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| Moving the static sound recorder. |
In between my exciting days of revising contracts, answering emails and writing procedures, I can sometimes sneak out to the forest and see what the scientists are up to. This week it was a (mostly) leisurely walk through the woods with Larissa, who is working on her Masters degree at the University of Jakarta. She has a fascinating subject - recording vocalizations of red langurs to figure out how they communicate. Unfortunately, the fun has to end sometime and after six months in Sabangau she’s scheduled to go back, write up her results and graduate. This is her last week here, so I promised myself I’d go out to see what she does before she stops doing it.
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| One of our forest friends - green pit viper. |
She hauls a fair amount of gear around - big fuzzy microphone, a recorder in addition to the regular forest necessities. And today she wanted to move a static sound recorder from one area to another in the hope of catching the primates calling when she's not around.
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| But fun(gi)! |
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| And more fun(gi)! |
This was my second time out in the forest tagging along on a primate project and there are basically two shapes to a day when studying apes. First of all, you have to find them. You and at least one other team member go out and search using a grid pattern, walking slowly and stopping at intervals to listen for sounds and watching the treetops for rustling. Your schedule depends on the species group you want to find. Gibbons sing early in the morning, giving loud, long calls out that can be heard at great distances. They start the concerts before dawn but don’t carry on too long into the morning. So a gibbon researcher heads out to the forest before daylight in the general area that the groups tend to live, listens for the songs and then heads towards the sounds to find the apes. Orangutans are lazier, and tend to loll around in their nests until 7 or 8 in the morning, so orangutan scientists get a bit of a lie in before going out and listening to hear their rustling. Harder to find them ‘though because they don’t vocalize like gibbons. Red langurs - ahhh - Larissa chose the most difficult of the three primates to find. They give short calls (less than 5 seconds) and also tend to be more active earlier in the morning so she is often up and into the woods searching by 4:30 a.m.
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| Challenging terrain |
That’s just searching. Once you’ve found your primate of interest, you follow it (or them, if they’re hanging out in a group). And again, Larissa volunteered for the short stick - langurs won’t settle down to sleep until late in the day, sometimes as late as 5 or 5:30 p.m., so we often see her coming back to camp after dark, after a 12-hour day. But still cheerful. Orangutan researchers often have long days as well, but while these apes will construct nests, munch leaves and just generally not rush around, langurs are quite small, move fast through the very top of the tree canopy, and therefore are more difficult to see and to keep track of. Larissa has often returned to camp after long days having lost the group and knowing she’ll need to go out and search again the next day.
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| Not about her project; Larissa's just being scale for some tree roots here |
To round out the brief primate tutorial - while it seems that staff involved in the gibbon project may be the luckiest (easy to find, and they settle down earlier in the day) there’s a downside as well. Gibbons are fast and very active, so once you’ve found them, it’s a race through the forest to keep track of them. And remember, this forest is designed to trip you up with waist deep canals and big hook-shaped tree roots poking out of the soft, twist-an-ankle peat soil.
I had a typical day out with Larissa - we didn’t find the red langur group for which she has been searching; one from which she has fewer recordings than the other two that live in the Sabangau research area. A leisurely walk in the woods, stopping, listening, looking - well, almost. As we were heading back to camp, another searcher texted - thought she’d heard the group on another transect! I continued my happy little walk back along the trail - Larissa headed off (fast) in another direction to try and track the primates down. No luck. Ah well, out at 4:30 tomorrow morning for her. Me - I’m working on revising contracts (9 to 5).
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| Larissa's biggest challenge? Making sure Berni doesn't walk off in her sandals. |
If you're wondering where the primate photos are: tcha! read the post - we didn't find them...
