The Monkey Matters Blog

Alas, it is the end of another field season and I am writing this from my home in New Jersey, two nights and two hot showers after leaving Tiputini. Here’s a smattering of thoughts and events from the past few weeks.

I arrived at Tiputini hoping to understand a little more about the behavior and ecology of lowland woolly monkeys. Instead, it has been a remarkably confusing field season. My main mission over the past month was to track the movements of the different woolly monkey groups at Tiputini and to collect genetic samples opportunistically for future analysis. Our main tool for tracking monkeys is radiotelemetry, the use of remote technologies to collect information. In our case, we use radio receivers to “listen in” on certain radiocollar-equipped monkeys. Out of the eight or so social groups that we know of, eight individuals are radiocollared representing six groups.

From past experience, we have had the sense that woolly monkey group ranges overlap tremendously and that monkeys from different groups rarely aggressively defend their home ranges. As a result, groups occasionally occupy the same area simultaneously and uneventfully. This complicates data collection tremendously and causes us to be especially careful when tracking groups, as the presence of a certain individual and a strong radio signal does not necessarily indicate that the individual belongs to the same group as the radiocollared monkey. Furthermore, woolly monkey groups are frequently very spread out, even beyond the range of our telemetry equipment. The absence of a radio signal in the presence of a monkey is therefore common and provides very little information. On one of my final days with woolly monkeys, I followed a group (group I) for an entire day without receiving a signal from any of the eight radiocollars and never leaving the known range of one of our better-known woolly monkey groups. Possible conclusions, therefore, are that [1] I followed group I but the radiocollars were not functioning, [2] I followed group I but it was so spread out that the two individuals with collars never entered the range of my telemetry equipment, [3] I followed an unstudied group whose range overlaps with that group I, and [4] my telemetry equipment was not functioning and/or I screwed something up. I can’t rule out any of the four possibilities. Altogether, very confusing but that’s what makes it intriguing (or so we tell ourselves).

I also had the chance to take ranging data on some of the radiocollared groups for which we have less information. Surprisingly (or perhaps not surprisingly), the monkeys led me to areas not known to be within their home ranges and overlapping significantly with the home ranges of other groups. On one occasion, I followed a group (group G) well outside of their known range and into the Harpia Plot, one of the two 1 km x 1 km plots here at the station. I lost track of time and was still deep within the plot by the time it got dark (around 6pm). Within 15 minutes, it was pitch black and I was still off-trail when it started to rain. As I was beating my way through tangles with my headlamp on and trying to get a bearing with my compass, I started to worry that Tony and the others would never find me as they had no idea that group G spends time in the Harpia Plot. I survived.

In my last few days, I got the chance to follow titi monkeys, along with Tony and Amy, a wonderful graduate student at UC Davis. Unlike woollies, titi monkey ranges are tiny and they travel little throughout the day. They do, however, tend to hide in the most brambly, inhospitable-looking (to me, at least) areas of the rainforest. They also inhabit the mid to lower-canopy, so the first time Amy pointed a titi monkey out to me, it took me a while to lower my gaze enough to see it sitting about 3 or 4 meters off of the ground. Tracking titis is very different from tracking woollies, who live in large but cohesive groups and make lots of noise throughout the day. Titis live in tiny groups and are much quieter when they move. They also spend a lot of time out-of-view, which means, as titi followers, we are continually circling their brambly resting spots trying to get a view. Titi monkeys are also unbelievably adorable, so getting a good view is usually worth it. Here are a few of my better pictures from this summer:

Red titi monkey juvenile

Peering from behind his hiding spot

Foraging on fruits

Titi monkey with radiocollar

After a day of settling in at home, I miss the rainforest terribly. Before I left for Ecuador, I told everyone who would listen that I wanted to go to Tiputini because I didn’t know whether I would have the chance to return to Neotropical rainforest. I know better now. I’ll be back.

Monday marked the arrival of Tony, my undergraduate advisor, and the first presence of another human on the monkey project here at Tiputini. While I have hardly been alone–the volunteers, managers, staff, and students have been tons of fun–it is refreshing to finally have somebody around to talk monkeys and to work with in the field. That said, things started off a bit poorly on Tuesday, Tony’s first day back in the field. While following behind him through a crowded portion of the forest, I ducked under a fallen tree and ran into a wasp nest that Tony had gracefully knocked over directly into my path. It took eight or nine stings, including several to the face, for me to process what had happened and to hear Tony yelling, “Run away Kenny, run away!” I ran in circles while Tony tried to find a safe area for me to cross, getting stung himself in the process (“This way! . . . Nevermind!”). While the wasp stings–my first ever at Tiputini–were pretty painful, they are trumped by the conga ant sting that Tony experienced earlier that day (and narrowly avoided later when I brushed a different conga off of my arm and into his boot). Needless to say, we were both smarting with pain by the time we finally found monkeys.

