Wawa had moved on and left the female`s hanging corpse to hang there… I bet I will have nightmares about this for weeks. Each time I close my eyes I still see her contorted figure covered in flies and butterflies that are attracted to the juices that drip from her body. Neither Teresa nor I can identify the young female because due to the intense Africa heat and humidity, by mid morning her face and head had already begun decomposing and her facial features were no longer recognizable. The smell was really bad… I spent some time watching Wawa in the afternoon to see if I could figure out which monkey is missing. However, Wawa was in an area of dense vegetation in the `Sacred Grove`. Poor visibility, combined with Wawa`s large group size (more than 30 monkeys) have made it difficult to figure out the ID of the dead monkey until I spend more time with them.
If you can imagine this, the next step for Teresa and I, once the monkey`s body falls to the ground (maybe by tomorrow), is to do a muscle or organ tissue biopsy! Yes, we will take pictures of the body and go in, cut into the flesh where the tissue`s DNA will be least contaminated, and take a thin strip of tissue that we will store in a special solution for genetic testing in the lab. Of course, both Teresa and I will wear something around our mouths and noses, and we will be dressed in clothes that will be burned afterwards. I am also planning to bathe in a tub of vodka or gin.
Once we do this thing, the body will be taken to the monkey cemetery (not by us, thank God!) in the BFMS forest. Since the monkeys here are scared to the local people, custom has it that the young monkey will be given a sacred burial ceremony by Nana, the fetish priest of Boabeng. The monkey cemetery is one of the main attractions for tourists who come to BFMS. The monkeys buried here have make-shift tomb stones with their age-sex class and date of death, so it`s kind of nice actually.
When in Rome...
THE REASON THAT THIS BLOG POST IS IN ALL CAPS IS BECAUSE IT WAS WRITTEN ON A PSION, WHICH USES ALL CAPS. A PSION IS HAND-HELD MINI COMPUTER THAT ETHOLOGISTS USE TO COLLECT BEHAVIORAL DATA. I WILL BE USING ONE FOR DATA COLLECTION AND I NEED TO PRACTICE MY TYPING ON IT. IT'S KIND OF FUN ACTUALLY...LIKE A GAME-BOY! I'VE BEEN SENDING E-MAILS TO FRIENDS AND FAMILY BACK IN CANADA THE SAME WAY TOO. SO AGAIN, IT'S JUST THE PSION PEOPLE. I'M NOT ANGRY OR ANYTHING. LOL
TODAY I WENT TO MARKET ALONE. I`M STARTING TO THINK THAT THE LOCAL GOD DWORO HATES ME, BECAUSE ONCE AGAIN IT WAS RAINING WHEN I WOKE UP. HOWEVER, I WAS NOT ABOUT TO MISS A MARKET DAY AND SINCE THE POWER WAS STILL ON, I HEADED OUT TO LOOK FOR A TRO-TRO HEADING TO NKORANZA ANYWAYS. I HAD SOME MAJOR LUCK (*SARCASTIC TONE*) BECAUSE 5 HOURS LATER I MADE IT ... THE WHOLE 25 KILOMETERS FROM BFMS TO NKORANZA. I COULD HAVE TRIED RUNNING AND I WOULD HAVE MADE IT THERE FASTER! EESH. THAT'S GHANA TIME.
SO AFTER 5 HOURS OF TRAVEL I REALLY HAD TO PEE. FOR SOME REASON HOWEVER THE KEY TO THE ONLY INDOOR URINAL I KNEW ABOUT IN THE ENTIRE CITY OF NKORANZA HAD BEEN LOST SOMEHOW, SO I SWITCHED TO PLAN B. "WHEN IN ROME, DO AS THE ROMANS DO." YES, YES ... I PEED IN PUBLIC (AND I WASN'T EVEN DRUNK). IT WASN'T JUST PUBLIC THOUGH. THE BEST PLACE I COULD FIND TO SQUAT WAS BESIDE A BUILDING NEAR A BUSY ROAD. THE FUNNY THING WAS THAT ABSOLUTELY NO ONE LOOKED AT ME. GHANAIANS URINATE (AND EVEN DEFECATE) IN PUBLIC REGULARLY AND I IMAGINE THERE MUST BE SOME UNWRITTEN RULE ABOUT PEEKING. AS AN OBRUNI I THOUGHT SOMEONE MIGHT TRY TO CATCH A GLIMPSE OF MY BARE WHITE ASS BUT THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN! I`M NOT SAYING THAT JUST BECAUSE I`M WHITE PEOPLE WOULD AUTOMATICALLY WANT TO SEE ME NAKED OR ANYTHING, BUT I HAVE NOTICED THAT GHANAIANS (ESPECIALLY CHILDREN) LIKE TO STARE AT CERTAIN OBRUNI BODY PARTS THAT ARE GENERALLY OUT OF VIEW (LIKE FEET)AND COMPARE THEM TO THEIR OWN. WHITE TOURISTS DON`T HABITUALLY WALK AROUND WITHOUT PANTS AND WITH THEIR BEHINDS EXPOSED, SO I THOUGHT THIS WOULD BE ONE OF THOSE TIMES WHEN BODY PART COMPARISONS WOULD BE MADE. ALLAS, I WAS WRONG AND I MANAGED TO URINATE IN PUBLIC WITH MY DIGNITY STILL INTACT. I ACTUALLY FEEL REALLY GOOD ABOUT THIS NEW STEP I HAVE TAKEN TOWARDS WHAT CAN BE DESCRIBED AS A PERSONAL REVOLUTION ... A LEAP TOWARDS GREATER FREEDOM. TODAY I URINATED ON A BUSY STREET, TOMORROW PUBLIC NUDITY! TAKE THAT BIG BROTHER. I AM FREE.
