Final Monkey Blog Post, Dec. 2012

If I were a more diligent blogger I would have divided some of these posts into multiple posts.  I would have kept up with current events, and probably written about basic things that until now I have ignored.  Such topics as exactly what I did in the field, and what we were studying, were completely left out from my blog.  I am using the past tense now because the field work has been completed as of two days ago, and the present tense feels inaccurate.  I won’t be too hard on myself though, because field work is exhausting and after spending 13 hours per day surrounded by monkeys, it’s a bit difficult to spend additional hours writing about them.  If you are interested in the science topics, read the article from the start.  If you could care less about the science but want to get to the more personal section, skip down a ways. 

The whole point of our Vervet field project was to investigate the relationship between temperament and foraging strategy.  Temperament is basically personality for animals; the specific aspect of temperament we measured was Novelty Seeking, which consists of both curiosity and boldness.  There are two basic foraging strategies we focused on: Producing and Scrounging.  Producing is when an individual moves into an unoccupied food patch (say, a bush, a tree trunk, or a section of ground with food scattered about) and begins to feed.  Scrounging is when an individual detects another group member feeding and joins them in the already occupied food patch.  Scrounging therefore requires the use of social information while producing does not. 

To investigate the relationship between temperament and foraging strategy, we simply measured both (data analysis pending).  Our main method for collecting data was the Focal Animal Sampling Method.  In layman’s terms this is the focused observation of one individual for a short period of time.  In our case the focal length was twenty minutes.  When the twenty minutes is over, you find a new monkey and do a focal on that one, and so on.  During a focal we paid attention to many things that would be extraneous to spell out, but mainly we recorded States and Events.  Every four minutes, we recorded a State, which summarized what the individual was doing at the time and who was within 1m, 5m and 10m of that individual.  After thousands of states one can get a clear view of how a monkey spends his time, who he likes to be with and how many others he likes to be around.  Events are recorded whenever they happen, and they are affiliative events like grooming, agonistic events like chasing or biting, and foraging events such as producing or scrounging.  This formed the bulk of our work and the vast majority of our data.

We also conducted two series of field experiments to help us measure Novelty Seeking.  The first series involved the layout of novel items in open areas, and observing and recording who approaches which items and for how long.  The novel objects we used for these experiments were inflatable boats, toys, and fake fruit and vegetables in containers.  The other series of field experiments involved the placement of fake insects or lizards in the paths of foraging monkeys.  Similar to the other series, these objects were entirely new to the monkeys.  However, this series of experiments was fundamentally different from the first because we targeted individual monkeys.  We used video cameras for all experiments to help us record the happenings.  The results from these experiments help us to determine the boldness and curiosity of each individual when encountering novel objects. 

That is, in a nutshell, what our project is.  There were many more things that we recorded, such as alliances in agonistic events and who led the group during movements.  But the main goal was to see if there was any correlation between novelty seeking and producing/scrounging.  Generally speaking, focals are easy to perform.  Sometimes your monkey is sitting in a tree, looking-out over the horizon with no one within 10m for the entire twenty minutes.  Other times, however, there are massive cofeeding focals with 25+ monkeys in the same food patch, and one cannot expect to be able to record everything.  Still other times it is impossible to see for 10m or maybe even 5m around your subject.  These are major contributing factors to what we call noise in the data.  Field science wouldn’t be field science without an extraordinary amount of noise.  That’s why the project was a year and half long, and that’s why we had to take hundreds of focals on each individual: to balance out the noise. 

Field experiments are cool, often producing unforgettable moments.  But they are so difficult that I think they make any scientist crave the convenience of a laboratory.  The problem with doing field experiments on monkeys is that they are monkeys, and monkeys do whatever they want.  If you lay out an experimental setup of novel objects in a section of your monkeys home range, that doesn’t mean the monkeys will go to that spot.  You may be waiting for weeks for them to go there, and that’s exactly what we had to do.  Even when they do go there, not all of the individuals in the group will pass through that spot.  Some may circumvent the setup completely.  In the second series of experiments, in which we targeted individuals with small objects, it was difficult to predict the direction of a monkey’s foraging.  I was able to predict their movement at above chance levels after much practice and refinement of technique, but some individuals are so skiddish and or oblivious that they will run past your setup dozens of times before you achieve a successful trial.  One monkey, Uli, who is a hilariously nervous fan favorite, was so impossible to do field experiments on.  We laid out a grasshopper for him and he went within 1m of it no fewer than fifteen times without detecting it.  These are the frustrations of the field primatologist.

There are other frustrations of field work.  The social isolation is difficult to bear.  For months 99% of my socializing happened with the other three people I worked with.  Occasionally I would speak to another person.  The hours are long.  In the summertime we woke up at dawn and returned to our house at 6:30 PM, about 13.5 hours if you ask me.  The work day begins like this: you’re tired because it’s early, and you may have even had a workday yesterday.  You drive into the reserve, and you may or may not have any clue about where the monkeys are.  We didn’t use any kind of tracking devices, so we needed to rely on knowing where the monkeys slept in order to find them more easily in the morning.  This was challenging in summer, when the monkeys start moving before you arrive and continue moving after you leave.  The time needed to find the monkeys ranged from zero seconds (seeing them from the road) to five hours (in extreme cases).  More frustrations.  All of the plants in South Africa hate you.  They’ll tear apart your clothes and skin.  They’ll make you bleed , then you have to watch out cause the flies are after you.  The sun feels like two suns, and it’ll have you seeking shade as early as 6:30 AM.  Starting in November I prayed for overcast days.  As if all of these frustrations weren’t marvelously frustrating, sometimes you simply get bored of the work—especially when it’s hot and the monkeys sleep for 5 to 7 hours of the work day.

I almost forgot: the snakes.  That inkling suspicion that you may collide with a venomous snake at any moment.  That paranoia spilled over into the night hours, when six or eight times I leapt out of bed in the middle of the night thinking that there was a cobra in my room.  An adrenalin rush at 3:00 AM isn’t exactly my cup of tea.  These nightmares happened to me whenever I saw snakes with high frequency in the park.  I had one of these nightmares the night after I watched a cobra devour a toad, which kicked and ribbited for fifteen minutes before being swallowed.   Sometimes, I would find myself uncomfortably close to a Cobra (within 2m a couple of times);  these incidences were surefire triggers for nightmares. 

You see, there are many unfortunate aspects of field work.  The frustrations can build up over time, and they’ll likely have you cursing the very animals you want to observe.  Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the monkeys and the field work, but after a while it gets to you.  I was counting down the days until the terminus of the project, which was December 10^th.  I had the same conversation with Sarah the Aussie about what we would do when we were done about 12 times. 

But then, when we reached the end, a stream of realizations hit me.  I realized that each of these monkeys is unique, easily as unique as you or me.  I could write a paragraph about every single monkey and tell you several stories about what each one did on this day or that day.  I love them.  I love Frank because he’s a total softy, always getting picked on by the other males.  I love Alba’s baby because it sat on my foot one time.  I even love the monkeys I hate, like Tammy, who always seems to threaten me.  I realized I had taken more pictures of Tammy than any other monkey, so we must have had something special.  I had broken the Jedi rule of not getting attached.  It wasn’t just the monkeys that I will miss; it’s also the quaint town of Soutpan with its endless fields and interesting inhabitants.  It’s the people of Ikgomatseng, the most welcoming villagers in the entire world (probably). 

Now that the project is over, the Vervets of group 2 in Soetdoring will de-habituate.  They’ll forget all about the researchers existences.  Males will transfer in and out of the group, and the group’s home range will shift.  Life goes on without us, and in many ways I think it is better without us.  We stressed some of them out, and we gave habituated groups big space and resource advantages over other groups.  Still, knowing that I will never see any of these Vervets again is almost unbearable. 

 I knew all along that this would be one of the biggest adventures of my life.  I’m young now, but I know I will remember everyone I met, all of the monkeys and experiences for as long as I live.  It is sad to be at the end of such a journey.  All of the frustrations of field work, all of my bitching about the thorny plants and semi-functional palm pilot, that all fades away at the end and what you’re left with is the memories of the personalities, and everything you have learned along the way.  After I said my goodbyes to the monkeys and to my coworkers, took my final looks around Soutpan and drove out of town on those dirt roads, I felt a wave of emotion and couldn’t help but cry.  I couldn’t believe it.  I had wanted it to be over for a long time, and now that I got what I wanted I could barely handle it.  I knew that it is dangerous to drive while you’re emotional so I pulled over.  I think I sobbed for about fifteen minutes. 