Tony’s arrival also sparked a marked improvement in my poop-collecting abilities as I’ve been picking his mind every chance I’ve had for tips. Here are a few key findings:

1. “Falling poop has a unique sound.” I knew this little nugget of wisdom from my last visit to Tiputini a year ago, but it took a while to get “tuned in” to the sound. I had imagined a “splatty” sound, but Tony calls it “thuddy,” which is actually a pretty accurate description and, with some training, makes the sound of falling poop easy to distinguish from the “thumpy” or “thwacky” sound of falling fruits or branches.
2. Even after recognizing the sound of falling poop, finding it can be a daunting task. After it falls, however, leaves and undergrowth may show signs of disturbance by waving back and forth for up to ten seconds. This tip instantly worked wonders for me–I am, in fact, a little embarrassed I didn’t think of it.
3. Dung beetles. These hardworking little creatures are much better at discovering poop than we are and following them is an excellent strategy for finding gold. After finding poop, female dung beetles lay their eggs and roll the poop up into a ball to carry off and bury. This helps incubate the eggs and provides some essential nutrients for beetle larvae once hatched. Tony, however, sometimes lets the beetles perform their work, then snatches the poop away, now sculpted perfectly for our fecal collection tubes.
4. Being able to tell when monkeys poop can be useful for knowing when to be extra vigilant. Monkeys poop throughout the day, but do so more frequently in certain situations.. Woolly monkeys often poop directly after foraging, after extended periods of rest (for some reason, I find the idea of groggy monkeys pooping after a nap irresistibly adorable), and after peeing (like some humans, no?). Finally, monkeys poop after pooping! Pooping often occurs in bouts, which is why it’s always a good idea to close your mouth when checking to see which individual just went.
5. We don’t collect all of the poop that we come across. Poop is much more worthwhile to collect [1] when we know some information about the individual and [2] when we don’t already have a sample from that individual. The second point can be difficult to keep track of, but being able to distinguish poop from different individuals can be a useful skill. According to Tony, you can do this by checking for different qualities of the poop, including things like color, contents, and consistency.

Gross story. I got rained on today by monkey poop and, at one point, felt some of it hit me in the left eye (see number 4 above). I spent some time trying to cry it out, but couldn’t shake off a sneaking suspicion that some of it was left in my eye. After getting back to camp, I switched out my contacts and tried to wash the poop out, then stopped thinking about it. While writing this entry, however, I noticed that I was picking out an unusually copious amount of gunk from the inside of my left eye, then got a little grossed out when I remembered what had happened earlier. Tony laughed when I told him this, but I’m not convinced that I’ll avoid an eye infection these next couple days.

Speaking of Tony, I killed a mosquito resting on his forehead today. I’ve done that before, but had the strange thought today that I might be one of the only students ever to have the opportunity to slap his or her major professor in the face and receive a “thank you” in return.

Things I don’t miss (but had forgotten about): Spiny plants
For obvious reasons, Tony calls them “bitch palms,” but however you may feel about them, they are responsible for the twenty minutes per night that I spend picking splinters out of my body. They also often get caught up in clothing and induce a good bit of picking and peeling to get off. Getting gored is also frustrating given that I intend no harm towards the plant, which presumably grows spines in order to ward off potential feeders and/or parasites. Attacking me, I think, is therefore exceptionally inconsiderate and makes traveling through the forest unnecessarily difficult and painful. “Bitch palms” indeed.

Before I sign off and head off to bed, I leave you with a variant of Tony’s favorite parting words for the field (and the source for my title):

“May the monkeys be visible, may the data be wonderful, and may the poop be plentiful.”

It is never silent here. It’s taken me two weeks here in the forest to realize that I am constantly immersed in a forest full of animals chittering and chattering, clicking and clucking, cheeping and chirping, hooting and howling. As a monkey person, my ears are “tuned” to react to certain sounds–monkey chirps, monkeys moving, falling fruits, for example–but that makes me wonder what I miss when I lump all other rainforest sounds into one never-ending buzz. There’s a lot of diversity and a lot of mystery in the rainforest. If my ears were “tuned,” say, to the sound of certain rare insects or birds, who knows how different my rainforest experience might be?

The area where I am currently living is referred to as a “hotspot” of biodiversity; one hectare (100 x 100 meter area) of rainforest here is reported to contain, on average, more species of trees than can be found in the entire continental North America. What does this look like on a day-to-day basis? As somebody who can name about ten species of rainforest trees, I normally see the forest as one one dense, homogeneous clutter of trees, just obstacles between me and my monkeys. But the forest is not homogeneous at all and when I finally took time to try to find two trees in view that belonged to the same species, I found that I couldn’t. Pretty remarkable.