IN OTHER NEWS, I DEVELOPED A STRANGE RASH ON MY LOWER TUMMY TODAY. I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE IT CAME FROM BUT IT MIGHT BE A REACTION TO THE OBAMA DIGESTIVE COOKIES (YES THEY HAVE THOSE HERE AND THEY ARE DELICIOUS) I ATE FOR BREAKFAST, OR IT MIGHT BE THE LAUNDRY SOAP I USE IN COMBINATION WITH IMPROPER RINSING OF MY CLOTHES. OR THE MOST LIKELY SCENARIO IS THAT GOD IS PUNISHING ME FOR URINATING IN A PUBLIC PLACE.
TODAY I WENT TO MARKET ALONE. I`M STARTING TO THINK THAT THE LOCAL GOD DWORO HATES ME, BECAUSE ONCE AGAIN IT WAS RAINING WHEN I WOKE UP. HOWEVER, I WAS NOT ABOUT TO MISS A MARKET DAY AND SINCE THE POWER WAS STILL ON, I HEADED OUT TO LOOK FOR A TRO-TRO HEADING TO NKORANZA ANYWAYS. I HAD SOME MAJOR LUCK (*SARCASTIC TONE*) BECAUSE 5 HOURS LATER I MADE IT ... THE WHOLE 25 KILOMETERS FROM BFMS TO NKORANZA. I COULD HAVE TRIED RUNNING AND I WOULD HAVE MADE IT THERE FASTER! EESH. THAT'S GHANA TIME.
SO AFTER 5 HOURS OF TRAVEL I REALLY HAD TO PEE. FOR SOME REASON HOWEVER THE KEY TO THE ONLY INDOOR URINAL I KNEW ABOUT IN THE ENTIRE CITY OF NKORANZA HAD BEEN LOST SOMEHOW, SO I SWITCHED TO PLAN B. "WHEN IN ROME, DO AS THE ROMANS DO." YES, YES ... I PEED IN PUBLIC (AND I WASN'T EVEN DRUNK). IT WASN'T JUST PUBLIC THOUGH. THE BEST PLACE I COULD FIND TO SQUAT WAS BESIDE A BUILDING NEAR A BUSY ROAD. THE FUNNY THING WAS THAT ABSOLUTELY NO ONE LOOKED AT ME. GHANAIANS URINATE (AND EVEN DEFECATE) IN PUBLIC REGULARLY AND I IMAGINE THERE MUST BE SOME UNWRITTEN RULE ABOUT PEEKING. AS AN OBRUNI I THOUGHT SOMEONE MIGHT TRY TO CATCH A GLIMPSE OF MY BARE WHITE ASS BUT THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN! I`M NOT SAYING THAT JUST BECAUSE I`M WHITE PEOPLE WOULD AUTOMATICALLY WANT TO SEE ME NAKED OR ANYTHING, BUT I HAVE NOTICED THAT GHANAIANS (ESPECIALLY CHILDREN) LIKE TO STARE AT CERTAIN OBRUNI BODY PARTS THAT ARE GENERALLY OUT OF VIEW (LIKE FEET)AND COMPARE THEM TO THEIR OWN. WHITE TOURISTS DON`T HABITUALLY WALK AROUND WITHOUT PANTS AND WITH THEIR BEHINDS EXPOSED, SO I THOUGHT THIS WOULD BE ONE OF THOSE TIMES WHEN BODY PART COMPARISONS WOULD BE MADE. ALLAS, I WAS WRONG AND I MANAGED TO URINATE IN PUBLIC WITH MY DIGNITY STILL INTACT. I ACTUALLY FEEL REALLY GOOD ABOUT THIS NEW STEP I HAVE TAKEN TOWARDS WHAT CAN BE DESCRIBED AS A PERSONAL REVOLUTION ... A LEAP TOWARDS GREATER FREEDOM. TODAY I URINATED ON A BUSY STREET, TOMORROW PUBLIC NUDITY! TAKE THAT BIG BROTHER. I AM FREE.
IN OTHER NEWS, I DEVELOPED A STRANGE RASH ON MY LOWER TUMMY TODAY. I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE IT CAME FROM BUT IT MIGHT BE A REACTION TO THE OBAMA DIGESTIVE COOKIES (YES THEY HAVE THOSE HERE AND THEY ARE DELICIOUS) I ATE FOR BREAKFAST, OR IT MIGHT BE THE LAUNDRY SOAP I USE IN COMBINATION WITH IMPROPER RINSING OF MY CLOTHES. OR THE MOST LIKELY SCENARIO IS THAT GOD IS PUNISHING ME FOR URINATING IN A PUBLIC PLACE.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Adjusting
Today I collected some infant data...well, I tried at least. I got 2 really bad 10-min focal animals samples done on Remus and Obama from group B2. During each focal sample, the researcher watches one individual (in my case one infant), and records everything that individual does within 10 minutes. To make things easier to record (behaviours can happen quite quickly, especially when there are a lot of social interactions with other individuals) we make up codes for all behaviours. While behaviours occur we record them, along with the time when they happened. My first 2 focals were stressful and I did a horrible job, but it will get better with practice (I hope!). During the first attempt, I was watching Obama. He was nursing from his mom, Ofilia. I guess I was watching them a bit too intensely because Ofilia got totally freaked out half way through my focal animal sample and she darted in the opposite direction. I don’t blame her! I would be creeped out too if while I was breast feeding my baby, I had some obruni woman with two HUGE circular eyes (binocular lenses) pointing directly at me while her voice droned constantly towards a small metallic weapon (voice recording Dictaphone). Like a good primatologist, I didn’t give up on her. I followed, while also making sure that I wasn’t stressing her out too much. I managed to complete my 10 minute sample, but barely. A pathetic attempt of which I am proud.
