20 April 2015
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5 April 2015
My aunt likes to say that she's the reason I ended up in this field. My family used to joke and that my dad was a silverback because of his stature, facial expressions, and salt-and-pepper hair. In truth, the resemblance is uncanny. So she bought me a stuffed gorilla on the day I was born. It was my very first stuffed animal. But when I actually decided to become a primatologist it seemed like a completely random left-hand turn from the path I had put myself on. I was in film school studying to be a documentary filmmaker. I was primarily interested in capturing interactions. My sophomoric film-school ethos was trying to distill the complex and convoluted into something pure and transcendent. I thought that I could use film as a mechanism for understanding people in a way that was aesthetically pleasing and comprised at least mildly entertaining storytelling. At that point I didn't realize how circular these notions were, and that I was going about it all the wrong way because my particular form of processing doesn't translate well into a time-linear two-dimensional medium. I started moonlighting as an anthropologist as early as I started shooting 16mm on a Bolex. And really, I had always been an evolutionary biologist, an anthropologist, and a primatologist. Clue 1: at least once a week from the time I was in kindergarten until it was inappropriate to force Mum to read to me every night, I demanded that she read me 1 to 3 Wildlife Fact Files from the World Wildlife Foundation. We had a whole binder of full-color, trifold, animal profiles. All of the basic info was in there- natural geographic ranges, home range size, conservation status, diet, social structure, and probably even more than I can possibly recall now, more than 20 years later. The ones that I remember most are the Bengal tiger because the picture was taken at night and was the most beautiful I had ever seen, the great white shark, and the orangutan who wound up in the conservation tab rather than with the other mammals. Clue 2: My favorite field trips were zoo trips and I could sit for heaps longer than the other kids just watching the animals. My favorite section was the primate house. Clue 3: My favorite TV shows were all the documentaries about animals, especially when they involved primates. Clue 4: I first attempted to read a scientific journal article at the age of 14 as a freshman in high school. I was working on a project about the evolution of venom in snakes and other animals. The paper was about the molecular structure of a viper (I don’t remember which viper) haemotoxin. I was completely enthralled. There was a single moment when I realized that I wanted to be a primatologist, specifically. I was with a gorilla who had just recently arrived at the London Zoo and she wasn’t fitting in well. When I first saw her she was sitting by the glass with one shoulder pressed against it and the other facing the rest of the enclosure so she could see all the gorillas and all the people. I watched her for a while as she people-watched and kept her other eye on her new gorilla family warily. Every so often she looked my way. Eventually, there was a lull in visitors leaving only me and my new gorilla friend. I approached and slid in right next to her, shoulder to shoulder but for the glass. I wanted to photograph her so I opened my bag to retrieve my trusty 35mm. She peered through the glass and into my bag as I dug rifled through, finally pulling out the camera. She was took one look at the black object and was disappointed. She motioned with her lips and chin as her eyes darted back and forth from me to the bag. We continued in this fashion until my bag was empty and I was surrounded in its contents. I tilted it upside down to show her that I did not, in fact, have any other goodies hiding. As I started to gather my belongings, a new set of visitors started trickling in. My outline against the glass was obviously eclipsed by my new friend’s and patrons quickly realized the opportunity for a photo-op. They crowed around, shoving their children up against the glass, their cameras flashing in bursts. The gorilla looked at me one last time before skirting away. As she hid behind a nearby wall, she periodically peeped back out at me, but she never came back. There’s something to those moments that you share with another species that you can’t find elsewhere. Its like an exponential version of finally breaking through or transcending a language or a culture barrier. I wanted nothing more than to know her whole story and how she saw her world- where did she come from? What was her old group like? Was she happy in this new group? Why did she like to sit by the glass? What was she looking for in my bag? Did she have a prior experience with some sort of zoo enrichment where she used to live? Was she ever privately owned? And, more importantly, how can I approach these types of questions in a way that will yield representative and accurate answers? I was already fond of gorillas, but they had just become my flagship species. And here I am, on the eve of meeting