It can be pretty tough to know where you are in the rainforest. There are trails here, but except for a few, they are very narrow and can be easily mistaken for random gaps in the rainforest. I get lost all the time. There are certain areas that I recognize better than others, but even after a few months here logging many hours in the forest, I still come across places that seem completely unfamiliar, even in the areas in which I spend most of my time. Luckily, I carry a compass and a GPS loaded with the station trail system; without them, I would never have made it back to camp on several occasions.

Strangely, I have had a remarkable run of recent peccary sightings. Peccaries are wild pig-like creatures and I have seen them, on average, about every other day for the past two weeks. Last year, in contrast, I had two peccary encounters in two months. Yesterday, I saw peccaries on three separate encounters and detected their scent an additional five times. Peccaries smell like, well, pigs but remind me of the smell of pee in the subway or in certain restrooms at Port Authority (I commuted to New York by bus all of last year). I still haven’t gotten a peccary picture, but if these sightings keep up, it’s only a matter of time.

A few nights ago, I was awake later than usual and left the lab to use the bathroom before heading to bed. When I opened the door, I saw what I thought was a mouse scurrying around the bathroom floor. Instinctively, I shut the door and decided to use the bathroom in my cabin before remembering that I was in the middle of the rainforest and that the “mouse,” even if it was just a mouse, was probably something interesting. It turned out not to be a mouse but a mouse opossum, a marsupial, and a cute one at that. I was able to snap a few photos. Figuring the little guy had nowhere to go, I shut the door again and woke a friend to show her, but when we got to the bathroom, it had vanished. Apparently, mouse opossums can climb walls.

Here are a few other photos taken in the past week or so:

Caiman

Grasshopper

Amazon dwarf squirrel

Kingfisher

Flycatchers

Roadside hawk

Two-toed sloth

Grossbeak

Butterfly chilling on my hand

Capuchin monkey

As the only researcher here, I was tasked with giving a lecture to students about the primate project here at Tiputini, which was a little intimidating given that I graduated with a BA only three weeks ago. My lecture ran for a little over an hour and went pretty smoothly. I cannot imagine, however, how professors can string together lectures on a regular basis. After one, I’ve exhausted my supply of topics to talk about and used up all of my good jokes. The highlight of my talk was probably when I tried to pass off as genuine a photoshopped “camera trap” photo of a pink river dolphin visiting a salt lick (mineral deposits that many rainforest animals visit to supplement their diet or to mitigate the effect of certain toxic chemicals). I was able to get off a monologue about the increased predation risks that dolphins expose themselves to on land and the mineral deficiencies in their fish diets before the students called me out. I’m just glad they were paying attention.

While I carry a radio receiver with me every day to help find monkeys (some of which are wearing radiocollars), so far many of my encounters with woollies have occurred without the help of radio telemetry. While part of this is blind luck, there are a couple of things that help when tracking woollies. I imagine that different researchers would come up with different lists; we all, after all, sense the world differently and, therefore, pick up on different things. Over the past two years, these are four things that I picked up from spending time with woollies:

1. Woollies make a distinctive chirping sound. Sometimes, I mistakenly identify bird calls for woolly chirps but in general, following the chirps is a surefire method for finding woolly monkeys. I am currently practicing my chirps while alone in the rainforest in the hopes of eliciting a response among the woollies. As it stands currently, I’m pretty sure I sound like a dying woolly monkey (perhaps they respond to that!).
2. Woolly monkeys are large-bodied monkeys that live at the mid to upper-level of the canopy. They move among trees by bridging between branches and occasionally, leaping onto lower branches (one of my favorite things to watch!). Listening for these sounds can help find them, although wind, falling branches, and other animals can create similar sounds.
3. Woolly monkeys feed extensively on the fruit of Spondias trees (a sweet but very sour-tasting fruit with a large pit). They are also messy, wasteful, eaters and drop many fruits uneaten or partially-eaten. Falling Spondias or coming across ground covered with Spondias are good signs that woollies are around.
4. Woolly poop! Poop does not last long in the jungle–believe it or not, we poop-collectors have many competitors–and seeing (or more often, smelling) woolly monkey poop is a strong indicator that woollies are not far away.