Other than monkeys, there isn’t a lot much else going on here. I go running every second or third day, like I do back in Canada, except it’s more difficult here because of the heat and humidity. A group of kids ran with me (the entire 12 km) the other day as they sang some cool marching songs in Twii. This was a bit discouraging for me actually ... the chunky obruni runs like a Ghanaian 8 year old child. I don’t get it! They weren’t even breathing heavily or sweating, while I was doing plenty of both those things! I see why it is good I came here well before the time when I have to really collect data...so that I have a few weeks of conditioning my body to field life. Geez. My Canadian chunkiness is a disability here because it’s so freakin’ hot. I need to transform into a lean, mean, data collection machine! Lol
It’s rained a lot so there hasn’t been electric power on several evenings. When I say rained, I mean huge African thunder storms with burning trees (from being hit by lightning) and lots of flooding. This is rain in Ghana! I’m reading lots. Overall though it’s kind of lonely... I guess listening to Leonard Cohen all the time like I do in Canada has a different effect on me here, but I try to counteract that with plenty of Basshunter (trashy Swedish techno). Most of the time I like it here a lot. The life is simple and all of the stupid things I worry about in Calgary no longer burden me. However, it does get lonely because we’re so isolated from everything I consider my home. I think it will get better though once Katie (my research assistant) gets here and I actually start collecting some decent behavioural data. Hell YA!!
Other than monkeys, there isn’t a lot much else going on here. I go running every second or third day, like I do back in Canada, except it’s more difficult here because of the heat and humidity. A group of kids ran with me (the entire 12 km) the other day as they sang some cool marching songs in Twii. This was a bit discouraging for me actually ... the chunky obruni runs like a Ghanaian 8 year old child. I don’t get it! They weren’t even breathing heavily or sweating, while I was doing plenty of both those things! I see why it is good I came here well before the time when I have to really collect data...so that I have a few weeks of conditioning my body to field life. Geez. My Canadian chunkiness is a disability here because it’s so freakin’ hot. I need to transform into a lean, mean, data collection machine! Lol
It’s rained a lot so there hasn’t been electric power on several evenings. When I say rained, I mean huge African thunder storms with burning trees (from being hit by lightning) and lots of flooding. This is rain in Ghana! I’m reading lots. Overall though it’s kind of lonely... I guess listening to Leonard Cohen all the time like I do in Canada has a different effect on me here, but I try to counteract that with plenty of Basshunter (trashy Swedish techno). Most of the time I like it here a lot. The life is simple and all of the stupid things I worry about in Calgary no longer burden me. However, it does get lonely because we’re so isolated from everything I consider my home. I think it will get better though once Katie (my research assistant) gets here and I actually start collecting some decent behavioural data. Hell YA!!
Harry the Chaser
Today I got chased by Harry, the alpha male of group Wawa...yet again! Harry and I have a history of playing cat and mouse (he’s always the cat and I’m always the scared little mouse). The first time he chased me I was an undergraduate student on the University of Calgary primatology field school 2 years ago. This was one of my first encounters with monkeys. At the time I wasn’t as monkey-wary as I am now and I managed to walk right smack in the middle of Harry’s group. He got angry, started open-mouth and stiff-leg threatening me, and began to come after me. I freaked out, started running, and just like in a bad horror movie, I tripped and fell! At this point Harry had the decency to give me a few moments to try to stumble back up. I wasn’t very good at it though, and even with the help of Janice (another student on the field school and friend) who literally dragged my spastic body away from the fury that was Harry, I was still not capable of getting my proper footing. We escaped unharmed but just barely, and only because Constance, a local Ghanaian woman and field assistant, had the brilliant idea of grabbing a stick that she proceeded to wave around threateningly in Harry’s face.
Since this time, I have played several other chasing games with Harry ... somehow he always manages to pop out of nowhere and get me! I think he enjoys it... honestly I think he does it for laughs or to show off to his girlfriends. Today’s chase was a bit different though. I was actually near him for 2 or 3 hours, peacefully watching the group and trying hard not to appear threatening in any way. He actually didn’t seem to care one bit about my presence as he gorged on leaves the entire time. Once he ate his fill though, without the least bit of warning this time (i.e. no threats or warning grunts or direct glances in my direction) he jumped down from his tree and began galloping towards me. For once, I kept my footing and I did not fall, but I ran into a group of white tourists who were also coming to see group Wawa. At the sight of me running towards them like a crazy woman (yes I was squealing like a little girl) while being chased by a huge colobus male the size of my German Shepherd dog, the tourists and the Ghanaian guide Henry also proceeded to run with me away from Harry, all the while squealing for our lives! Once again, he didn’t actually catch me but I wonder if he ever really tries or if he just enjoys the sight of my behind giggling desperately as I try to get away... Maybe next time I will stop to ask him what his problem is before I run away. Oh Harry...you asshole!
