The thorny kingdom of samangos

“The detailed study of any animal presents
 its own peculiar problems, and the blue monkey (Syke's/samangos...)
is certainly no exception. The main difficulty
 lies in seeing the animals at all. 

 In parts of the forest where the canopy is 
thin enough for monkeys to be clearly visible,

 the undergrowth below is so thick that it can be

 penetrated only by cutting; the human 
observer can progress only at about 100 yards 
an hour, which is a lot slower

than a startled monkey. Conversely, in places where

 the canopy is sufficiently dense to suppress the undergrowth,

it is so thick that one cannot see anything in it anyway.

 There are intermediates between these two extremes,

but conditions of observation are seldom

better than indifferent.” Alrich-Blake, 1970

I have already described (i.e complained about) how the home range of the samangos is; but some pictures are much more explanatory than a million of words so...here are some details of the vegetation in which I pass several hours a day tangled, while the juveniles look at me biting their tails with curiosity. I'm getting a master in thorns and hooks removal, though... 

 

 ...and, not in few occasions, the vegetation around me is just like this...

To make it best, just imagine it at night!! Yeah, I had a extremely funny evening yesterday trying to come back after following the monkeys all day, with my shitty headtorch and the flashlight of my mobile. If sometimes the vegetation looks like a maze during the day, at night it simply looks like unpenetrable walls. To make things more interesting, just add  some enormous slippery rocks that avoid you to pass and the idea that a leopard could be watching you wondering how tasty you are...or maybe an angry snake from the ground (yeah, they can be active at night!!)...and all this without nobody knowing where you are...everything is by adrenaline...

Trapping and revolution

In my high school there was a boy famous for being the best writer of the institution; most of the times winning the yearly literature context. Then, I arrived (Muaahahaha). Depending on the year, we were on the same or different categories because of the age difference, and we disputed each other the prizes. I still remember the year I won not only in the prose discipline but in poem too, to see him sat on one of the green chairs of the conferences room, biting nervously his nails. We never spoke, even if we had common friends who insisted in that we had to talk; I guess it wasn’t the style of any of us. Until one night, in which I was taking the nocturnal bus back home after a fail party night and he came in a couple of stops after me. He sat behind my seat and we talked a little, don’t remember about what exactly but, since then, I have remembered a commentary. This was that it was difficult, if not impossible, to write when you were happy; sadness is a kind of muse.

For long I agreed with him; writing was almost the only relief I had during many years of darkness. Then the university came and the spare time ran off as well as my willingness to write. But the macaques in Morocco, among others, made me want to write again, even if it was in a language that would make things more difficult. This time, my inspiration came from happy moments, things about my outside world that I wanted to share instead of things of my inner world that I needed to get rid of .

This entire long story just to justify why I’m lagging behind with the posts and, it’s simply that I haven’t been very joyful these last weeks; but things are going to change…inshallah.

“I think I saw a pussy cat”

After some weeks of preparations in which we had to clear areas and do some pre-baiting (i.e. dragging pieces of beef fat, penises and testicles on the ground and hang them afterwards on the clearances); the Trap Master came and we were ready to start the leopard trapping. Each night, two people had to check the traps at certain hours, driving along them all by a predetermined circuit.

My first night was quite peaceful, with nothing remarkable. Then, some nights afterwards, it was my turn again, together with the French-Spanish to make the checkings.

She collected me at the Barn some before 21h and drove towards the bumpy area where the traps were. After checking the first trap, we continued until the one close to a little bridge, which we were supposed to check the last, but which is in a junction that you need to cross to go to the other traps. "Well, we'll check this one latter, it seems there is nothing" said the French-Spanish in Spanish when we were passing along...but just then we both looked again and realized of the two tiny round ears attached to a squared head which seemed grey between the bushes. She slowed down even more and the leopard stood up trying to escape.

She drove further to don't disturb the animal any more while we started the protocol, using the satellite phone to call the Owner.

After that, we had to continue our checking. The thing is that, as I said, this trap was just in a junction in which we necessarily needed to pass again and nobody had thought in this detail. So, we stopped around 50m before arriving to the trap and switched off completely the lights to see if the Team was already there or what.

Then we started to hear it...a kind of soft purring...leopards are big cats, after all, but they sound a little bit creepy when you don't see pretty much anything. For long we didn't see any clue of the presence of the Team; latter, we could see light sometimes. There were a couple of hours of confusion but, at the end, everything went fine, even with the typical unforeseen events of the first time.