some in the wild. My skin tingling with the electricity on anticipation, my stomach full of butterflies for all the same reasons. Tomorrow I will finally find this hour that I have been waiting for my whole life. 29 March 2015 *Note: Just in case you cannot imaging me laughing as I tell you this story, the tone of this piece is more than slightly amused exasperation* It might not surprise you when I tell you that I learn more about the world than “just” chimpanzee behavior from my field experiences. It hasn’t surprised me either. Aside from tons and tons of information, I’ve learned to expect surprises, random hurdles, unpredictable changes in absolutely everything, and (most importantly) to expect that any expectations about the aforementioned will be exceeded and undermined- sometimes simultaneously. It is easy for anyone to realize that other animals are pretty darned interested in your things- especially when those things are food. It only takes a few days in this forest to realize that baboons are a constant threat. In Kakamega, the blue monkeys were constantly trying to sneak into the house for a snack. When you really settle down in the woods, and your kitchen is a small building butting right up to a nice patch of trees and underbrush, it is not surprising that the rats move in to feast on your bountiful supply of sweet fruits and processed carbohydrates. It is an annoyance, of course, but it is understood that you must spend a bit of time to protect yourself from sharing with rodent friends. I did not expect them to demolish every non-metal food storage unit overnight. We dealt with that hurdle by adding a few new ones to their nightly routine, shifting all of our fruit, veg, and carbs into a metal trunk. They promptly resolved their food access problem, managed to flip the latch and prop the lid open- even though we anticipated it ahead of time and weighed the lid with two bricks. Luckily, they haven’t grown thumbs to open the lock we use now to prevent them from unlatching our little treasure trunk (though I sometimes feel like it could happen at any moment). Instead, their solution has been to chew through the wall of our house to run around the common room all night snacking on anything that is accidently left out, regardless of what we would consider “edibility.” The walls are cinderblock. We still cannot find the entry point. We bought another trunk. So far, despite the frustration of realizing a tiny little rat brain has outsmarted me yet again, these are the type of struggles I expect and am mentally prepared to deal with. Mango flies are another expected annoyance- relatively easily thwarted (thank heavens) by ironing everything. Even- no especially– your underwear. What never occurred to me was that rats would eat 80% of the underwear that I brought to Uganda in the space of a single night between being taken off the laundry line and ironed the next day (oh how I wish I was exaggerating). When rats eat so much of your underwear, you embark on an epic adventure to replace them. You hop on a boda (motorbike) with trusty side-kicks and head for Fort Portal--- And then, as it turns out, the only underwear you can buy in Fort Portal are the kind that were rejected from every Goodwill, Salvation Army, etc. and shipped to Africa wholesale in giant bundles of all things wearable. When rats eat so much of your underwear, and there are not suitable replacements in a 200km radius, you hop in a car with your trusty sidekicks. You drive through hurricane-style rain storms, pull off the road for safety just to navigate through a small river, narrowly avoiding a water-logged Toyota. You finally make it to the big city, lay down for a well-earned night's sleep and wake up to find that not surprisingly, in all that mess, you've punctured a tire. Luckily you're driving the one Toyata in Uganda with a spare! And luckily, your trusty side kicks are excellent tire-changers, you switch it out in record time- and you don't even need assistance from the Texan missionary who offered so much advice but no real help while he sat there watching you get your hands dirty---- AND THEN, as it turns out, somehow it is nearly impossible to find a decent pair of underwear even when you scour 3 malls between Kampala and Entebbe. Yes, apparently the only place to find new underwear is the supermarket. Further, all of said underwear is XXL or “high cut” circa 1984, or both. Or- the one alternative that we did find- is the right size, a decent cut that will actually stay on your hip-less body, but with very round and cushy BUTT PADING that tones and shapes and add a whole “butt size.” In the end, the trip to the big city has resulted in locating exactly 4 pairs of underwear that are even remotely suitable and will solve the problem for the time being. Who knows how well they’ll stand up to ironing. Or the rats. I have also acquired a few bottles of wine and some good, dark chocolate… 5th March 2015