Since this time, I have played several other chasing games with Harry ... somehow he always manages to pop out of nowhere and get me! I think he enjoys it... honestly I think he does it for laughs or to show off to his girlfriends. Today’s chase was a bit different though. I was actually near him for 2 or 3 hours, peacefully watching the group and trying hard not to appear threatening in any way. He actually didn’t seem to care one bit about my presence as he gorged on leaves the entire time. Once he ate his fill though, without the least bit of warning this time (i.e. no threats or warning grunts or direct glances in my direction) he jumped down from his tree and began galloping towards me. For once, I kept my footing and I did not fall, but I ran into a group of white tourists who were also coming to see group Wawa. At the sight of me running towards them like a crazy woman (yes I was squealing like a little girl) while being chased by a huge colobus male the size of my German Shepherd dog, the tourists and the Ghanaian guide Henry also proceeded to run with me away from Harry, all the while squealing for our lives! Once again, he didn’t actually catch me but I wonder if he ever really tries or if he just enjoys the sight of my behind giggling desperately as I try to get away... Maybe next time I will stop to ask him what his problem is before I run away. Oh Harry...you asshole!
Market Days and Infants
While we are here, researchers usually have access to internet once a week. The market day in the local town of Nkoranza is held every Tuesday. On this day, us BFMS researchers take the tro-tro (a small minibus that is meant for 9-10 people but which is usually jammed with 20 people and their luggage) and head down to the market where we buy our groceries for the week, check the post for any mail or ‘care packages’ and use the internet. While we are living here, Tuesday market days quickly become a huge event! I look forward to market days like I anticipate Christmas mornings. So you can imagine how disappointed I was last week, when I woke up on Tuesday morning to find that it was raining heavily and that the electricity was off. This meant that Teresa and I had to wait until the rain stopped before taking a tro-tro to Nkoranza. Getting to town after it’s been raining is much more difficult, as the unpaved roads became like mud pits from the rain. In previous years, I have been in situations where all of the passengers have had to get out in knee-high mud to push the back of the tro-tro, in order to continue our journey! I find stuff like this kind of fun actually so I am describing this more with a sense of pleasure rather than complaint. Last week however, we made it to market without having to get out and push the tro-tro. We got our shopping done and Teresa bought a bicycle that she needs in order to conduct her own research project, but the electricity was still absent (it remained off for several days), which meant that internet and checking e-mail was not possible until next Tuesday market day... Boooo.
As for my actual work, I’m still in the midst of remembering individual monkey Ids and figuring out the infant situation and new group compositions in my potential study groups. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this already but ursine colobus monkey infants are born completely white; this is their natal coat. As they age, over approximately 6 months, their natal coat is slowly replaced with various degrees of grey, until they gain their adult pelage (black and white). Like in human children, although there is some individual variation around how quickly infants develop, coat colour changes over time seem to be generally similar among different infants. This is how it’s possible to estimate specific ages of ursine colobus infants. Like 99% of human babies, ursine colobus infants have ‘too-big-for-their-body’ heads (many people describe new infants as resembling aliens) but they’re adorable even when they are in the midst of changing from white to grey. During this transition, the area right around their eyes and their mouth darken first so they look like they have been fist punched in the face right in the eyes and mouth.
In group Dadie there is 1 (or possibly 2) black-and-white infants and 1 grey, group Wawa has 1 grey and 3 older black and white infants, group B2 has 2 brand-spankin’ new white (!!) and 1 older black-and-white infants, groups Red Tail and Splinter only have infants older than 6 months, and according to Teresa, Odum (a group who’s individuals I still have to learn) has 1 white-ish infants. The most important groups of all for me right now are B2 and Odum, because they have new infants and these are the only two groups in which we know for sure that there are immigrant females. This makes it possible for me document allomothering behaviour of females who aren’t related to any of the others, to see if kinship affects maternal tolerance to allomothering and if unrelated infants are less attractive for allomothering. I’m not discouraged by the fact that the majority of groups don’t have new infants. I will be here for 6 months so it is better for my project that the births are spaced out a bit so that I am always collecting data. Also, I’m not too confident in my data collection skills yet, so I will need some more practice before any of my collected data will be good enough to use. I did collect my first bit of data yesterday; an inter-group encounter between Splinter and Bomosua, a group I don’t usually watch. Inter-group encounters occur when two groups meet, usually on the boundary of each other’s range. They will contest over resources or the common space between one another’s ranges. Inter-group encounters can be aggressive, but they are usually more subtle and not outwardly aggressive. Individuals will ‘stiff-leg’ threat and ‘open-mouth’ threat at each other, but there usually isn’t a lot of contact fighting. To see who wins an inter-group encounter you wait and see which of the two groups moves off first, while the winning group remains in the common boundary space. In the inter-group encounter I documented, Splinter moved off first so they lost the “fight”. This makes me sad because Splinter has always been a winner during inter-groups, but with the murder of former alpha male Ed who was the primary participant in most inter-groups, Splinter’s power is diminishing. Or maybe the new male needs some time to establish himself as a confident and powerful leader...in case of actual aggression during an inter-group encounter he might need the support of the Splinter females and sub-adult males. I think that in time he will gain their trust and support.