Friday was a quiet day as a few student groups left to return to Quito. Come nighttime, however, at least two groups arrived to take their place (enough such that I had to move out of my personal cabin and move in with the two volunteers here). While student groups can be fun, they can also be quite loud (as is the case with these two), driving away much of the wildlife. I’m worried that this will affect my string of recent interesting wildlife sightings; in the past few days, I’ve seen several peccaries (a pig-like critter), Amazon red squirrels (much rarer and much prettier than the ones back home), currasows, a toucan, a caecilian (inconceivable!), several species of caiman, a paca (a large agouti-like rodent), and a few snakes.

Things I don’t miss (but had forgotten about): Sweat bees
Survival in the rainforest is not easy. To do it, all rainforest creatures have developed adaptations and counter-adaptations in what amounts to a constant war for existence. In the case of humans, our crucial adaptation is probably the ability to alter our surroundings to both effectively exploit our environment and shield ourselves from its dangers. Consequently, we do not need to be as fast, agile, or as sensitive to our surroundings as other rainforest critters. Imagine my delight, then, the first time I successfully snatched a sweat bee–a type of stingless insect–right out of the air as it was circling my head. I had seen squirrel monkeys struggle to catch insects and here I was, a proficient insect hunter finally adjusted (I thought) to the pace of rainforest life. But alas, this was not the case. As it turns out, sweat bees are extremely easy to catch, with what I think are some of the slowest reflexes of any flying insect. They make up for it, however, with their huge numbers, helping to explain their willingness to continue circling my sweaty head as I pluck their companions out of the air. A few days ago, I started a pile of dead sweat bees (n = 16 by the end) in the hopes of sending a grisly message to the insects still circling my head. They ignored it.

Being located about two hours downriver from the nearest human settlement, all food, supplies, and visitors arrive at Tiputini by boat, which run only on Mondays and Fridays. This is actually very important to know if, like me, you micromanage your stash of Oreos and juice boxes. Also, these days can be exciting when they bring in new faces (I feel like an aquarium fish). Laundry is done for us twice a week, on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Boat rides and laundry days are how I keep track of days. Tomorrow is Laundry Day (oh boy!).

The water here is pumped directly from the Tiputini River, then passed through a water tower where it is filtered, chlorinated, and distributed to all the buildings of the station. Since all of the running water passes through this system, that means you use the same water to drink, to shower, and to flush. Since the system can only handle so much, water use is self-regulated. Nevertheless, when the station is crowded, we are almost certain to run out of water.

The station does have electricity, but cabins are powered only during hours when the generator is running, from 10am to 1pm and again from 6pm to 9:30pm. After it gets dark (around 6pm), flashlights or headlamps are indispensible for moving about the station, especially when there is no electricity. Lights and outlets in the central research building (office, library, and lab) are powered 24/7, although large appliances such as the air conditioning run with the generator. Expensive electronics are stored in “dry boxes,” large wooden boxes containing an incandescent light bulb and sometimes a desiccant such as silica. There is a satellite internet connection, which can be quite slow but is nonetheless a huge luxury in a place like this.

The food here is pretty good and the station staff (the Tigres) do a great job with the limited supplies that they have. I picked up where I left off, however, and have been avoiding peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, served on the ubiquitous dinner rolls that find their way into almost every meal. Those sandwiches are the standard items to take into the field; they can get moldy, however, in the field. Luckily, you can request “comida,” which is usually leftovers from the previous day and far superior to PBJ sandwiches. Breakfast can be anything from pancakes to French toast (made from dinner rolls) to scrambled eggs. Cereal is available every morning and tea and coffee are available throughout the day. Dinners (sometimes the only meal I eat in the station) are quite good and go far beyond the typical “rice and beans” that most field researchers eat in the Neotropics. So far, we’ve had chickpeas and rice, chicken with corn and mashed potatoes, and lasagna. Yum.

While hiking along the Puma plot (one of two 1km x 1km plots at the station) this morning, I came across the next in my series of “Things I don’t miss (but had forgotten about).”

Things I don’t miss (but had forgotten about): Gorges
Actually, these can be quite fun, but my initial thought when coming across these steep cliffs is something like, “Oh hell no.” Moving up or, in particular, down gorges involves a few seconds of planning. Should I run it? Should I jump it? Or should I do a controlled tumble? The issue is that there are often few footholds and many are prone to crumbling. Sometimes, there are trees to grab on to, but doing so runs the risk of annoying a conga ant, the “most painful” insect of the order Hymenoptera (biological group including ants, bees, wasps, and grizzly bears). In reality, gorges are much easier to maneuver across than they look, but I still find them scary as hell, especially when I am rushing so as not to fall behind my monkeys. At times like these, I miss parasitizing off of the routes of the much more surefooted Ricardo or Chris. Tony, on the other hand, crumbles all existing footholds, making it much more difficult for the next person (in his defense, he will offer a hand).

What do I do with this?