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.