I am trying to stay happy now, which isn’t too hard because I am traveling around South Africa, one of the most beautiful countries I know of.  I want to stay focused on the next adventure, and not dwell on the one in the past.  It is kind of like breaking up with someone though, except I broke up with a field primatology project.  It will take some time to not feel sad about it.  Emotional reactions like this happen only when something is very special to you, so I am glad that I pursued this research opportunity.  To me it proves that I am living my life to the fullest.  Living to the fullest doesn’t stop now though, and I aim to keep it that way.  On to the next adventure!

 

Thank you for reading my blog and sharing my adventure with me.  I hope you enjoyed my writing.  I will more than likely write a few travel posts in the coming months. 

 

 

Spring Update, Social Supply and Demand and Calculations made by Vervets

It’s springtime now—that awkward phase between winter and summer when you don’t know whether to put on pants or shorts.   That time of year when, here at Soetdoring Nature Reserve, the uber-dry landscape spontaneously combusts, igniting the reeds which burn wildly at 400 C, producing flames that shoot up even above the taller acacias at thirty meters.   In the past month we have had two wildfires, which in total have burned over 50% of my group’s home range.  Fires in this area are completely natural, and restore vital nutrients to the soil to stimulate new plant growth.  Despite much of the treeline’s resemblance to a tinder box, the fire burns slowly, giving animals ample time to escape the inferno.  So it’s not too dangerous—I even waltzed up to a wildfire, weaving through some burning bushes to snap a few photos.  When a fire occurs here, there is so much long-lasting fuel on the ground that it can burn for several days.  Thick, dry logs lie strewn about, simmering for days just waiting for the right wind conditions to restart the blaze.  Adding to the problem is the cornucopia of antelope dung, literally everywhere, which is quite flammable and nearly impossible to stamp out once it’s burning. 

But following these fiery explosions has been an equally impressive swelling of plant and animal life.  Neophyte reeds have become towering green pillars, and weeping willows now sport healthy vines, to the delight of monkeys and climbing man both.  Swarms of migratory birds have made the shallow ponds of Soetdoring their temporary home, feeding on the fresh supply of insects together in swooping, rhythmic patterns.  Fish eagles circle the sky in mating pairs, riding the thermals and screaming surprisingly pleasant songs.  And flamingos, which are not pink but white due to a lack of crustaceans in their diet, patrol the waters in troops, plunging their faces into the mud as they go.  There are also these black and white water birds which have nested on the ground near the shore, and they become very upset when the monkeys pass through.  So upset, in fact, that they begin furiously cooing and repeatedly divebombing at them.  I watched in amazement as one bird swooped down at Quinton (a sweet and unassuming monkey) no fewer than ten times in a row, and so closely that the bewildered vervet had to perform acrobatic ninja rolls to avoid colliding with the black and white banshee. 

The birds aren’t the only ones enjoying a spring awakening—so are the lizards, fish and snakes.  Monitor lizards the size of small alligators slither through the water, probing the surface with their long tongues.  Throngs of catfish can be seen spawning in protected areas of the river near the bank, all swimming on top of each other so that they form a ball, mouthing the surface of the water.   And venomous snakes lie in wait in concealed positions, waiting for their rodent prey to stumble into them.  There are two species of snakes native to this area: Puff Adders and Cape Cobras.  So far I have seen five puff adders, but I never would have seen them if it weren’t for the monkeys because their black and brown skin is perfectly camouflaged to match the surroundings.  The monkeys are vigilant when it comes to predators, so when they find a snake they make a sputtering alarm call to warn the others.  But since the puff adders pretty much just sit there, still as a stone, many of the more curious individuals like to run up and get a closer look.  This often results in a crowd of primates surrounding the snake at the base of a tree or in a bush.  We use these occurrences as natural experiments testing for boldness and novelty seeking behavior.  Anyway, the puff adders are the less dangerous snake species in the park.  Cape Cobras, on the other hand, are very dangerous.  But they are either more rare or more shy than the puff adders, because I haven’t seen one yet.  Luckily their skin is bright orange/yellow so they are easier to spot.  Since I have seen so many snakes, I’ve been extremely careful about where I step. 

Since I’m on a roll with this animal stuff, I’ll write a bit about the other species of mammals as well.  There is an impressive array of antelope species in southern Africa, which is all new to me since there is really only one species of deer where I come from.  Hemsboek, Blesboek, Impala, Springboek, Waterbuck, Kudu, and Wildebeest are just some of the species which can be seen often.  Zebras are common as well but I don’t think they count as antelope.  I’ve become well acquainted with their poop and can identify which poop came from which antelope.  Some of them have beautiful twisting horns, others have cute dangly things on their necks, and some are regular speed demons easily reaching 50 kmph and probably faster.  The impala do this funny thing which I think is called spronging, where in the middle of their running, they will do a fantastic leap, presumably to gain a better view.  On some of the better jumps I’ve judged their feet to reach at least ten feet off the ground, easily clearing the rim of the nonexistent NBA regulation basketball hoops in the savannah.  The antelope are shy creatures, and they can smell you and the urine you leave behind in the field from far away.  But when you’re lucky with the right weather conditions (fog, wind blowing from the antelope towards you), or the animal is distracted for some reason, they can stumble through the treeline and end up right next to you.  One male hemsboek, which I think was distracted because it was running away from another male, came bounding through an open section of the treeline straight towards me, apparently not seeing me.  I didn’t want to get run over, so I grabbed a stick and started banging it on a tree to alert the beast of my presence, but it didn’t alter its path until it was just ten meters from me, which marks the closest I’ve been to an antelope while on foot.  But sometimes the impressive things about these animals aren’t what you can see, but rather what you can hear.  During the mating season, the males make these low-pitched, belching sounds which can be heard from incredible distances.  I have also heard their screams, which sound like a brief and loud television white noise. 

I’m tempted to list all of the different animals I have seen, but that could go on for volumes.  I do wish to mention, though, that I’ve seen an Aardvark, which is a rare sight because they are nocturnal.  It was at dusk one night, when we were leaving the reserve at an unusually late hour, and we could see this creature which looked like an awkwardly large rabbit sprinting across the grass with all of its limbs and appendages flopping wildly.  I’ve been hoping to see an Aardwulf, which are kind of like hyenas but they are equally rare as Aardvark and so I might not end up spotting one in the remaining couple of months that I am living here. 

Social Supply and Demand and Social Calculations Made by Vervets

I promised that I would talk about this in my previous blog, so here it is, everything you’ve been dying to know about Vervets!  Vervets are not the most clever primate species when it comes to physical cognition.  They don’t use tools to make their lives easier like capuchins do (although they don’t really need to), and despite the fact that they know there is delicious food in my backpack, they can’t figure out how a zipper works on their own.  However, laboratory tests have confirmed that Vervets are skilled in tasks of transitive inference.  That is, if told you that object A is bigger than object B, and object B is bigger than object C, then you would infer that object A is bigger than object C.  Vervets can calculate that just fine, and it is proposed that they are able to do this because their society demands for great social intelligence.  Every Vervet group has a complex and strict dominance hierarchy, and each individual must figure out his or her place in the pecking order.  Upon acclimating to a new group, the monkeys use their skills of transitive inference to rapidly calculate who is dominant to whom.  If a new monkey, Chester, migrates into our group, he will soon see Eric displacing Vinny at a feeding patch.  Next, he will likely see Vinny chasing Janine.  Chester can then infer that Eric is dominant to Vinny AND Janine. 

Indeed, where Vervets shine is truly in their social intelligence.  The monkeys not only have to figure out individual dominance hierarchies but also the complex interactions between different families and alliances.  They must remember who aggressed against whom, in what context, and who supported whom—they can use this information in the future when deciding how to compete for resources like food and resting places.  For example, our new monkey Chester is undoubtedly going to see Isabel supporting Tammy in aggressive contexts at feeding patches.  So even though Chester is larger than Isabel and can easily supplant her, he will think twice about doing that if Tammy is nearby; he knows that Tammy will support Isabel, and two against one is rarely pretty. 

Now let’s say that Chester senses some agonism between Eric and Vinny while the two of them are feeding in the same patch.  Chester can choose to stay out of it and go about his business, or he can try to gain an ally by supporting one of the two monkeys.  Who will he support?  He will probably support Eric, because Eric is dominant and would be a more powerful ally than Vinny.  This social mechanism ensures that the dominance hierarchy is maintained, because most of the monkeys will support the dominant ones in the hopes of gaining that individual’s support in the future. 

But, the principles of supply and demand can be applied here.  Let’s say that Chester is a relatively small and weak male, while Eric is fierce and strong.  Chester’s help in an alliance is therefore less valuable than Eric’s.  So how many times is Chester going to have to support Eric for Eric to later support Chester?  Many times.  But supporting others isn’t the only way to gain the favor of another—the monkeys also use grooming to accomplish the same goal.  It’s a different method but the same principles apply.  Because Eric is a valuable ally, Chester will need to groom him for a long time to gain his favor.  Simultaneously, Eric won’t groom Chester for very long because his value as an ally is so low. 

