March has been a decent month for us. We had some good experiments and were able to find the monkeys that we wanted almost every day. But it has been HOT (over 100 degrees at the beginning of the month) and so both the monkeys' and our activity has slowed down during the hottest time of day. This means we spend a lot of time waiting for the monkeys to wake up and start moving so that we can set up experiments. But hanging out with monkeys in the shade by the river is much better than searching for them on the often shadeless trails so we can't really complain (at least we try not to). We reached our halfway mark in the field season and celebrated by...going out with the monkeys and doing more experiments ;)
Forest Destruction
Returning to the home range of one of our study groups, Rafiki's, reminded me that I have yet to describe the devastation to their habitat that took place in July and January. This particular group lives right next to a privately owned gravel pit. It was always one of my least favorite places to visit last year because the noise of the gravel pit made it difficult to communicate. I can only imagine how this must affect monkey communication. But last year, the gravel pit company decided to chop down chunks of forest in order to put in huge (double lane) roads so that they have easier access to gravel in other parts of their property (see pics below). This not only makes the habitat much uglier to work in, but also makes us worry about the monkeys. Will they continue to cut down forest to make roads in the future? At this point they don't seem to be progressing very quickly, but as gravel becomes more profitable, they may slowly cut away all of Rafiki's group's territory.
Road where there used to be forest
Infection (Warning-these pics may ruin your lunch)
Just when you thought all I did was romp around outside all day playing with monkeys - bad health, the ugly part of fieldwork, strikes! Although I have basically been healthy while I have been here, I recently had a bad bug bite turned infection. I can only guess that my body was run down from the work month and thus wasn't so great at fighting off the germs. I fought with it for a while and then gave in and took antibiotics :( Check out the photos below
My beautiful arm infection
The swelling in my arm. It looks like I am flexing, but I'm not.
Ok, enough gross pictures, on to...
Beautiful Monkeys
I could think of some reason to tie all of this into the rest of the blog, but really I just want to show you pics of my monkeys so here goes:
Moth, alpha male of Rambo's group, looking tough
Cassie, adult male in Rambo's
Brava and her baby, Bedlam
Pitufo, male in Pelon group, looking disgruntled
Babies like to stick their tongues out...especially in the wind...we think it may have to do with cooling down
Baby monkey running
Wait that's not a capuchin. You're right. It's a howler monkey with baby on back
Twilo (?), male in Rafiki's group
Monkeys foraging at sunrise
Moth is sexier than ever. And I can't believe how much Cassie has grown up.
ReplyDelete