The new male in Splinter has now been named Wolverine. I came up with the name, but I was keeping Teresa’s specifications for the kind of name we need in mind. Other names I proposed were Diablo, Satan, and Cocky, but Teresa didn’t think any of those fit. You see, Wolverine has some really nice big tufts, making him look like he has massive horns on his head. He also has unusually large testicles. Teresa thinks he is a hot monkey; she’s said this repeatedly and with quite some intensity. Under normal circumstances this would make things a little awkward... it’s kind of weird to get turned on by a male of a different species no matter how big his tufts or testicles are. Here however, the lack of available human males may just be getting to us ... I sometimes find myself describing male colobus as attractive and handsome also. LOL It doesn’t help that alpha males (including Wolverine) are constantly walking around with erections and trying to mount the females in their groups. haha
I also have the privilege of naming the new infants in my study groups! Wahoo. With naming infants, we’ve adopted Jane Goodall’s naming system for the chimps at Gombe. The first letter of the mother’s name will be the first letter of her infants’ names also. This way, the individuals in each colobus matriline will begin with the same letter of the alphabet. This system makes sense since ursine colobus at BFMS are generally female philopatric (females remain within the group in which they were born, while males disperse when they reach sexual maturity). Sometimes females do disperse, but under more special circumstances. I’ve thought about names for the infants in B2 ... they have to start with the letters G, O, and R. I am also including a theme to go along with these letters, to make it easier to figure out which cohort these infants belong to as they mature and grow into juveniles. The theme is spiritual and political leaders, and the infant names I thought of are Obama, Ghandi, and Remus (one of the founders of ancient Rome). I’m not sure if we will keep these names but I like them, especially Obama. Hey, he`s kind of an ok guy. Obama deserves to have one of the BFMS colobus monkeys named after him! hehe
As for my actual work, I’m still in the midst of remembering individual monkey Ids and figuring out the infant situation and new group compositions in my potential study groups. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this already but ursine colobus monkey infants are born completely white; this is their natal coat. As they age, over approximately 6 months, their natal coat is slowly replaced with various degrees of grey, until they gain their adult pelage (black and white). Like in human children, although there is some individual variation around how quickly infants develop, coat colour changes over time seem to be generally similar among different infants. This is how it’s possible to estimate specific ages of ursine colobus infants. Like 99% of human babies, ursine colobus infants have ‘too-big-for-their-body’ heads (many people describe new infants as resembling aliens) but they’re adorable even when they are in the midst of changing from white to grey. During this transition, the area right around their eyes and their mouth darken first so they look like they have been fist punched in the face right in the eyes and mouth.
In group Dadie there is 1 (or possibly 2) black-and-white infants and 1 grey, group Wawa has 1 grey and 3 older black and white infants, group B2 has 2 brand-spankin’ new white (!!) and 1 older black-and-white infants, groups Red Tail and Splinter only have infants older than 6 months, and according to Teresa, Odum (a group who’s individuals I still have to learn) has 1 white-ish infants. The most important groups of all for me right now are B2 and Odum, because they have new infants and these are the only two groups in which we know for sure that there are immigrant females. This makes it possible for me document allomothering behaviour of females who aren’t related to any of the others, to see if kinship affects maternal tolerance to allomothering and if unrelated infants are less attractive for allomothering. I’m not discouraged by the fact that the majority of groups don’t have new infants. I will be here for 6 months so it is better for my project that the births are spaced out a bit so that I am always collecting data. Also, I’m not too confident in my data collection skills yet, so I will need some more practice before any of my collected data will be good enough to use. I did collect my first bit of data yesterday; an inter-group encounter between Splinter and Bomosua, a group I don’t usually watch. Inter-group encounters occur when two groups meet, usually on the boundary of each other’s range. They will contest over resources or the common space between one another’s ranges. Inter-group encounters can be aggressive, but they are usually more subtle and not outwardly aggressive. Individuals will ‘stiff-leg’ threat and ‘open-mouth’ threat at each other, but there usually isn’t a lot of contact fighting. To see who wins an inter-group encounter you wait and see which of the two groups moves off first, while the winning group remains in the common boundary space. In the inter-group encounter I documented, Splinter moved off first so they lost the “fight”. This makes me sad because Splinter has always been a winner during inter-groups, but with the murder of former alpha male Ed who was the primary participant in most inter-groups, Splinter’s power is diminishing. Or maybe the new male needs some time to establish himself as a confident and powerful leader...in case of actual aggression during an inter-group encounter he might need the support of the Splinter females and sub-adult males. I think that in time he will gain their trust and support.
The new male in Splinter has now been named Wolverine. I came up with the name, but I was keeping Teresa’s specifications for the kind of name we need in mind. Other names I proposed were Diablo, Satan, and Cocky, but Teresa didn’t think any of those fit. You see, Wolverine has some really nice big tufts, making him look like he has massive horns on his head. He also has unusually large testicles. Teresa thinks he is a hot monkey; she’s said this repeatedly and with quite some intensity. Under normal circumstances this would make things a little awkward... it’s kind of weird to get turned on by a male of a different species no matter how big his tufts or testicles are. Here however, the lack of available human males may just be getting to us ... I sometimes find myself describing male colobus as attractive and handsome also. LOL It doesn’t help that alpha males (including Wolverine) are constantly walking around with erections and trying to mount the females in their groups. haha
I also have the privilege of naming the new infants in my study groups! Wahoo. With naming infants, we’ve adopted Jane Goodall’s naming system for the chimps at Gombe. The first letter of the mother’s name will be the first letter of her infants’ names also. This way, the individuals in each colobus matriline will begin with the same letter of the alphabet. This system makes sense since ursine colobus at BFMS are generally female philopatric (females remain within the group in which they were born, while males disperse when they reach sexual maturity). Sometimes females do disperse, but under more special circumstances. I’ve thought about names for the infants in B2 ... they have to start with the letters G, O, and R. I am also including a theme to go along with these letters, to make it easier to figure out which cohort these infants belong to as they mature and grow into juveniles. The theme is spiritual and political leaders, and the infant names I thought of are Obama, Ghandi, and Remus (one of the founders of ancient Rome). I’m not sure if we will keep these names but I like them, especially Obama. Hey, he`s kind of an ok guy. Obama deserves to have one of the BFMS colobus monkeys named after him! hehe
Ed is Dead!