A better example of the grooming supply and demand mechanism is with females and their infants.  All of the females want to hold all of the infants.  Let’s say that Rosa does not have an infant of her own, and five other females give birth to infants this year.  She really wants to cuddle an infant so she will approach one of the mothers and groom her for five minutes to gain access to the infant.  Mission accomplished, Rosa got to hold an infant!  But let’s say that in the following year, only one female gives birth to an infant.  Rosa still doesn’t have an infant of her own and she wants to hold the new infant.  To gain access to this new infant, she will have to groom the mother for fifteen minutes.  That’s a three-fold increase in grooming from the previous year.  Because the supply of infants greatly decreased, she’s going to have to pay up big time to get the same reward.  This is just one example of why scientists are interested in primates for insight into the origins of economic principles.

Habituation, Temperament, Dealing with Aggression, and Social Order of Vervets

Hello everyone!  It’s been quite a while since I wrote my last blog and good Lord it is snowing outside right now.  That’s not what I was planning to write, but I just noticed it.  The Free State has some freaky weather conditions.  Just the other day, it was so hot while I was working that I spent half the day without my shirt on—well actually, the only reason I had to do that was because I forgot a t-shirt.  I was rocking the hoodie with no undershirt look, a look I like to call “The Lodovico.”  The following day was breezy with light rain and lightning streaking down from the heavens, and now it’s snowing.  In Africa.  That’s something I never would have expected.  What’s more, there are actually penguins that live off the coast of southern Africa as well—I saw living, waddling proof with my own eyes in the Cape Town area about a week ago.

But that’s enough loosely connected rambling for now, because I have many a topic to write about.  Somebody play the montage song, because since my last post, I’ve gone from just a beginner to a pro at identifying the monkeys in my group.  I’ve been on two holidays, one to Cape Vidal on the east coast, and the other to Cape Town on the west coast.  I attended an informative primatology conference and did a bit of light networking.  And I was fully integrated into the University of Cape Town environment for three full days and learned all the cool Western Cape lingo.

But today I am feeling sciencey, so I will first write a little bit about field work with Vervet monkeys as well as some basic things about primatology.  Since I have so much to write about I will save the travel experiences for a separate article altogether.

Habituation

SO, the first thing that one must realize when trying to understand the work I’ve been doing is that these vervets are in fact wild animals, and before research commenced on these specific groups of monkeys about one year ago, they were not at all used to seeing humans.  They would run, hide, and even sound the “human alarm call” upon seeing a person.  The first thing one must do to study a group of wild monkeys is to habituate them to your presence.  The scientific definition of habituation would be something like the process of reduction in response to a stimulus after repeated exposure to that stimulus—in other words, the process of getting used to something.  In psychology, the opposite of habituation is sensitization:  the heightened response to a stimulus after repeated exposure to that stimulus.  Sensitization manifests itself, for example, whenever we hear a song so many times that it becomes more and more aversive with every playback. Sensitization is the exact opposite of what we want when beginning to study a group of wild animals.  We want to turn these monkeys from nervous forest creatures into amiable college-town squirrels.  The process of habituation with Vervet monkeys takes two to three months… at first, the researcher stands far away from the monkeys, and with each passing day he or she gets closer and closer until they’re able to stand just a few meters away without inducing a significant fear response.

The key to speeding up habituation is consistency.  That means maintaining a presence in the field for as many days as you can, and it also means maintaining a consistent appearance.  If you intend to wear a hat and sunglasses in the field while you work (which you should do if you’re working in Africa), you need to wear the hat and sunglasses from day one.  I theorize that the main way for the monkeys to tell humans apart is by their outlining edges of the figure, especially of the head, as well as other key features of appearance.  Vervets are highly socially intelligent and so fixate on the face when looking at a person.  Wearing the same hat every day provides the monkeys with a recognizable outline that they can see even from quite far away, so they don’t have to rely on some of the more subtle identifiers like skin tone, shape of the ears, gait, et cetera.  I have found that the monkeys notice when I change my hats, and it makes some of the more nervous individuals very evasive.  So, as much as I can, I wear the same accessories every day.  Of course, it helps that I always carry the same backpack and wear the same shoes and jacket.

Individual and Sub-group Differences in Vervet Habituation/Temperament

Each monkey has a unique personality, and a different threshold of fear with humans, so there is considerable variation in habituation times between individuals.  Some of the monkeys are remarkably calm to the point where you can practically step over them (after habituation), and others spend most of the day evading you and clinging to safety in the trees or thick bushes, even after they’ve seen you every day for months.  I consider it a positive thing that the monkeys are so unique.  Not only is it interesting to see a rich spectrum of temperament within the same group, but it adds challenge to my daily work because I need to alter my behavior depending on which monkey I am taking data on.  Sometimes it is nice to do a focal on Dan or Julia, because both of them are so bold that I can stand behind them at a distance of one meter and gaze over their shoulders to get a closer view of what they’re eating.  But other times, when I’m in Ranger mode, I’m feeling a bit friskier, and would rather have a challenging hunt.  In that case, I track down Zara, who is by far the shyest monkey in the barrel.  The first part of the quest for Zara focals is finding her, which is difficult because she is always at the front or back periphery, and most of the time she is concealing her appearance within a tree or a bush.  When I do end up finding Zara, I stand about ten meters away and cleverly turn my back on her and watch her slyly over my shoulder, as though I were some private investigator keeping tabs on my target in the city streets.  Turning my back on Zara is a good technique because it communicates to her that I am not a predator; also, I am trying to trick her into thinking I don’t see her at all, when in fact I am intently watching her and recording every behavior that is pertinent to the study.

If you spend a lot of time with Vervet monkeys like I do, you would likely possess the ability to categorize monkeys in your group(s) into subgroups based on temperament and/or relatedness.  There are for example stable and obvious sex differences in boldness with my monkeys.  That is, nearly all of the adult and subadult males are bolder than all of the adult and subadult females.  There are of course exceptions to the rule, but if I were to rank the boldness of the monkeys, the top ten boldest of the group would include maybe two females.  Boldness is operationalized, basically, as the speed of habituation.  There are very good reasons for these sex differences in temperament, but I will delay their explanation for now for the sake of avoiding a lengthy tangent.

Besides obvious sex differences in boldness, there are also differences in overall temperament based on relatedness.  For example, Vinny is Alba’s son.  Both can be found on the periphery of the group most of the time, and both prefer to surround themselves with fewer rather than greater numbers of peers.  Vinny and Alba showed similar rates of habituation.  This example shouldn’t be surprising, as it is well known in humans that genetics plays a large role in personality formation, accounting for roughly half of its variance.  Another example of relatedness correlating with temperament is with Rosa, Gemma and Isabel.  We can tell that they are related because their appearances are nearly identical, and all three show similarly high levels of boldness, aggressiveness, and willingness to threaten humans.  Gemma and Rosa are the only two monkeys from my group that have touched humans in an aggressive context;  they wait until your back is turned, and then dash up and give you a nice firm punch in the calf or on the foot.  Which leads me to my next point…

Are Vervet Monkeys Dangerous?

The potential problem with habituated monkeys is that they can become so comfortable around you that they become overly bold and possibly aggressive.  If a highly habituated monkey feels that you are not a threat, they may test their limits by threatening you with mean facial expressions and grunts, or even lunge at you or strike at your shoes or legs.  When a Vervet wants to threaten you, it will raise its eyebrows, make its eyes as wide as possible, and stick its neck out towards you.  We’ve all seen this look from time to time in the human world.  It’s the look that says “What are you looking at?!”  Now, it’s neither unusual nor scary if a Vervet threatens.  Normally the threat is empty.  Vervets often redirect aggression, so if you happen to be standing near a monkey that has just been attacked, chased, or threatened, prepare to have that agonism redirected at you, and don’t take it personally.  Other times, I have made the mistake of leaning in closely with wide eyes, attempting to get a closer view to identify co-feeding monkeys, only to have my facial expression mistakenly interpreted as a threat.  If you make this mistake while near a “problem monkey,” you may be in for some unwanted aggression.

