Orangutans, Gorillas, Bonobos, oh my!

 

A large male orangutan with one of the females.

I had an amazing summer working with the lemurs at the Duke Lemur Center in North Carolina, but eventually it was time to drive home. It would've been a hard 15 hour drive but I knew that I would be taking a pit stop for a day at the Columbus Zoo so it wasn't so bad. Over the summer I met a wonderful woman at the Friends of Bonobos board meeting, she works in the grants department at the zoo and she invited me to come visit their bonobos. Since I have never actually meet any of our great ape cousins I jumped at the opportunity. I spent just over an hour with each of these beautiful species (an hour a piece was not enough time and I could've spent all day with any one of them) and then I had to continue on my way home to Michigan. The following pictures are of my first encounters with orangutans, gorillas, and bonobos!

 

Adolescent Gorilla 

A baby gorilla, it was hard to take a picture because she was running around so much.

Bonobos

Here is a link to the Friends of Bonobos webpage to find out more about one of our closest primate relatives (equally as related to us as Chimpanzees) and how we are trying to help them.

http://www.friendsofbonobos.org/

How do Lemurs say goodbye?

It was the last day for one of the researchers I was working with so we took at trip to the lemur center for him to say his goodbyes to the lemurs. We went into the free-ranging enclosures and were able to see these amazing creatures very close. Some of the lemurs were out in the forest.

I didn't realize it at the time but it was also my farwell trip to the lemur center. I finished testing a few days after this and started work on the paper about our research. I loved my time at the Duke Lemur center this summer and I will definitley go back, even if it is just to visit the lemurs!

Coquerel's Sifaka

Free-ranging Brown Lemurs

Free-ranging Ringtailed Lemurs

Baby Red Ruffed Lemur

Fellow researcher Aaron and I on his last day at the Duke Lemur Center

Love to the Lemurs

I have finished my project here at Duke and now I am helping to put together the manuscript. Since I just finished my final presentation Friday I now have the chance to actually work on posting these pics. So enjoy the lemurs, these photos were taken on the "field trip" that my program took to the lemur center. In these pictures you will see the Red Ruffed, Black & White Ruffed, and Coquerel's Sifaka lemurs. Also David Brewer, one of the research managers and I. David has been so helpful this summer, he knows how to coax even the most stubborn or shy lemur into participating in my test!

Papers, Papers, PAPERS!

So it has been a month since I last posted but my life has been very busy. A few weeks ago I got word that the paper I submitted after I completed my research project last summer (on the Opportunistic Defense of Bracken Fern by Patrolling Ants) has been accepted for publication! So of course that meant more work, I had to go through and address the concerns of two reviewers, changing or adding things and defend my paper against some aspects I am not going to change. It is a stressful experience, but very exciting as well. Officially last night at 9:50pm I finished and it has now been sent back to the editor and I am anxiously awaiting the final decision.

Not only have I been working on a paper but also reading lots of them. Now that I have decided to pursue my passion for primates in graduate school I have read over 20 papers concerning primatology this summer and have more that are just waiting to be embarked upon. I have high hopes of designing and carrying out another project next summer (Lemurs!) so I want to start now so that I can make sure that I could get a publishable unit of data. There's always more to do but it is so overwhelmingly incredible to think I could contribute to this field someday that I don't mind being busy.

Ocean water tastes terrible!

JONES SAUSAGE ROAD 1/2 mile

This post is coming a little late, because it actually was Memorial Day when Mike came to visit. We made the smart decision (like the rest of humanity in North Carolina) to head to the beach that day. It was a three hour drive so we amused ourselves along the way with my early birthday present, a new 160GB ipod. Besides playing with that we spent our time taking pictures of some interesting road signs :  )

Once we made it to the beach, which took over two hours of driving around looking for a parking spot, we went straight for the surf! It was not disappointing, the waves were huge, and there were quite a few surfers taking advantage. I made a very important discovery (the hard way I should add): do NOT drink sea water. As a giant wave brought down its wrath on me I inadvertently inhaled an exceptional amount of water. And guess what...it tastes horrible. The taste is reminiscent of the smell of fish that has gone bad. And the second part of my discovery is that this taste/smell lingers, well pretty much for the rest of the day.

On a more attractive note Mike and I have now decided that we are going to add another very expensive hobby to our list of extremely expensive hobbies (for example: rock climbing, ice climbing, travel...) We are going to take surf lessons! The ultimate goal will be to go back to Peru and spend some quality time with the rock of the ocean cliffs, and the waves of the surf while camping on the beach in between the two. Always looking for the next adventure...



Crowned Lemur



Of course since Mike was visiting I had to show him where I am doing my research this summer. So we took the official tour at the Duke Lemur Center.

Ringtailed Lemur scent marking a tree

 On the tour we of course had to stay on the outside of the enclosures, but for my research I actually get to go inside to work with the lemurs. (Hopefully this summer I will be able to get some pictures without the mesh obstructing the view.)

Coquerel's Sifaka (my favorite!)

 Here are some pictures of three different species, not even close to all of the species! At the Duke Lemur center there are at least 20 species. Also Mike and I were fortunate enough to be touring on the debut weekend for the new tour path which is very beautiful.

The name of the mom is Pia and the baby is Adelaide.

New tour path

Galavanting about the campus

Mike came to visit! So of course we had to tour Duke's campus, which is rather huge. I heard an estimate about how long it takes to walk from one side of campus to the other...50 minutes, yikes. So we didn't do that but we hit up some of the more important parts. I took him through the Bryan Center which is the student union, where we had an impromptu bouldering session.

Also we wandered around the beautiful buildings near the heart of campus. Especially admiring some of the unique old doors.

And of course we had to take pictures at the Duke Chapel, because it is probably one of the most well known parts of campus. We took some pictures of the impressive stone building and stunning glass windows, that might be stained glass it's hard to tell. We then noticed there was a wedding going on inside, so no pictures in there. Someone actually told me that sometimes they had up to 2 or 3 weddings a day in the chapel on the weekends.

 

And of course we had to use the self-timer to get a picture of us together.