I’ve been in Ghana now for about a week, after leaving this place a year ago. Teresa (another MA student working under the same supervisor as me) and I both agree that it feels like we never left. It’s great to be back! The first few days were spent in Ghana’s capital Accra, where we had to meet a representative of the Ghana Wildlife Commission so that we may pay a hefty research fine and ask for official permission to conduct research at BFMS. This task had Teresa and me scrambling through various parts of Accra looking for someone (anyone) with the proper equipment to make passport-sized pictures of each of us and to photocopy our passport signature pages. Needless to say, we got all of this done in one day (a miracle when you’re on Ghana time) and we even got the chance to meet some rich Ghanaian people who introduced us to Joe, their pet monkey (mangabey) who was tied up on a rope outside of their large home. Poor Joe did not seem like a happy monkey. He is bound to get even more depressed as he reaches sexual maturity and decides that all he really wants is to be free so that he may find himself a mangabey girlfriend or two (or three).
The cultural differences between our ‘Western’ and Ghanaian societies enable some interesting situations to occur. Wherever we go we are constantly called “obruni” (i.e. white man or stranger). Speaking for myself, I feel shame when I hear myself called this. Obruni seems to sum up the spite that Ghanaians and many other Africans feel towards the white colonialists who came to Africa to ravage the land and people. I feel shame when I hear someone call me obruni because I know that I am white and with the colour of my skin come certain implied wrong-doings (sins maybe?) that I cannot change ... they are in my history. Well, maybe not my personal history since most Romanians were generally the ones being persecuted by various totalitarian regimes rather than doing the persecuting, but you get my drift. Actually Ghana has always reminded me a lot of Bucharest, Romania, around the time when I grew up; right before and after the Ceausescu’s communist crap ended. The country was a mess compared to nowadays. I don’t mean to offend Ghana because I like it here, but I find comfort in some of the familiar comparisons I find with my own childhood.
Other than being called obruni, a white person must get used to being petted (we have considerable more hair on our arms than Ghanaians), getting our hair pulled and/or stroked, and our freckles poked and picked at (I don’t think Ghanaians have freckles generally). A white tourist must also get used to the public urination and defecation, and if you are a woman, constantly being asked if you have a husband. The answer must always be “Yes, and he is big and strong and can beat you!” or you will never escape. Either way you should be prepared to receive several marriage proposals, because any white woman in Ghana must be looking for a man to show her how to be a woman right? Teresa has a list she has actually written down, of the best/worst pickup lines she had ever received from Ghanaian men. She has a lot of them, but my favourite has always been the most shocking: “I want you to be my girlfriend! Do you know why? Because I have a big black penis and it will make you very happy.” LOL
Cell phone service in Ghana is amazing! The country literally bi-passed the entire landline phone system because by the time individuals were ready to get a personal phone, cellular technology was already super. Something that has never happened to me here before which has occurred to me within the past few days, is getting strange phone calls from some Ghanaian who keeps yelling at me “I want you to stop calling my wife. I want you to stop seeing my wife. Do you understand?” The first time this happened it was 1 am and I had no fucking clue what was happening or what continent I was. The next few times he called I told him (at first politely and eventually forcefully) that I was a Canadian woman and he must have the number mixed up. I said I don’t know his wife, I have never called or seen her (i.e. I am not having a secret affair with this woman) and he should stop calling. His reply was confusing, but generally he still believes that I am a Ghanaian man with incredible voice and accent altering abilities, and that I am indeed fooling around with his wife. A woman (his wife maybe) also called me several times this morning. She spoke only Twi and we clearly did not understand one another.
After a few stressful days we finally got the guesthouse at BFMS. This is our home! It is marvellous. Teresa and I (well mostly Teresa because she is quite a bit stronger than me) carried all our kitchen and room stuff out of storage and set things up. Our make-shift kitchen consists of a gas stove and a few shelves, in the open air. The bathrooms have toilets which are flushable by bucket water we get from a manual pump in the garden. Our daily showers are generally also done by bucket water. The water we drink is run through a ceramic filter that we fill via ... yes you guessed it, buckets! Needless to say, in a few weeks I expect to have stronger arms than I ever would have working out at the gym in Canada. Pumping water, in addition to our 10 to 12 hour days following monkeys through the forest, standing on our feet all day with binoculars raised, and going for bi-daily 12 km runs, are bound to get our white flabby asses in shape. Only to get flabby again once the field work is over and we return to Canada, but what can ya do? Our meals are modest yet delicious...or at least Teresa’s are since I can’t cook worth a damn. I would rather open a can of beans for dinner than cook something that other people may actually try to ingest but I can learn...eventually.
At the time when I am writing this, I have only seen monkeys two days. I LOOOOOOVE THEM! I missed watching monkeys so much I didn’t even know it. I have seen some of the main groups that I will include in my study (Wawa, Splinter, B2, Dadie, Red Tail) and things are looking good in term of infants. B2 has 2 young infants! My MA study focuses on finding any potential kin biases in allomothering behaviour in the ursine colobus monkey. That is, are the aunts, grandmothers, sisters, more likely to hold and care for the infant than females who aren’t related? If so, than my findings may provide strong support for the ‘kin selection’ (a theory developed to explain “altruistic” behaviours that are not properly explained by Darwin’s theory of natural selection). It was nice seeing all my old friends (still talking about monkeys), and I was surprised to see how some of the young ones have grown. All of a sudden, young males are more filled in and handsome, and females are larger and look almost adult size. A few horrible things did occur while Teresa and I were gone. Ed, the alpha male of group Splinter was shot by the villagers because he was believed to be dangerous! It’s true he attacked several people, including some poor students on the U of C Primatology Field School last year, as well as a primate researcher friend of ours who had stayed here for several months, but still! The monkeys here are supposed to be protected. At Boabeng-Fiema, it is a cultural taboo here to kill them (monkeys are associated with local gods) and the colobus are nationally protected under Ghanaian law. Furthermore, the tourism industry here has reached a point where the anthropogenic effects of tourism and constant human presence are starting to have negative effects on the natural behaviour of the nonhuman primates. It no surprise that Ed, who’s group ranges in a highly tourist visited area of the forest, had began acting aggressively towards people. I am a bit worried about the current state of Splinter group at the moment. Male-male competition for females and a good quality territory are quite high in the ursine colobus here. When humans interfere in these matters, I can only imagine what poor Splinter group did without their protective alpha male. Several outside males likely came in and fought over access to the females, fighting for top rank as alpha. In the process infanticide could have occurred... The situation with Splinter still needs to be assessed though in the next few days.