Generally speaking, my academic work comes more easily when I’m in the field. Something about being in it- being in the forest, in a group of chimpanzees, in the work itself- keeps my mind in the right frame for organizing thoughts into words and methods. But sometimes the sound of a tree snapping under the weight of an elephant cuts through chilled night air like a gunshot, and I freeze, thoughts fleeing from my uneasy mind. I have a deep and profound respect for elephants. As a scientist of sociality, they are incredibly fascinating: multi-tiered social systems, extended matriarchal families, complex communication, visiting the bones of dead relatives… They have this mysterious intelligence about them, not to mention their delightful charisma. Truly a mega fauna. But Anjojo hangs in the air like this menacing force- this monster that we never see but always sense. Waiting for you around any corner, behind any tree, in any valley. It holds this tension that knots my stomach. The tree was so loud and so close that I thought it must have fallen just beside the house. But when I stepped outside and lit the lawn up to the forest line with my headlamp, there was nothing. No signs of disturbance. I can still hear them now- I could hear them from the porch too. Cracking, smashing. They sound like aliens: low, guttural rumblings that roll toward me then- POP! My hair is raised and these goosebumps are not from the cold- my hot cup of chamomile won’t soothe them. There are lights on all the front and back porches, and by the kitchen and outhouse doors. The light on 4b illuminates the side yard past the fence to the road- and yet, in all of this light space, my ears filled up with elephant sounds, I see nothing. Not so much as a branch or a leaf quivers. Its like they hover just beyond that pitch black shadow wall, pulling trees to the ground to taunt me. …Perhaps I’ve labored too hard over the same three paragraphs of this proposal for the last two- okay, four- hours. Maybe I should stop weighing the costs and benefits of using one term instead of another. Or whether I have the room to squeeze in that extra line of text to better justify my choice of a GLMM instead of a GAMM approach- and should I write out each and every control and random effect every time for every test or leave it to the summary in this table? At least I have Anjojo to pull me of my own head, back to the real world and remind me that its time for bed. Here's a smattering of some of the better photographs I've taken this season. I hope you all enjoy the images as much as I enjoy taking them!
20 February 2015 Do you remember the time that I told you about our alpha candidates, Lanjo and Eslom? And my personal opinions and feelings about both of them? Well the new has officially broken, folks: we have a new alpha at Kanyawara! To see the story that pairs with that headline check out the blog post that I co-wrote with my lab mate, Drew, on the Kibale Chimpanzee Project website (https://kibalechimpanzees.wordpress.com/news/). *DISCLAIMER: the following commentary represents my thoughts, feeling, and opinions alone and does not necessarily reflect those of other individual or group of individuals including but not limited to those associated with KCP, the University of New Mexico, or Harvard University* I was there when it happened that Tuesday afternoon. Not ten meters from where I sat with the FA’s, another researcher, and our new photographer. The photographer could sense that something big was happening- I’m not sure if he picked up more on the chimp cues or our dropped jaws. It was such a quietly colossal moment. Somehow I just thought that it would be more of a big deal. I don’t know why it wsa so dead-set in my head. Maybe it was the way things went down between PK and Squirt at Kakamega. It seemed like PK would prefer to die-like he was actively trying to get himself killed- than lose his alpha status. There was so much horrific bloodshed- he suffered a gash to his forehead that opened his skin to the bone. Gravity pulled it down over his eye, closing it completely but leaving the big swatch of skull exposed. It was gruesome. True, this situation was very different- not a coups d’etas, just a race for the open slot. But I still expected something more like that battle royale. I imagined that Lanjo would finally accept Eslom’s challenges and they would come to blows as the rest of the community watched with eager anticipation. A drawn out, hard-fought battle, and at least a bit of blood. Why yes, I am anthropomorphizing right now. Terribly unscientific of me! One thing that I honestly expected was an immediate and palpable shift in group social dynamic. And this did not happen. Yes, Lanjo pant-grunted to formally admit defeat and concede the title, but over the next two weeks it seemed like things went on as usual, like the pant-grunt was an isolated incident. Lanjo might have afforded Eslom a slightly larger berth, but he did not obviously avoid his alpha. Neither did Eslom target Lanjo. I started to think maybe we jumped the gun or imagined the whole thing in the first place. I finally detected the shift mid-February. Eslom began making foraging and traveling decisions and everyone followed. He’s led no less than six hunts since he became alpha and four have been successful. He’s taken a monkey in all four of the successful ones. In fact, one