The samango revolution

As I said in previous posts, I wasn't very pleased with how the things were done around here concerning to the primate data collection. After two weeks of really having a bad time because of this, thinking that was a terrible mistake to have come, a waste of time and money and even thinking of leaving, I tried to fix the things. Giving up is in my vocabulary, but till now the meaning has been always theoretical.

I dared to speak to the Leader and the Co-leader, giving my point of view on how the things should be. The outcome was surprising. Apparently, they had been so busy with the predator stuff that they hadn't really had time to review what the primate volunteers were doing and they were quite surprised that many obvious things weren't being done. Next day, we had a meeting the three of us together with the primate co-ordinator to speak about the protocol and discuss some of the several ideas I had presented. As a result, now I'm in charge of writing a new detailed protocol, as well as creating  new spreadsheets, ways of managing the data, etc and I also carried out a between-observetr reliability test which, even if it wasn't as good as expected (ever is?) gave us clues on many aspects that we have to work on and fix.

Well, it is something. It's true that I came here to learn, not to teach ( If I thought that I am  in that level I wouldn't be volunteering...though I know that the world doesn't follow my  standards). I'll do my best, hopefully counting with the help of the primatologists around here, the Scottish and the PhD student, but I guess that I will make some awful mistakes. Even though, it is a victory. I'm not only going to learn more than I expected but I'm going to do a kind of trial of how to manage a field study, which I hope it will be great to be prepared for a PhD...and WTF! I'm leading a complete group of English-Speakers (…even if I suspect that some don't understand a damn word of what I say...)!

Let's see how it goes...

"Training" the Minnesotan

Two weeks ago, a new girl, the Minnesotan, arrived to collaborate in the project and pretty much at the same time, half of the people left to have some holidays. With the Cardiffian, the Crossliner and the Cologner gone to Kruger and the Leader, the Co-Leader and the Predator Team to Botswana, I end up in charge of her training...even if it was my 3rd week.

Barn troop

The first day it was our turn of replacing the Cardiffian and the Crossliner in the follow of the Barn troop. Additionally, the Cardiffian had explained to me roughly the night before she left how to collect the data of the sleeping sites...

So, at 5 in the morning (aka d%ck o’clock), the Minnesotan came to the Barn and together, armed with our torches, went into the forest until we reached the sleeping site and sat waiting for the monkeys to give any sign of life, while Bonney the intrepid cat walked around with her bright eyes because of the light of the torches.

The sound of the pee and poo falling gave us the clue that the monkeys were awakening.

After collecting some data on the trees, I hurried up to follow the monkeys who quickly were leaving the Barn surroundings and going towards the road that goes to Bush camp. Anyway, we stayed for some hours with a kind of subgroup formed mainly by subadults.

That day I let the Minnesotan just to watch; it was too soon for me to "teach" and I think that she deserved a day of just looking, as I had in Morocco; though I told her to try to discover nipples on the monkeys, which is the only feature we have to tell apart adult females and subadults.

The monkeys made us follow them through an extremely thorny forest until we reached Bush Camp. It is amazing that, even when you wear long trousers, your legs end up like the scratching pole of Freddie Kruger's cat...but your trousers are still without a scratch!

The day finished with us trying to see what sleeping trees were the monkeys using to sleep and marking them.

The eco-ilogical plots

Next day, the Minnesotan had to help the Scottish with the buckets and then, come with me to do some ecological plots.

The GPS that we had with the points of the plots was completely crazy and we were lost in the bush for an hour, until we came back to one of the roads. Then, I took out a couple of normal compass that I had to measure the aspect and the slope of the plots and we saw how the GPS had the north right in the opposite direction of the compass...even if these two didn't exactly agree between them! At the end, somehow, we found one of the points and I could "teach" the Minnesotan all that I had learnt about the plots in the previous couple of weeks...which wasn't much and we both had a lot of queries, but we did our best. After lunch, we tried to do another one, but we couldn't complete it because I had to take her at 16h with the Scottish.

Around 17h, I was going to left the girls and the buckets to look for the House troop to follow it the next day when the Scottish made me realized that I had misunderstood the instructions of the Cardiffian and that the sleeping site data were collected the evening of the follow and the morning of the next day...Between this and our morning problems with the GPS, the Minnesotan should be thinking that I was pretty stupid, or at least I felt so.