Luckily I have learned all the tricks to deflect monkey aggression.  When faced with a monkey who is threatening, the first step is to not back down.  If you take backward steps, the monkey will interpret that as submission, and so he will feel as though he is dominant to you.  This will likely lead to more aggressive behavior in the future.  An equally bad idea is to react by turning your back and walking away.  The only instances of aggressive touching with my monkeys have been when a person has their back turned.  It is especially important not to turn your back on an aggressive female, because female monkey to monkey aggression normally manifests itself as tail-biting.  It’s like the female Vervets see this as their golden opportunity to strike with minimal risk, so it’s best not to give them this opportunity.  Instead, a trick that works nicely is to threaten an inanimate object or the air in a random direction, mimicking the Vervet threatening face.  This redirects the aggression and confuses the monkey who was originally threatening you.  You can just threaten the air, wait for their confusion, and then simply ignore them from that point on.  I find it quite amusing, actually.  But sometimes this trick doesn’t work, and you have to resort to intimidating the Vervet.  I like to stomp my feet, raise my arms to the sky to make myself look taller, and shout obscenities as though I were smack-talking some punk in the street.  Also, making quick strides in the direction of the problem monkey will usually scare them into the trees where they are no longer dangerous.

Remember that Vervets are roughly the size of a house cat, ranging from kitten size to the largest house cat you have ever seen.  The disparity in size between them and an adult human is enough to ensure my safety, however it is important to know how to deflect their aggression.  The worst case scenario is that a Vervet decides to bite you, and I reckon they could take a nice chunk out of your leg or maybe even chomp off your finger if they had the opportunity somehow.  A biting attack is, however, a huge investment for a Vervet and a risk they are unlikely to take.  I have heard of someone being bitten by a Vervet, but this was when a scientist was trying to trap and handle the monkey.  I never ever touch the monkeys because I want to communicate to them that touching is not OK.

A lone Vervet threatening and lunging at you is laughable under normal circumstances (unless it were a large male, which hasn’t happened to me).  But it’s when multiple Vervets threaten to attack simultaneously that it becomes frightening.  The problem is that Vervets maintain alliances with other individuals in their group, and often support one another in conflicts.  For example if Tammy is threatening me and Isabel is nearby, Isabel often supports Tammy and begins to threaten me as well.  By supporting Tammy, Isabel is trying to gain Tammy’s support in future aggressive conflicts.  I have had as many as three monkeys ganging up on me, all threatening me and taking turns with their little lunges at my feet.  Luckily the monkeys who do this in my group are the female monkeys who are smaller than the males and therefore less scary.  A few stomps have taken care of problems such as this.  At any rate, you can always just kick the monkey if it gets out of control, and it’s no drama.

In general though, the paramount step to avoiding aggression from monkeys is to NEVER FEED THEM.  Once they start associating humans with a food source, they become quite aggressive and are much more likely to attack or otherwise get fresh with you.  Trust me, you really don’t want to be bitten by one of these things, especially since up to 60% of wild Vervets in southern Africa carry SIV, the monkey version of HIV.  I once heard a story about a Vervet who was addicted to nicotine, and would terrorize people for their cigarette butts.  The only thing to do was to shoot the monkey dead, and that’s what happens to many Vervets after they’ve grown accustomed to human food sources and goods.   So don’t feed them, because you may be indirectly killing them.  And that goes for all wild animal species, not just monkeys.

Note: Primates are divided into two categories: monkeys and apes.  Apes (chimpanzees, orangutan, bonobos, et cetera) are without a doubt very dangerous.  Monkeys are typically less aggressive than apes.

Vervet Life and Social Order

As you may have noticed, I have had far more problems with aggression from female monkeys than from the males.  I have also written about sex differences in boldness.  Well, there is a method to this madness, and the answers lie in understanding the life and social order of the Vervet.

Vervet monkeys live in groups, and they compete with other groups for resources such as territory with the best access to food, water, and favorable trees.  But it becomes more complex when you delve deeper.  I think the best way to explain this is to start at the very beginning.  The basic unit of a Vervet group is an adult female.  When a female reproduces, a mother-child bond is formed that is the strongest social bond that exists among monkeys.  The mother and the child become strong allies and support each other in conflicts for as long as they exist in the same group.  If a female bears a daughter, then she can count on having the daughter as an ally for life, because female vervets never leave their groups.  If a female bears a son, then she has gained an ally only until the male reaches sexual maturity (after about 5 years) and exits the group.  Imagine two matrilines existing independently in nature.  One matriarch has two offspring, and the other has three offspring.  They are exposed to the dangers of predation far more as independent matrilines than they would be if they allied with each other.  So, sensibly, they ally with each other and form a group.  United, they can gain power over the resources of their environment over other monkeys, and reduce the risk of predation with the use of cooperative vigilance.  But importantly, the two matriarchs are more strongly bonded with their own children than they are with each other.  If a conflict between two juveniles occurs, and escalates to the point of screaming, the mothers of the two juveniles both come running to support their offspring.  In this case the mothers end up pitted against one another, and in this way the offspring inherits the rank of its mother.  The mother with three offspring is more powerful than the mother with only two offspring, and so the former matriarch becomes the dominant female of the group.  On a related note, juveniles show little fear in conflicts against other monkeys if their mother outranks the opponent; this is because the juvenile is essentially the same rank as its mother.

Understanding a Vervet group as multiple allied matrilines plus adult males that have immigrated from other groups is essential.  By understanding this, one can deduce that female dominance rank is inherited matrilineally.  The matriline and matriline size are not the only factors contributing to female dominance though.   Affiliative behaviors can boost the dominance rank of a female by increasing the number of her allies within her group.  One way to gain allies is by grooming other individuals.  It has been proven that the main reason that monkeys groom one another is to create a reciprocal relationship, and not to pick insects and dirt out of one another’s coats.  The monkeys who are groomed by others the least are not the ones who self groom the most.  If one Vervet grooms another, it is increasing its chances of being supported by that monkey in the next conflict as well as increasing tolerance by that individual at resting places and in food patches.  Another way to gain allies is by supporting others in their conflicts in the hopes that they will support you in the future.  There is a definite reciprocal nature to Vervet social interaction.  So, generally the female who bears the most children (specifically daughters) and who is most successful at gaining allies in her group is the dominant female.

Male dominance and general way of life is entirely different from that of the female because of sexual reasons.  Of course, as long as a male is a juvenile, he holds the dominance rank of his mother.  But as soon as he leaves his maternal group and becomes a full-fledged adult, his fighting ability is what determines his dominance rank.  Male Vervets are far more independent than the females and rely less on alliances and more on size, strength, and fearlessness to gain access to resources.  The main differences between the male and the female Vervet are that their access to one of the major resources, sex, hinges on starkly different factors.  Sexual demand for females is always high.  The males always want the females.  Furthermore, a female’s reproductive capacity is not changed whether there are seven adult males in the group or just one.  Therefore, a female’s reproductive capacity is necessarily limited by access to other resources such as food and water.  A male’s reproductive capacity hinges on his access to females, which is determined somewhat by his dominance rank.  Taking all of this into consideration, it is easy to understand that females are far more territorial than males when it comes to food and water, while the males are territorial regarding access to females.

The reason that females are far more frequently aggressive towards humans is that they are very territorial around food sources.  To interrupt or threaten a bold female while she eats is a good way to make her aggressive.  And because females are largely dependent on alliances, you might just get other female monkeys rushing to support her.  Because they are highly territorial, Vervet females are often more vicious than males in intergroup encounters.  When two monkey groups meet, usually the males are at the front.  They want to be at the front so they can check out the females of the other group, while simultaneously chasing males from the opposite group away from their own females.  Sure, there is a lot of aggression in contexts like this, but it gets really serious when the females start fighting as well.  The females fight for the land, while the males fight for the females.

In the next blog I’ll cover the concept of supply and demand for social partners, the social calculations made by Vervets, and how this relates to grooming and alliance building.  I’ll also write about what exactly it is that I do in the field all day, and I’ll hopefully get around to some of the travel experiences I’ve had as well.

Update: A Tale of Forced Rest Days

The gods have granted us (in a forceful manner) many rest days lately, which have interrupted our work yet offered us some respite from grueling hours of monkey-watching.  The string of rest days began with looming morning clouds, which dimmed the sun’s light enough to make vervet identification difficult if not impossible.  That alone was enough to keep us out of Soetdoring, but the clouds soon began spitting intermittent rains that lasted two days—a rarity during the Free State winter.  So on the first day of precipitation we seized our opportunity to spend a day in Bloemfontein.  I perambulated (GRE words aren’t totally useless, at least) through the mall with my head on a swivel, absorbing as much visual information as I could.  After donating 20 rand to an outgoing deaf woman, I scoffed at the movie choices at the theater, which included Battleship and two separate movies about Snow White.  I was enjoying my day in town, but the best thing about Bloem is the internet, which operates at blistering 3G speeds (that was sarcastic).