hunt ranks among the most successful in our history- they took down seven red colobus that day. Even a female or two snatched some monkeys. Max (who lost both of his feet to snare injuries as a juvenile) managed to take a monkey! By now it is unmistakable. Eslom has settled into his new role, everyone respects his status. He still plays with all the babies- especially Winza and Leaky- and he even defends our 6-year-old-orphan, Moon (I will be posting about Moon shortly). His displays have come a long way since my first summer. He moves with finessed and measured muscle power. He has this kind of masculine elegance similar an Olympic gymnast. He is also perfectly puffy like a teddy bear when his hair goes piloerect during a display, but somehow that feels like I’m undermining his alpha-ness. Then again, maybe I’m not. Maybe the best way to conceive of Eslom is to try and make wrap your brain around a very manly, badass, tough-as-nails teddy bear with super-hero strength and the grace of a dancer. 15 Feb 2015 When I arrived at Kibale for the first time in 2013, the great Kakama, the alpha to rule all alphas, had just died. His cause of death was a bit mysterious and already shrouded in the legend of his reputation. We suspected that he had died from complications arising from the same respiratory illness that killed our oldest male and a rather robust younger female. But a simple cold could not have killed the great Kakama- he must have been trampled to death by an elephant! Perhaps he was thrown from the highest limb of a tree in battle with another male! And still, his royal shoes remain unfilled. Yes, when I arrived here in January, 21 months of contests had still not produced an obvious alpha. You see, the problem is that Kanyawara has a number of very young males, and a number of very old males, but very few right in the middle. Among male chimpanzees, maintaining an alpha position requires brute strength and prowess, but also a certain confident attitude and nuanced social savvy. To rise up the ladder and find the top rung, one must strike the balance between physical domination of those below you, and careful cultivation of political allies. Our best candidates are Eslom and Lanjo, and they could not be more archetypal. Lanjo, the classic hero, is drop dead gorgeous. His long light colored coat flows with the wind, glistening in the sun as he displays. He uses saplings like stage props in some sort of modern ballet, swaying and bending but never breaking. He is majestic and powerful but graceful as well. When other males aggress against his mother, Tongo, Lanjo defends her honor. He keeps the peace, breaking up squabbles as they break out in the canopies of feeding trees. Lanjo also has a certain fascination with people, but that story is for another post. Eslom is an orphan. No siblings. Just Eslom. And he wants to be alpha so badly that I cannot devise a hyperbolic metaphor to do his ache justice. Eslom has goals and aspirations. And he chips away, slowly but surely, fighting his battles and stacking up victories and supporters. He is not beautiful, but he does not look intimidating either. His bottom lip ticks a melancholy quiver when no one grooms him. Another researcher calls him a teddy bear because of how fuzzy he looks when his coat goes piloerect during displays. I find this comparison perfectly appropriate, even as Eslom tries so hard to convince us all of his fierceness. I arrived as a staunch supporter of team Lanjo, but recently I’m flip-flopping. I thought of Eslom as a brute. He reads as the slightly villainous underdog with a chip on his shoulder. But now I see more layers. He is so playful and seems as happy to groom others as his is to be groomed. He has an adorable little entourage of subadults following him around faithfully. He is one of our most accomplished hunters and never hesitates to defend the community against intruders. My feelings on Lanjo have shifted as well. I still find him absolutely beautiful- if he were a human he would be a Calvin Cline model. Classically chiseled. But he isn’t a leader. He sneaks into the party and slinks away as he pleases. Sometimes his disappears for days or weeks. He doesn’t exhibit the same hunting, protection, or playful drives that live at the core of Eslom. This is all to say that I realized recently, watching Eslom play with the kiddies, that I’m switching sides. I’m trading in my Team Lanjo kit to sign with Team Eslom, hoping that all the hard-work pays off for my little brutish underdog. In the interest of full disclosure, I should share that Eslom does seem to be winning this war, slowly but surely, but this is yet another story for another day. My point is to say that I’m not jumping ship just to pick a winner. It’s his playing that won me over. How could I say no to supporting the most playful adult male? I’ll let you know how things develop… 09 Feb 2014