In addition to this sad news about Ed we also heard that Marika, a crazy tourist lady had come in while we were gone and began building tree houses throughout the forest! She wanted to make cute little bungalows where tourists could sleep and be ‘one’ with the monkeys. Incidentally, the first tree house she built was in Ed’s range, and we’ve heard that she was attacked by him twice (probably in the midst of her building project)! Poor Ed was probably just taking his family for a nice meal to a favourite tree - the exact one where the tree house was being built - came across Marika, freaked out and lunged at her. Ed’s murder is probably her fault ... I blame Marika. Apparently Marika is also dead; she died in Kumasi (another city in Ghana). Teresa and I think someone got fed up with her crap and stabbed her in the heart. This idea isn’t too far-fetched as she had already been stabbed in the heart once in her youth, but then she had survived. All of this is no joke...people like this exist. Unfortunately they tend to have money; they come to Ghana where they offer their money to naive and poor local farmers so that they can continue being insane. In Europe and North America we call these people mentally deranged and dangerous and we put them in institutions where they can be kept under control. Or we give them drugs to numb their psychotic tendencies. Marika evaded such treatment and escaped to Ghana where she finally met her doom.
The cultural differences between our ‘Western’ and Ghanaian societies enable some interesting situations to occur. Wherever we go we are constantly called “obruni” (i.e. white man or stranger). Speaking for myself, I feel shame when I hear myself called this. Obruni seems to sum up the spite that Ghanaians and many other Africans feel towards the white colonialists who came to Africa to ravage the land and people. I feel shame when I hear someone call me obruni because I know that I am white and with the colour of my skin come certain implied wrong-doings (sins maybe?) that I cannot change ... they are in my history. Well, maybe not my personal history since most Romanians were generally the ones being persecuted by various totalitarian regimes rather than doing the persecuting, but you get my drift. Actually Ghana has always reminded me a lot of Bucharest, Romania, around the time when I grew up; right before and after the Ceausescu’s communist crap ended. The country was a mess compared to nowadays. I don’t mean to offend Ghana because I like it here, but I find comfort in some of the familiar comparisons I find with my own childhood.
Other than being called obruni, a white person must get used to being petted (we have considerable more hair on our arms than Ghanaians), getting our hair pulled and/or stroked, and our freckles poked and picked at (I don’t think Ghanaians have freckles generally). A white tourist must also get used to the public urination and defecation, and if you are a woman, constantly being asked if you have a husband. The answer must always be “Yes, and he is big and strong and can beat you!” or you will never escape. Either way you should be prepared to receive several marriage proposals, because any white woman in Ghana must be looking for a man to show her how to be a woman right? Teresa has a list she has actually written down, of the best/worst pickup lines she had ever received from Ghanaian men. She has a lot of them, but my favourite has always been the most shocking: “I want you to be my girlfriend! Do you know why? Because I have a big black penis and it will make you very happy.” LOL
Cell phone service in Ghana is amazing! The country literally bi-passed the entire landline phone system because by the time individuals were ready to get a personal phone, cellular technology was already super. Something that has never happened to me here before which has occurred to me within the past few days, is getting strange phone calls from some Ghanaian who keeps yelling at me “I want you to stop calling my wife. I want you to stop seeing my wife. Do you understand?” The first time this happened it was 1 am and I had no fucking clue what was happening or what continent I was. The next few times he called I told him (at first politely and eventually forcefully) that I was a Canadian woman and he must have the number mixed up. I said I don’t know his wife, I have never called or seen her (i.e. I am not having a secret affair with this woman) and he should stop calling. His reply was confusing, but generally he still believes that I am a Ghanaian man with incredible voice and accent altering abilities, and that I am indeed fooling around with his wife. A woman (his wife maybe) also called me several times this morning. She spoke only Twi and we clearly did not understand one another.
After a few stressful days we finally got the guesthouse at BFMS. This is our home! It is marvellous. Teresa and I (well mostly Teresa because she is quite a bit stronger than me) carried all our kitchen and room stuff out of storage and set things up. Our make-shift kitchen consists of a gas stove and a few shelves, in the open air. The bathrooms have toilets which are flushable by bucket water we get from a manual pump in the garden. Our daily showers are generally also done by bucket water. The water we drink is run through a ceramic filter that we fill via ... yes you guessed it, buckets! Needless to say, in a few weeks I expect to have stronger arms than I ever would have working out at the gym in Canada. Pumping water, in addition to our 10 to 12 hour days following monkeys through the forest, standing on our feet all day with binoculars raised, and going for bi-daily 12 km runs, are bound to get our white flabby asses in shape. Only to get flabby again once the field work is over and we return to Canada, but what can ya do? Our meals are modest yet delicious...or at least Teresa’s are since I can’t cook worth a damn. I would rather open a can of beans for dinner than cook something that other people may actually try to ingest but I can learn...eventually.