But nothing better to cheer you up than found your little samangos preparing to sleep in bamboo poles, reminding you to the fight of the bamboo forest of the House of flying daggers.

House troop

This time, we woke up a little bit latter and went to the bamboo poles to find the samangos; which awake late, giving us the opportunity of watch them as small fury shadows hanging of the bamboo poles.

I asked the Minnesotan if she had already seen the baboons and, just a couple of minutes later, as an invocation, they appeared. They were among the troop half of the day, together with the PhD student and the Scottish, that had a day off and had gone with the PhD student to remember all times in which they both were assistants and followed these curious monkeys.

It was fun to watch the baboons, their interactions and to hear the bunch of vocalisations they do, and how, when they have to pass "close" (7m or more) to you, they look at you constantly and run. The samangos didn't seem to disturbed by their bigger cousins, but when these climbed to the trees in which the samangos were and these later jumped to another tree giving ground.

Concerning to the "training", I was testing the Minnesotan about the age and sex classes as well as the heights. I let her one of this fancy clinometer so she could practice alone the latter, and I let her in charge of the GPS points. I was expecting that she would have to expend a couple more of days training with the Crossliner and that she would have a real cultural shock...

Close to the sunset, the monkeys travelled to the Owner's garden...which is a garden near the house, but a thick thorny jungle downwards, where the monkeys made us stay for a couple of hours squeezing hour brains trying to find out how to follow them among the dense bush.

When the sunset came, we tried to find the sleeping trees, but Gunter, the massive smelly dog, was after us all the time, bordering especially to the Minnesotan. At the end, we couldn't find any thanks to the slobbery cub.

Next morning, I went alone to do the sleeping sites. I was relatively successful despite Gunter, the fact that the clinometer's batteries got exhausted and that I had to hurry up to meet the Post-Doc, the Cologner, the Neatherander and the Scottish to go to Polokwane at 8...well, to a Mall in Polokwane; it seems that this centre are one of the most exciting thing to do around apart from fauna watching.

End of training

The next House troop follow day, the Leader had told me to let the Minnesotan to do alone the second half of the day. So, I was quickly teaching them how to do the scans, and done a kind of "test" to see if we agreed. Fortunately, that was the case; she really wants to do the things right and is clever.

So, around 12h, I left her with the monkeys, sad, thinking once again that "my babies" were with a stranger...I guess a common feeling among "primate people".

Random stuff

Well, I have been here for a little bit more than a month and, sadly, I'm a little bit disappointed yet. I find that many things are not done as well as they could be done, especially concerning all the primate stuff. But I'm trying to change that. Thanks to the advice of the Boss in Morocco, and the discussions with the Scottish, I finally told my point of view in one of the group meetings and apparently, we are going to change the samangos data collection, so it is closer to a serious primate study...hopefully. I gave to the leader the protocol that we are using with comments, suggestions and ideas that the PhD student, the Scottish and I had and let's see what happen...But sometimes I wonder if it's the best strategy to make enemies during a leopard trapping season; I could end up like bait!

Apart form that, as I just said, we have just started with the leopard trapping to radio-collar them and tonight will be my first night checking the traps.

Yesterday, on the other hand, was my first day checking the vervet traps. I should say that I was glad that none of them got caught; I have many concerns about how ethical is to trap monkeys to radio-collar them, at least with the methodology we are using...but well, I haven't had the chance to read about the topic, so maybe it's just my impression, after all, I'm not an expert... Nonetheless, when I did the last trap check, one of the traps was triggered and without the baits and I saw, for the first time, the vervets, who were around 30m away from the trap, apparently very happy. They honoured me letting me stay with them for some minutes at around 10m, before they got lost on their nearly impenetrable kingdom.

I try to enjoy the experience, but the fact that I've got the impression that the things aren't done properly drains me out. I don't want to blame anyone in particular, because I think that probably all is a by-product of the "low-cost" science which is on fashion nowadays more than a matter of neglect...but... It doesn't help to remember Morocco everyday while wondering if I will ever have such a good times in my life again and the fact that, once again, my future is an unknown. I shouldn't think too much in this kind of things but, as I said, bad habits are difficult to give up.