This brings me to my next point: I have uploaded pictures to my flickr account @ www.flickr.com/jnasenbeny.  I had enough time in the city to add fifty pictures, including shots of London, the location, Soetdoring, cheetahs and monkeys.  The number of pictures I have taken far exceeds my ability to upload them at the current moment, so you can all look forward to their slow release into the worldwide web over the next several months.  Also the many many readers of my blog (there really needs to be a sarcasm symbol) can look forward to the retroactive addition of pictures to posts I’ve made in the past.

But as the French say, let’s return to our sheep.  I think they say that.  On our second rainy day, we stayed in Soutpan.  One may think that full days in Soutpan would be tedious, but in fact they are rare enough that there is always a mixture of leisure activities and chores to do.  I sweep the floor, which always accumulates millions of pieces of dirt from our shoes after days in the field.  That takes about 3 minutes, leaving the rest of the day for chess puzzles.  Just kidding.  Although I actually spent about 5 hours playing chess that day.  Now, back in the states, I played a lot of speed chess on the internet, taking roughly 5 minutes per game.  But, equipped with 1999 style internet, the hare has become the tortoise—now I play games with 3 days or more on the clock, and opt to play about a dozen games at a time.  It’s acceptable though, as because of this, I have discovered a nice way to improve my French and my chess simultaneously.  I joined a chess group called Team France, and I’ve been playing long scrimmage games against their players; we chat during the games in both French and English and it has proven to be a learning experience for all parties involved.

After I had had enough chess for one day, we decided to put True Grit on—I half-watched it and was annoyed by the lack of contractions in the dialogue.  We definitely should have watched The Room.  I don’t care if I have already seen it seven times, Tommy Wiseau is a genius.  My colleagues weren’t keen on watching it though, so I’ll have to invent some way to convince them one way or another in the future.

Car Troubles

The following morning, the saga of rest days continued.  We drove our Volkswagen Polo into the nature reserve, stopping at the gates like normal when we were greeted by not only the gate guard but also billowing heaps of steam shooting out from the engine.  [Test your knowledge of cars.  See if you can solve the mystery of the overheating car before I reveal the answer] We popped the hood and allowed the heat to dissipate with the help of frosty air and the dumping of eight liters of water onto the engine.  The water tank was running extremely low, so we filled it up a little past the max line and waited half an hour before the temperature gauge subsided to 90 degrees C.  By that time, the water level in the tank had once again fallen far below the recommended level, and a quick look at the car’s underside revealed a steady outpouring of water.  Exclam! Obviously a rock had skipped up underneath the engine, tearing a hole in a tube causing a leaky water supply, in turn causing the car to overheat.  So we took the car into town to have it looked at by Klaus, the blunt-mannered German mechanic.  He told us there was no leak, and sent us back to the nature reserve to take data on the monkeys for the rest of the day.

We were puzzled but nonetheless happy to be with the monkeys again.  We thought our car troubles were a flukey thing of the past.  However, the next morning, we were once again greeted by steam clouds, this time billowing even more ferociously from under the hood.  The water level and oil were both fine.  So what was our problem?  Was it:

 

A. Evil car gnomes

B. A leak in the water system that had been sealed by ice by the time Klaus examined it

C. No antifreeze in the water tank

 

If you chose C, you were right.  It is beyond me why the mechanic didn’t add antifreeze to the car, either in April when he last looked at it or when we brought it in explaining our problems of overheating.  At any rate, this car is going to be absolutely trashed after a year and a half transporting researchers between Soutpan and Soetdoring.  The tires have been blown multiple times by lurking swaths of potholes on these dirt roads; and each day we plow through the patterned ridges in the roads which violently shake the vehicle up and down, both rendering conversation impossible and probably damaging the car also.  A Jeep would be nice for these conditions, but alas, a Jeep we do not have.

Game Capture

Okay, so we survived rain storms and persistent car problems.  Time to get back to work?  Not really, because of the game capture that happens at this time of year in Soetdoring Nature Reserve.  Hunting is a big industry in this country, and South Africans and foreigners alike pay big bucks to nature reserves and private game reserves to shoot various animals.  The processes of game capture and hunting are all highly regulated to avoid damage to the various animal populations; the hunters pre-pay for the animals that they are going to kill.  So let’s say a hunter goes to a private game reserve and he wants to hunt a warthog and a hartebeest—he buys the animals in advance, that way the hunters can’t go ballistic and kill too many animals.  If he fails to bring down his desired prey, he can come back at a later date and try again.  Game capture comes into play when they want to move the animals from point A to point B.  Sometimes a private game reserve will want to buy some antelope from a nature reserve, and so they hire a game capturing company to catch the animals and move them to their new location.

In this specific case, the game capturers wanted to catch ten impalas.  It just so happened that there were two groups of impalas in the same general area as our group of monkeys.  We aren’t allowed to work as long as the game capturers were in the area, because our smell acts as impala repellent.  I am actually glad that the game capturers came to our area because it gave me the opportunity to learn about how it works.  As it turns out, the game capture is a huge production involving at least thirty men to get the job done.  Curious, I approached a group of workers to inquire about the process of game capture, but they either didn’t want to answer, didn’t speak English, or spoke English with such heavy Afrikaner accents that I could understand only two out of every three of their words.  Luckily Maryjka was there to translate for me, and I could also simply watch them as they set up their trap for the impalas.

Basically, the game capturers create a giant funnel for the antelope to run into, and at the end of the funnel is a container.  The funnel is constructed with many poles (about 3 meters in length) stuck into the ground and connected by thick black tarps.  At the right moment, the game capturers call in a helicopter, which uses a siren to herd the antelope towards the funnel.  Once the antelope have entered the funnel, men chase them towards the container with long prodding sticks.  The container is disguised as a bush with lots of leafy branches so the impalas think they are running to safety.  Once they are in the container, they are loaded into a truck and taken away.  Any extra captures are simply released.

I figured this would be my only chance to see game capture in action, so yesterday I went out to the nature reserve to watch them do their thing.  I arrived at 8:00 AM, and patiently waited with the game capturers for the next six hours for the proper wind conditions that never came.  The wind needs to blow in the direction from the impalas towards the trap, so that they cannot smell any humans.  Along with their sense of smell, their vision must also be blocked; all visual evidence of humans is blocked by the trap itself, as we parked ourselves and all of our trucks behind the opaque tarps.  The game capture was a failure to launch yesterday, but they are giving it another attempt today.  Perhaps they have caught the impalas by now, but I didn’t feel like waiting another six to eight hours for the chance to see it.  Instead, I stayed home and wrote this blog!

If they did succeed, then the ten impalas are on their way to the home of a black farmer.  There is a program that the head game capturer told me about, where they catch game and donate it to black people, because there are not many black people in the private game industry.  The idea is that the farmers can take the impalas and release them on a section of their land; the impalas will procreate and hunters will pay to hunt them, thus providing a renewable income to the poor farmers.  The game capturer told me that he started this program five years ago and that there have been mixed results so far.  Sometimes the antelope are slaughtered and eaten immediately instead of being left alive long enough to reproduce.

Regardless, there are enormous disparities of wealth in this country that are highly correlated with race.  Some white farmers here have a fear that black people will come and seize their land—fears fueled by events that transpired in Zimbabwe, wherein black people forcibly took over many farms.  This created huge problems for the economy in Zimbabwe because these farm pirates lacked actual farming knowledge, and all of the crops and livestock died.  Zimbabwe’s once thriving bread-basket economy is now in shambles.  In South Africa, it is not uncommon to hear about white farmers being attacked, firstly because the assailants wish to steal things but secondarily because the farmers tend to be more conservative.  Actually, just today my neighbor Krona came over and told me to lock my doors, because a farmer had been attacked on a farm some 50 kilometers away.  It seems that any attempts to peaceably close the gap between the rich and the poor are necessary, and hopefully the game capture will help.

Climbing Prospects

I’ll conclude with something happier.  After my attempts to find a climbing gear shop failed in Bloemfontein, I looked through the student associations on the University of the Free State’s website and found a contact from the climbing club.  He said there are not many climbers here because it is so flat (I am in one of the only regions of the country without mountains), but nevertheless gave me the number of a guy, Pieter, who runs a gear shop out of his garage in a Bloemfontein suburb.  I gave him a call and ordered some rock rings (things you can put in a tree and hang on from your fingers to get in shape for climbing).  Pieter said he’d be keen to do some climbing trips with me, and he informed me that there are some stellar climbing spots not too far from here.  He also told me where the local climbing wall is and when I can go to meet other climbers there.  On the phone Pieter seems like he would make an excellent climbing partner, so I am psyched about that.  At the end of the month, the research group is going to a Primatology conference, after which I will have three days off from work, so perhaps I’ll be getting my first taste of South African rock in the coming weeks.