At the time when I am writing this, I have only seen monkeys two days. I LOOOOOOVE THEM! I missed watching monkeys so much I didn’t even know it. I have seen some of the main groups that I will include in my study (Wawa, Splinter, B2, Dadie, Red Tail) and things are looking good in term of infants. B2 has 2 young infants! My MA study focuses on finding any potential kin biases in allomothering behaviour in the ursine colobus monkey. That is, are the aunts, grandmothers, sisters, more likely to hold and care for the infant than females who aren’t related? If so, than my findings may provide strong support for the ‘kin selection’ (a theory developed to explain “altruistic” behaviours that are not properly explained by Darwin’s theory of natural selection). It was nice seeing all my old friends (still talking about monkeys), and I was surprised to see how some of the young ones have grown. All of a sudden, young males are more filled in and handsome, and females are larger and look almost adult size. A few horrible things did occur while Teresa and I were gone. Ed, the alpha male of group Splinter was shot by the villagers because he was believed to be dangerous! It’s true he attacked several people, including some poor students on the U of C Primatology Field School last year, as well as a primate researcher friend of ours who had stayed here for several months, but still! The monkeys here are supposed to be protected. At Boabeng-Fiema, it is a cultural taboo here to kill them (monkeys are associated with local gods) and the colobus are nationally protected under Ghanaian law. Furthermore, the tourism industry here has reached a point where the anthropogenic effects of tourism and constant human presence are starting to have negative effects on the natural behaviour of the nonhuman primates. It no surprise that Ed, who’s group ranges in a highly tourist visited area of the forest, had began acting aggressively towards people. I am a bit worried about the current state of Splinter group at the moment. Male-male competition for females and a good quality territory are quite high in the ursine colobus here. When humans interfere in these matters, I can only imagine what poor Splinter group did without their protective alpha male. Several outside males likely came in and fought over access to the females, fighting for top rank as alpha. In the process infanticide could have occurred... The situation with Splinter still needs to be assessed though in the next few days.
In addition to this sad news about Ed we also heard that Marika, a crazy tourist lady had come in while we were gone and began building tree houses throughout the forest! She wanted to make cute little bungalows where tourists could sleep and be ‘one’ with the monkeys. Incidentally, the first tree house she built was in Ed’s range, and we’ve heard that she was attacked by him twice (probably in the midst of her building project)! Poor Ed was probably just taking his family for a nice meal to a favourite tree - the exact one where the tree house was being built - came across Marika, freaked out and lunged at her. Ed’s murder is probably her fault ... I blame Marika. Apparently Marika is also dead; she died in Kumasi (another city in Ghana). Teresa and I think someone got fed up with her crap and stabbed her in the heart. This idea isn’t too far-fetched as she had already been stabbed in the heart once in her youth, but then she had survived. All of this is no joke...people like this exist. Unfortunately they tend to have money; they come to Ghana where they offer their money to naive and poor local farmers so that they can continue being insane. In Europe and North America we call these people mentally deranged and dangerous and we put them in institutions where they can be kept under control. Or we give them drugs to numb their psychotic tendencies. Marika evaded such treatment and escaped to Ghana where she finally met her doom.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
First Impressions
Based on the encouragement of a student in an anthropology class I TA'ed this year, I've decided to write a blog to document my field season (end of April to November). I am an evolutionary anthropologist; primatologist in particular. I observe and collect behavioral data from our closest living relatives, the nonhuman primates. Primatology is really great (at least I'm passionate about it) because it helps us understand how our early ancestors may have behaved and how humans may have evolved. Through a better understanding of nonhuman primates, we may be able to answer some of the questions associated with why we do what we do!
I'll write about my adventures and misadventures in Ghana, particularly about the colobus monkeys I'm observing at Boabeng-Fiema-Monkey-Sanctuary. You'll get to read exciting stories about the monkeys' lives (who's copulating with whom, who's having infants, allomothering, who's being "mean"). Watching monkeys is like watching soaps on tv; I might have called this blog 'The Colobus Saga'. Serious scientists don't anthropomorphize their study subjects but I can't help that here! I'll also write about the fun African and non-African people who will be my family during my stay, as well as any other shenanigans we may get into (snakes nesting in my room, getting sick with malaria, tro-tro rides, dreams about eating delicious fast foods, nightmares about eating more yams, etc.).
I've never even kept a diary or journal before, so this blog thing is new and exciting to me. If it's lame you can just look at my monkey pictures (if I can figure out how to post pictures...).
Enjoy and comment please!
I'll write about my adventures and misadventures in Ghana, particularly about the colobus monkeys I'm observing at Boabeng-Fiema-Monkey-Sanctuary. You'll get to read exciting stories about the monkeys' lives (who's copulating with whom, who's having infants, allomothering, who's being "mean"). Watching monkeys is like watching soaps on tv; I might have called this blog 'The Colobus Saga'. Serious scientists don't anthropomorphize their study subjects but I can't help that here! I'll also write about the fun African and non-African people who will be my family during my stay, as well as any other shenanigans we may get into (snakes nesting in my room, getting sick with malaria, tro-tro rides, dreams about eating delicious fast foods, nightmares about eating more yams, etc.).
I've never even kept a diary or journal before, so this blog thing is new and exciting to me. If it's lame you can just look at my monkey pictures (if I can figure out how to post pictures...).
Enjoy and comment please!
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