As I watched Outamba’s family playing on the path, a large male approached, piloerect and stiff-armed. Females pant-grunting in submission, he moved right into the middle of the bunch and sat, looking fierce. Pairs of playful infants and juveniles went right on wrestling, seeming not to notice. They tumbled closer, falling over each other and into his legs when suddenly he snapped to life snatching an infant male, Tembo. Tembo let out a small squeak as he was ripped away from his play mate- but it was too late. The male already held Tembo’s exposed tummy against his open mouth- his fingers tangling around Tembo’s torso and arms and legs. As his mother looked on, Tembo struggled against those strong hands. Biting fingers and pulling hair. The male held firm, smushing his open mouth into Tembo’s belly but never fully biting down. Tembo gasped with little chimpanzee laughter as the male squirmed his fingers into all the best spots with just enough force, but never too much, for a solid ten minutes of tickle time. Moments like that one are my favorite. I am consistently amazed that male chimpanzees can be so fearsome and brutish in one moment, and so tender and gentle in the next. The same male that showed such careful restraint playing with Tembo was chasing and attacking a subadult female with pounding fists merely moments before. The way they crash through the undergrowth demolishing trees and unleash seemingly unbridled muscle power and yet- sigh. I love that I get to study the other side of that coin. 06 Feb 2015
On Tuesday my lab mate and I were debating- you see, he had heard elephants tons of times, but never seen one. On the other hand, elephants seem to appear out of nowhere when I’m in the forest and might be fond of chasing me as well. So we wondered: who’s luck was the strongest? My lab mate led the group on the long walk back to camp. As we shuffled home, laughing and swapping jokes after the trek down into the swamp, across the swamp, and back up the hill to the main road, you could smell them. I swallowed, telling myself that the odor was probably a few hours old. Surely they were gone by now. Surely. Then our leader stopped cold. A gray shadow in the twilight. Flapping ears. Fifty meters ahead and just left of the trail. We whispered. Crept along quietly to confirm our first suspicions. Squinted into the fading light at the spot where the trail turned. Greener and light on one side and darker on the other and-- Yes. There was Anjojo. With friends. There was no suitable way around them. I felt betrayed by the GPS. We waited for a bit, hoping that our new friends would move further into the forest. Finally, the coast was clear enough to press on. The journey was slow, cautious, dark. I barely took a breath. We passed the spot. I sucked in the twilight air. Let my shoulders drop from my ears as I exhaled. Picked up the pace to make up for lost time. ANOTHER ANJOJO! Sitting right on the path and looking like might live out the rest of its long elephant life without leaving the spot. There were no side trails nearby. So we waited. With baited breath. Finally, the elephant moved along and let us pass. We made it home safely and soundly. No charges, no chases, and my lab mate saw his first TWO elephants instead of just one! So I guess our luck was about equal. 20 Jan 2015 To me, exhilaration is the marriage of deepest fear and purest excitement. As we hit cruising altitude on this first flight leg- Dulles to Brussels- I am suddenly stuck by it. It isn’t the same as the eager anticipation that I experience when I’m wheels up for a holiday adventure. Nor the equal-parts-nervous-and-delighted butterflies that take flight in my stomach when I’m about to see my boyfriend after a long separation. This time it was some inseparable mixture of fight-or-flight level terror and the feeling of scoring the winning goal of your soccer match. Because, let’s be honest, this suddenly got real. Like, really real. I’m not a first year anymore. I can’t just tool around and have fun. I’m not a research assistant or meeting the chimps for the first time or even piloting random methods to see what’s what. I am a Master of something. And THIS is my dissertation work. (That’s the completely scary part.) And now I remember that the hardest part of travel like this is leaving your loved ones and your home behind so many months. You can never know how much things will change while you’re away. And then there’s Marlee. I feel like I’ve abandoned my poor lil pup- who knows if she’ll even recognize me when I get back, smelling like the forest and looking like it too. On the other hand- I have a proposal and a data protocol and a decent little pile of pilot data to build on. I know the forest and the station and chimps (and where the elephants are easily surprised…). For the first time, I’m returning to a field site instead of starting fresh! Not to mention all the babies! We have so many chimp babies! Possibly more little chimp babies than ever- I almost hesitate to write it down for fear of putting a jinx on the whole operation- but I can’t hold it in I’m elated! It feels like every time we had a lab meeting last semester there was a new baby! On top of all that- the icing on the cake, one might say- is that my best friend will finally overlap with me at Kibale! So here’s to 2015! The year that I begin my dissertation. |
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