Update, Intro to the Monkeys, Our Study, and Field Tasks

Hi everyone, I have spent my first three (consecutive) days in the field with the monkeys.  Even though it is winter and the days are short, the work days are still long, about ten hours.  There is a lot of walking and standing involved and so I am usually too tired by the end of the day to write blogs for you all.  But I finally have a day off today so I have time and energy to write a little.  In this blog, I’ll write a summary events starting with the end of the visit to the location, and then I’ll get into an introduction to Vervet monkeys and their behaviors, and I’ll conclude with a few details about our study and what my jobs in the field have been so far.  If you want to skip to the part about monkeys, just scroll down a bit, although there is an interesting bit about big cats just before I begin to write about the monkeys.

The Braai

So after we visited the location, we returned to Soutpan for a braai, which is basically a South African barbecue.  Because it is winter, we started the braai early in the afternoon while it was still warm outside.  I’ve been told that at braais, men usually take over the grilling for masculinity reasons much like American barbecues.  Also, South African men don’t take kindly to foreigners cooking at the braai because it is a “South African thing.”  Maryjka says though that South Africans often overcook the meat and she prefers when her husband who is American handles the braai (score 1 point for ‘merica).  This is extraneous information though because I was the only man at the braai, besides Jakob who came several hours too late for eating.  So in the absence of men, our landladies Liza and Krona handled the grilling.  These two Afrikaaner ladies also run the coffee shop next door, and I was very pleased to get to know them because they are both friendly and interesting.  Besides running the coffee shop and being landladies, they also operate a small farm with their own cattle, sheep, and chickens.  I intend to buy eggs from them instead of buying them at the store.  They also breed boxer dogs and pugs, which I can play with on my off days.  Liza is a kind soul who is nearly always smiling; Krona can nearly always be found with a cigarette, speaking in a blunt and matter-of-fact tone.  She informed me that the big bang theory is preposterous and how she formerly rejected the theory of evolution but has since changed her position.  Krona’s way of showing love is to poke fun and playfully reject someone.  I think she is funny and I quite like her.

I ate two steaks at the braai, cooked well done, as well as a hunk of meat from one of Krona and Liza’s cattle.  I tried boerworst, a type of South African sausage.  There was also ostrich to try, which was very lean and tasty.  Another typical braai food that we had was corn on the cob, although nothing beats Illinois corn and so I was not thoroughly impressed.  Krona tells me that Afrikaaners eat a lot of meat for dinner, and refers to chicken as a vegetable.  She thinks of green vegetables as nice decorations for your plate.

The braai was a good time and gave us all a chance to get to know one another with the help of some tasty alcoholic beverages.  We all had some Springboks, which is a South African shot that I think is made with gin and Amarillo or whatever that stuff is called.

Shopping in Bloem

The day after the braai, we went into Bloemfontein.  We went to a very nice shopping mall and I had a good introduction to South African inefficiency.  There are usually too many staff members and not enough people actually working.  Anyway, I bought the first pair of running shoes that I tried on, Nike Frees, and Maryjka said she was impressed by my decisiveness.  The shoes cost me 830 rand (no sales tax), roughly just over $100 US.  I actually had a brief moment of panic after I bought the shoes because I incorrectly calculated the currency conversion to $300 US, but I soon got that sorted out.  The woman behind the cash register heard my American accent and kind of stared at me for a few seconds longer than I deemed socially normal; she also thought my name was funny because Jordan is evidently an uncommon name in this country.  To prevent theft, there are security guards at the doorways to most big stores who sign off on the receipts before allowing you to exit the store.

After that, I decided to go to McDonald’s to eat and also just to check out the differences between American and South African McDonalds.  I had a McRoyale which turned out to be a Big Mac.  The guy had a thick accent and asked me three times “for here, or for take away?” before I understood what he was saying.  I replied “to go, please” but the proper way to say it here would be “for take away.”  Yeah.

A couple people in the mall approached me and started to speak Afrikaans, which I took as a good sign because at least I appear to blend in at first glance.  I simply replied to them in English and they began to speak English after that.  For me to learn Afrikaans seems unnecessary because nearly everyone in this country speaks English.

Feeding the Lions and Cheetahs

So the following three days were spent in the field with monkeys which I will soon get into.  But the other non-monkey related thing I have to write about is the area of Soetdoring Nature Reserve called the predator park, which consists of the cheetah enclosure and the separate lion enclosure.  The big cat enclosures are surrounded by colossal chain link fences with barbed wire lining the top–it has a Jurassic Park-esque feel.  The entrances to the enclosures are a series of gates operated by a pulley system.  If one were to mention the Soetdoring Predator Park to someone in Bloemfontein, they would probably recall the incident with the lions that happened around 2009, where a man was killed and eaten.  Visitors can come into the Nature Reserve and enter the predator park in their vehicles, and they are warned to stay in their vehicles because obviously the lions will kill you.  But apparently a few idiots came to the park a few years ago and decided to get drunk to celebrate one of their birthdays.  One of the men got out of the car for some reason, and the guy behind the wheel decided to play a prank on him and drive away little by little, not allowing the man to catch the vehicle.  Well, he ended up being caught by a lion.  Sad story but people have to have common sense.  A lion will kill a man in the blink of an eye, but the cheetahs are safer and accounts of cheetahs attacking a fully grown man are unheard of.  The big cats in the enclosures do not hunt but are fed by the rangers once a week.  Yesterday I had the opportunity to enter the enclosures and watch them feed the big cats, first the lions then the cheetahs.  The lions were brought a young hartebeest, which they dragged from a truck bed into the bushes to eat.  Unfortunately the lions retreated so far into the thicket that I could not observe their feast.  Still, I was awestricken by the size of these cats!  They are truly huge and scary cats, and it’s very exciting to see them in person.  It goes without saying that our vehicle’s windows were closed the entire time we were in the lion enclosure.  After watching the lions we drove to the cheetah park to watch the cheetahs eat a warthog.  The cheetahs are such beautiful animals, especially when they run.  They effortlessly kept pace with the truck which contained their meal.  Unlike the lions, the cheetahs devoured their food in the open, so I took many pictures with my windows rolled down and we all watched as three cheetahs ate the warthog until there was literally nothing left but some ribs and skin.

Introduction to the Monkeys

The monkeys I am studying are called Vervets.  I am no expert on vervets yet, but I can tell you what I have learned so far as it applies to the specific groups in Soetdoring Nature Reserve.  The monkeys live in groups usually consisting of 20 individuals or more.  The particular group that I am assigned to has no fewer than 57 monkeys, so it is a fairly large group.  Vervets are a common species of monkey.  I know for certain that this species covers  most of the inhabitable areas of southern and eastern Africa, but this species is also common on certain island chains and probably in other places too.  The most important part of the monkeys’ home range is the source of water.  Therefore Vervets do not exist in Namibia which is covered by true desert.  Here, the monkeys have settled along the Orange River and consume the food resources which this arid savannah grasslands has to offer; the monkeys forage for prickly pear, leaves, berries, and acacia gum, and eggs, and more rarely hunt for insects and even birds.  A bird is a rare meal but I’ve seen video of one of the adult male monkeys in my group plucking one right out of the sky and eating it alive.

Group Movement and Home Range

Because they are foraging animals, the monkeys are constantly moving from area to area within their home range.  The size of a group’s home range is correlated with the number of monkeys in the group.  The rate of movement of a group is also correlated with the number of monkeys and the size of the home range.  When the number of monkeys is small, the group does not need as many food patches because there are fewer mouths to feed.  Fewer necessary food patches and a smaller home range means slower group movement.  The smaller group in our study has 30 monkeys, and they move very little throughout the day; by comparison, my group with 60 monkeys moves quite constantly so you infrequently have time to take off your pack and sit down for longer than ten minutes.  Besides for foraging reasons, the group also moves around its home range to establish territorial boundaries.  There are at least seven groups of Vervets in Soetdoring which compete for resources;  group X wants to ensure that group Y doesn’t invade their space, and so they visit all ends of their home range to ward off intruders.  The size of my group’s home range is relatively large because there are many monkeys.  I have not yet used the GPS to determine the exact size but it seems like it has a radius of roughly one kilometer.  There is access to different water sources (the river, and a few smaller water bodies) consistently throughout the home range.  The terrain ranges from easy to medium hiking: there is the savannah which is largely flat with small bushes and clumps of grass scattered about, however a good portion of the home range is a nasty thicket with cloth-ripping thorns on nearly every plant.

While Vervets are not a strictly arboreal species, they tend to stay relatively close to the trees.  They are amazingly agile in the trees and use them to escape from predators (cats and snakes) and to gain a better view of their surroundings (the monkeys search for predators, other groups of monkeys, and also can keep tabs on their own group from the high branches).  They also use bushes to escape from predators like eagles.  In the case of the Soetdoring groups, the only real predators are cobras because the cheetahs are in an enclosure and predator birds are rare if not nonexistent (Note: warthogs were introduced to the area in recent years, and the monkeys are afraid of them even though they are not predators).   Nevertheless the monkeys instinctively seek the trees for comfort.  It is much easier to observe a shy monkey in the tree than a shy monkey on the ground because they feel more secure in the tree.  When it comes time to traverse an open area, the monkeys run instead of walking, often pausing beforehand to stand on their hind legs and scout for possible dangers.  One interesting thing to observe is which monkeys lead the group across the more exposed areas—perhaps it is the more dominant adult monkeys who do this, although it is not necessarily the case because the lowest ranking subadult male often leads the group.  This is one subject that I will pay close attention to in the coming months.  At any rate, I find it fun to position myself in the direction of the group’s movement in open areas—after the first couple of monkeys begin to cross, they are often trailed by a dozen juveniles which are very very cute to watch.

Intro to Dominance Hierarchy, Mating and Social Interaction:

Vervet groups hold a strict dominance hierarchy.  Again I am no expert now but dominance as it relates to behavior and decision-making is an interesting topic for me.  There is literature on this topic that I intend to read.  So, in groups of baboons for example, all males are dominant over all females.  But this is not so in Vervets, as the higher ranking females outrank the lower ranking males.  In male Vervets, it seems that temperament is the main determinant of dominance, although size and strength are also factors.  In my group, there are four adult males.  The dominant male is Eric, and he is actually one of the smaller adult males.  His face is serious and harsh, and when he moves into an area, the other monkeys move out of the way.  When he moves towards another male, the other male will usually scream and move away, wearing an intimidated expression.  Eric is normally calm during this process, acting like he doesn’t care—however, other times I am observing him while he sits in a tree, overseeing the group, and he begins to rapidly look in all directions, becoming excitable, and then dashes towards another male monkey just to threaten him.  This is assuredly because it is currently mating season, and the males compete for access to ovulating females  (Note:  Vervets mate throughout the year but there is a peak mating season in April to May, and a peak birthing season around October).  The dominant male will do what is called mate-guarding, where he hangs around with the most fertile female and keeps the other males away from her. Over the past few weeks Eric has mate-guarded several different females one at a time.  I haven’t had a chance to observe the highest ranking female, Zara, because she is extraordinarily shy and tends to stay away from people and especially new people like me.  It surprised me to learn that the most dominant monkeys are not necessarily the boldest, as I had expected.

Grooming and Playing

Some basic social behaviors of Vervets include grooming and playing.  The monkeys spend a considerable amount of time grooming one another at different times in the day.  The monkeys obviously do this to keep their fur coats healthy and insect-free, but there are other reasons to groom.  A monkey may groom another monkey to gain its favor for alliance-building reasons, which may come in handy if a scuffle were to break out.  Gaining the favor of another monkey also helps if one intends to scrounge from their food patch without being threatened or chased off.  I have even heard of female monkeys grooming mothers of infants to gain access to the infant.  Both male and female monkeys groom others, but it appears that females groom more and the dominant male more rarely grooms others.

Monkey playing behaviors are quite amusing to watch.  They’re pretty much what you could expect: biting, pulling, wrestling, chasing, and jumping, often from tree to tree or from tree to sitting monkey.  The juvenile monkeys play A LOT.  I’ve noticed the body language to initiate playing is different from the body language to initiate grooming.  Grooming is often initiated by grabbing the other monkey on the top of the head and pulling gently towards oneself while presenting it with an area to be groomed.  Playing is frequently started when one monkey faces another and grabs with both arms, tugging on both shoulders or both sides of the other monkey.

Intro to our study:

In our study, we are interested in Vervet personality.  Vervets are social animals that live in groups and all the monkeys have unique personalities.  The monkeys survive by foraging, so we think that these diverging personalities arise because they are linked to the individual’s foraging strategies.  If all of the monkeys were foraging with the exact same strategy, then there would be much competition for resources between the monkeys even within a single group.  Instead, they differ their strategies and we think that the success of a particular strategy depends on the inverse of the frequency of that strategy within a group.  Basically if a monkey has a unique strategy it may be more effective since it is less common and therefore there is less competition.  We think that social foraging behaviors may be linked to personality.  Much research has been conducted on personality and temperament of Vervets in captivity, but none have been conducted with wild monkeys.  As a measure of personality, we will be doing field experiments where we introduce novel objects to the group and record their novelty seeking behaviors.  We will be collecting social foraging behaviors and examining whether there is a connection between the social foraging behaviors and novelty seeking behaviors, which provides evidence for the theory that foraging strategy relates to personality.  If the hypotheses are correct, this may provide evidence for the idea that divergent personalities exist to increase foraging success.  This also may shed light on human personality, because a long time ago, early humans survived by foraging and hunting. If this isn’t clear, I’ll be writing more about it later.

My Initial Jobs in the Field:

My first field duty with the monkeys has been to simply be present.  I may write a separate blog about the entire process of monkey habituation in the future, but for now I will just gloss over some details.  These Vervets are wild animals, and are not used to seeing humans.  Therefore they are cautious when a human comes around that they have not seen before.  When collecting data in this study, one needs to be relatively close to the monkeys to observe their behavior, and this is impossible if the monkeys are afraid of you.  So for now I have been following them around, treading lightly, and letting the monkeys get used to me.

My other job has been to learn to identify the individual monkeys.  The data would be worthless if you don’t know which monkey whose behaviors you are recording.  If you are seeing a group of Vervets for the first time, they will likely all look the same if you don’t know what to look for.  Here I will tell you how to distinguish individual Vervet monkeys.  Firstly, the adult males are larger than the adult females.  The males also have bushier coats and they tend to have more fur around their faces, although it’s a subtlety.  The adult males are easy to spot because they have large (perhaps huge) testes.  Their testes are bright blue so if you see a Vervet with some blue between the legs, it’s a male; if the testes are visible but small, it’s usually a subadult male. The subadult males usually have younger looking faces too and are usually smaller than the adult males.  The adult females have visible nipples that grow even larger when they are breastfeeding an infant.  You can often tell the adult females apart by the coloration of their nipples.  Some of them have all pink nipples, others have all black, and some are in between.  The subadult females have nipple buds that are barely visible.  Besides  testes and nipples, you can often rely on tail length, shape, and coloration to tell the monkeys apart.  All Vervets start out with long tails, but for one reason or another (we think there may be a disease) a lot of their tails end up shortening because the ends fall off.  Some of the monkeys have short tails, some have half length tails, and some have long tails.  Some of the monkeys have very distinctive coloration on their tails, usually a black patch of fur somewhere along the tail and usually at the end.  Other monkeys have tails with distinctive bends or kinks in them.  You can sometimes tell the monkeys apart by general body size; however, adult females can be the size of subadult males and even large juveniles, so you must have experience to get a feel for sizes.  Many of the monkeys have distinctive scarring or depigmentation on their faces and bodies.  I can always tell which monkey is Eric because he has a scar on his nose from a puncture wound.  Rosa has white marks on her upper lip that makes her look like she is wearing a moustache.  And Oliver has blotches of depigmentation under his eyes.  Many of the monkeys have parts of their ears missing, or oddly shaped ears, which both serve as identifiers.  Some of the monkeys have no real distinct traits, so they are harder to identify.  You often have to depend on the exclusion principle to identify these monkeys.  Ursula (a subadult female) for example has no obvious distinctive traits but she always has a worried expression on her face.  If you spend enough time with the monkeys, you can tell them apart just by their faces even if they have no distinctive traits.  It will take experience to be able to do this, so I need to spend more time with the monkeys before I can begin to record data.

Visiting the Location

On Monday, I ventured into the location to do a bit of investigating.  If you haven’t read my last post, a location is an old apartheid town whose residents are all black.  Because the location near Soutpan (the exact spelling of the town escapes me but it sounds like Katsumarahng) is impoverished, I had my reservations about strolling down the road with my camera in hand.  However,  some Soutpan natives instructed me that because it is so rural, the location is a perfectly safe place to visit, except on the weekends when people become drunk and belligerent.  Well it wasn’t a weekend, and my informants were correct, because the people adored both me and my camera.  Never before have I seen human beings greet a camera with such exuberance—I passed a school and throngs of wild children pressed their faces against the fence, screaming in English, Afrikaans, and Tswani for me to take their photograph; groups of adult men also requested to have their pictures taken, and women briefly halted from their household chores to make unnatural but humorous poses for me.  I don’t think the people are accustomed to tourists in the location.

In addition to being photography enthusiasts, the people of the location seem to be genuinely friendly people.  I was given quite a warm welcome.  But despite the fact that many of their residents wear happy faces, it wasn’t hard to sense that the location has more than its fair share of problems.  Most of the houses are composed of scrap metal.  Now, even my own house in Soutpan lacks insulation, but I’m certain that I am much warmer at night than they are.  I caught glimpses of several people suffering from what appear to be curable skin diseases, but the medical center is underfinanced and understaffed.  And one of the men I photographed asked me to tell the press about the poor conditions there, and how many are unemployed.  After my short visit to the location, I was lost in thought during the drive back to Soutpan.  Experiences like this can really make you appreciate what you’ve got.

I actually have a lot more to say, but no time to write it now.  I spent ten hours following monkeys around today, which is not that strenuous but tiring nonetheless.  I’ll post again soon! Oh, and I’ll write about the monkeys soon too.  =)

Getting Started

I’ll start out with a quick word about the travel from Chicago to South Africa:  I flew from Chicago O’Hare to London Heathrow, and arrived in London at around 8:30 AM.  My next flight was from Heathrow to Johannesburg, 12 hours later, so I had a chance to escape the airport and explore London.  I took the train into Paddington Station, and I truly had no idea where I was going.  London is a painfully confusing place for an American tourist accustomed to cities like Chicago, which are meticulously planned and which consist of almost entirely parallel streets that form a Cartesian grid.  I wandered aimlessly for a solid hour and a half until I came across a Hilton which provided me with a decent map.  I gave navigation a good attempt but my efforts quickly dissolved into asking “Which way to Buckingham Palace?” to anyone who looked British.  That strategy worked nicely, and I ended up at the palace after a long stroll, right in time for the changing of the guards which of course I did not plan.  However, there were about 3,000 people surrounding the palace and I silently marveled at all of their attempts to get pictures of the marching guards.  They all held their cameras up, blocking my view and making it nearly impossible to even see them.  I waited for the crowd to disperse to snap a couple of photos and then I made it into town, which was also swarming with tourists all chattering in dozens of languages.  I stopped at a pub to get fish and chips, then walked around the area surrounding Piccadilly Circus, but by then it was 14:30 and I started to feel the jetlag.  So I hopped on the tube to Heathrow and fell asleep about 20 times in 20 minutes on the way back to the airport.

Because it is now winter in Johannesburg, not many people are travelling there now.  So my flight was very comfortable and I was able to spread out and sleep across 3 seats.  After 11 more hours of air travel I landed in South Africa, and purposefully walked through the airport to grab my bags from the carousel.  However I wasn’t the only person interested in carrying my bags, as a couple of African guys claiming to be porters walked up and tried to snatch them. I assertively told them to leave my bags alone, and they did… there were three large men who were either soldiers or policemen (they were wearing blue camouflage) standing nearby, and their presence probably helped.  I made my connecting flight and after an hour of travel, landed in Bloemfontein.  I exchanged my American dollars to South African rand, met my contact, Maryjka, and we set out on our way into town to pick up a few things from the market.

At this point I’ll break things down into a few categories, and in future posts I will elaborate and expand on what I’ve written today.

My precise location, surroundings, and details of my living arrangement:

The village I am living in is Soutpan, which is situated in the Free State Province 30 to 40 kilometers from Bloemfontein.  The address is P.O. Box 4, Soutpan 9356.  The GPS co-ordinates are 28°43’16.78″S,  26° 3’54.48″E.  Soutpan consists of about a dozen small homes along a single dirt road.  There is a police station within walking distance, and a petrol (gas) station that appears to be out of service.  Next door to my house is a shop which is called a coffee shop but I haven’t had a chance to meet the people there yet.  Everything there is written in Afrikaans, so I can’t understand their menus.  There are some salt flats in town here, but apparently there was a disastrous flood in 1989 that came through the area and put a lot of people out of business.  The Soetdoring Nature Reserve where we will conduct our research on vervet monkeys is a short drive away.  A kilometer past the nature reserve entrance is a small town called a “location,” which is an apartheid term describing a shanty town whose residents are all black.  The residents of the town don’t call it a town, they call it a location.

Since I am the only male in our group of four researchers, I get my own room in our house.  The house is really just one room which is divided in half by a wall.  On my side is my bedroom which has a bed and an armoire, a kitchenette where the entire group does all the cooking, and a simple bathroom.  The other side of the house is Maryjka’s room.  This house was designed to be a bed and breakfast, but there weren’t many customers because Bloemfontein is not a tourist area at all.   It truly is “not that bad,” although I have already caught grasshoppers, mosquitos, and a lizard infiltrating my space.  Also, some bats have taken up residence in the roof.

How to reach me:

I have access to the internet via an internet stick, which appears to be quite unreliable.  My cell phone in the states worked on a 3G connection that is 3 or 4 times faster than this.  Nevertheless, I can manage to get on the internet.  If you are my facebook friend, facebook is an excellent way to contact me.  I am also reachable by my email accounts:

jnasenbeny@gmail.com

nasenbe1@illinois.edu

and my flickr account:

flickr.com/jnasenbeny

I am of course also reachable through this wordpress.com blog.  I do not yet have a cell phone, but I will be inheriting one on Tuesday when Chris, another field assistant, leaves the country.

I think skype video and voice chatting will be simply impossible from this location but I will try to set up times to do that when I can be at an internet café in the city.  Instant messaging is also an option, via facebook.

Photography/Wildlife:

I invested in some nice camera equipment before coming here, and I intend to get the highest quality photos possible.  I will upload my photos to the internet when I can get a high speed connection in town.  I scouted around town on foot a few kilometers in every direction to see what the opportunities for good photography are.  If you are interested, you can look forward to photos of some rustic buildings, landscape, and awesome wildlife photography.  You can find my pictures in the future at flickr.com/jnasenbeny or my facebook page.  I will also upload some of my favorites to this blog.

I have been here in Soutpan for less than one day and I’ve already had a nice introduction to the great biodiversity of the region.  I’ve seen zebras, impalas, several kinds of antelope, and a few kinds of birds including guinea fowl and secretary birds.  While there ARE big cats in Soetdoring, they are fenced off into their own enclosure, so I don’t have to worry about being hunted by any cheetahs or lions.  We tracked down a group of vervet monkeys yesterday, and it gave me a chance to get acquainted with them a bit.  This particular group of monkeys is one that has been studied for at least half a year, and I am the sixth person they have come in contact with.  They are fully habituated to human contact and so even on my first day, they were willing to come within 1.5 meters of me.  Some of the adult monkeys are bold, and some are shy, but the infant monkeys are not at all bothered by us because they have been around humans since birth.

Security:

While South Africa is a developed country, one cannot really call it safe.  Nevertheless, we all feel secure here in Soutpan especially since there are not many people around.  All of my windows have metal cages on them, and on the outside of my front door there is another door with bars and a sturdy lock.  The keys that we use are interesting.  They are not at all like the space age laser-cut keys I am used to, but rather they are comparatively primitive keys.  They work just fine.

The police here are rumored to be less than useful, however I did see one man arrested at the Johannesburg airport.  Maryjka speculated that he may have been a rhino poacher, which have become an increasingly large problem in this country.  Poachers kill rhinos for their horns, which are valuable in East Asian markets.  I understand, perhaps incorrectly, that conservationists have responded to this problem in part by injecting the horns of rhinos with poison, making them dangerous to handle and worthless at the markets.

My Schedule:

Roughly, I will work two days on and one day off.  There are three field assistants including myself; so on any given day in the field, two of us field assistants will be working and one will have the day off.  On work days, I will wake up at sunrise, drive with the crew out to Soetdoring Nature Reserve, and track and record data on the monkeys until sundown.  On days off I can do whatever to keep myself occupied.  I will have to get creative here as my days off will largely be spent with me myself and I.  I imagine that I will have more to say about this in the future.

I will go into town maybe once every ten days or so, to buy food and other things.  Overall, the project ends in mid-December 2012.

Climate:

I arrived here yesterday at the very beginning of winter.  The natives seem to believe that it is cold but I have other ideas about this, as compared to Chicago this is basically… well, incomparable.  In central South Africa, the climate is semi-arid—winter is the dry season, and summer is the rainy season.  The climate here is opposite to Cape Town in that regard.  But even in winter, the temperatures are quite pleasant in the day, reaching maybe 20 C/ 70 F, with sunny skies and no clouds whatsoever.  Sunglasses and lip balm are two of my best friends already.  At night, it can be chilly but it rarely dips below -4 C/ 25 F.  I’ve been told that during the winter, if the clouds roll in and threaten a storm, it will likely pass over and become sunny again within ten minutes.

More posts to come, most likely on my days off.  I will include more details on the project soon!