Return to Panamania

Camera trapped!

2009-10-15T19:56:00.003-05:00

Story about me in National Geographic Adventure

2009-10-15T19:54:00.000-05:00

Photograph by Christian Ziegler

http://adventure.nationalgeographic.com/2009/10/innovators-text/9

Through the canal!

2009-10-15T18:05:00.005-05:00

When you live on Barro Colorado Island, the Panama Canal is a big part of your every day existence. You commute to and from the office through the canal. You work in the canal. You swim in the canal after hot days, and party on a raft in the canal at night.

There are also a number of canal-related activities that you do repeatedly with your visitors like visiting the canal museum and having dinner at the restaurant that overlooks the locks. I've even been down into an emptied out lock while it was under maintenance, crawled back into the tunnels that feed water into the locks, and turned the handle to open a lock and let a ship through. However, until last week, I'd never actually gone through the canal!

Friends from Maine who are sailing to New Zealand invited me to join them on their canal transit as a line handler. Every boat going through the locks is required to have a captain and four line handlers, and they were one person short!

I actually had just gotten back from a week-long workshop in Santa Barbara, but on Monday morning, I got up early and took the bus to Colon. Nothing quite like sitting on an over air conditioned bus for two with an incredibly violent movie about Central American gang members killing one another being played at full blast. I met Gram, Jo, Bill and Zach at Shelter Bay Marina, which is near the old Fort Sherman base.

When I'd seen sail boats transiting the canal in the past, I'd always wondered why people who can afford a sail boat couldn't afford decent bumpers. What was up with all those tires?!?!? Turns out they are the official gear given to you by the Canal Authority (ACP) to use while going through the locks. Guess I shouldn't have been so snotty.

We had to wait a while before our pilot arrived and we could start towards the locks:

Gram, being the responsible individual that he is, worked to get the boat ready while

the rest of us relaxed and looked around at the boats waiting to go through the canal

the containers that have been offloaded and are waiting to go across the isthmus by train

and the impressive lightening storm, followed by gorgeous rainbow!

Then, it was off to the locks when our captain and our lock-mate:

Once we got to the locks, guys threw us ropes which we used to position the boat in the lock so it didn't move around when the water started to rise. Then, up we went. No photos of any of this, as we all had our hands full. I thought it would all seems a little scarier and out of control than it actually did. Up we went, through the three different locks, and out into Lake Gatun, where we had to anchor for the night, on the sketchiest mooring ever:

Gram did some fancy foot work and Bill did some impressive maneuvering to get us tied up to this thing in the pitch dark!

Gram and slept on hammocks up on deck (no mosquitoes!) which was great until the howler monkeys went off at 4:30 a.m. The morning was not very promising:

but it eventually cleared up enough to get to enjoy a bit of Lake Gatun!

Panama is expanding the canal, building a new, larger set of locks big enough for the new post-Panamax ships, and straightening the canal to make it easier to navigate, so there is a lot of construction going on.

This peninsula will soon be gone. . .

This used to be de Lesseps Island. A couple of howler and spider monkeys were stranded out here earlier this year, sitting miserably in a the one remaining tree.

This was the last boat we passed before we got to the Pedro Miguel and Miraflores locks and out into the Pacific

Welcome to the Pacific!

and good luck on your sail to New Zealand!

Fit!

2009-07-19T21:35:00.002-05:00

I bought a car! It's red! Yup, that's pretty much it!

Saladino is dead!

2009-07-19T20:00:00.002-05:00

Capuchins live a really long time--up to 40 years--so it isn't all that often that an adult in one of the groups that I study dies. In fact, of the 12 animals that I collared for my dissertation, all are still alive 5 years later. However, in a continuation of my bad luck with darting and radio-collars, the photo above is all that is left of Saladino, one of the males we collared in January. We could tell on Thursday afternoon that he had stopped moving, and so knew that either his collar had fallen off or he had died. Thursday is the end of our work week, and by the time we got back to BCI on Sunday morning, this is all that was left of him.

I was pretty impressed by how quickly the jungle did its thing, but I recently learned that it isn't at all abnormal for a dead animal to be nothing but bones in a matter of hours. But a few days ago, I came across a dead howler monkey hanging in a tree, looking like it had just fallen asleep. Three of the female capuchin monkeys were alarm calling at it, and then started poking it and pulling its tail. Eventually, they moved off, but when my friend Robert went back the next morning because he wanted the skull, there was nothing left but bones. Doesn't take long. . .

Can you find the fer de lance?

2009-04-15T14:56:00.003-05:00

Here's the photo of the fer de lance that was outside the dorms yesterday. A beautiful snake!

An unwelcome guest

2009-04-13T21:47:00.002-05:00

This morning brought more excitement than I'm generally interested in before my coffee. It came in the form of a 1 meter fer-de-lance (Bothrops asper) sunning himself (herself?) outside my room. Fer-de-lance are highly venomous and have the reputation for being quite aggressive. Take a look here if you want nightmares: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tissue_necrosis_following_bite_from_Bothrops_asper_PLoS_Medicine.jpg

I'd only ever seen one, very small one on BCI before today, which I'm generally quite thankful for. I have to say that it was beautiful (hopefully I'll have tracked down some photos of it by tomorrow--I didn't have my camera nearby). However, it posed an interesting conundrum: what do you do with a very dangerous animal that is hanging out in an area where people in flip-flops and bare legs are walking at all times of day? Most places in Panama, you'd just kill it, but that seems somewhat inappropriate in a nature reserve. . . So, do you behead the fer-de-lance on your front steps? or try to move it, and put the unlucky person who draws the short straw at risk as they try to move it?

Easter egg hunt!

2009-04-12T23:26:00.006-05:00

The tinamous are nesting on BCI, which means there are large, aquamarine eggs hidden throughout the forest tempting the capuchins. Eggs are high quality food, and all the monkeys are spending a lot of time staring at the ground or following adult tinamous around, hoping to find a nest. A couple of days ago, three females cooperated to chase a male tinamou off his nest and steal his eggs. The birds nest on the ground at the bases of trees, so Claudia climbed down the tree and scared the male off his nest, and while Mimi and Betty kept him distracted, she stole all his eggs. After all their help, you might think that Claudia would share her booty. Actually, she did, but not with either of the females who helped her out. Instead, she and Cheverul sat side by side on a palm frond, happily dipping their hands into the opened egg and licking the yolk and whites off their fingers.

The capuchins aren't the only ones who like tinamou eggs, either!

All the activity we've seen in the last few weeks surrounding these eggs (and especially the food sharing we've observed), got me excited about an art and crafts project and I went on an epic search for easter eggs dyeing kits and white eggs. Surprisingly, given that the easter bunny doesn't visit Panama, it was easier to come up with the kits than the white eggs. I have been to every grocery store and every market in the city, and discovered that only brown eggs are sold in Panama. Everyone seems to remember a time when you could find white eggs, but not any more. Luckily, it turns out that using the blue dye tablet and brown eggs more or less turns a chicken egg into a reasonably convicing fake tinamou egg.

I've spent the last three weeks teaching the Princeton semester in Panama class on tropical vertebrate biology, and we used these eggs to create fake tinamou nests. We wanted to know how close monkeys had to come to see the eggs, and look at the role that dominance and social relationships played in determining who actually got to eat them once they were found. It was quite funny, actually, as soon as a capuchin saw the 'nest', they immediately started scanning the trees around them to see if any of their group mates were visible, and only then, moving very slowly and quietly did they start moving down to the ground to pick up the eggs. If one of the adult males saw a female or juvenile moving towards a nest, he'd immediately rush over and take all the eggs, so stealth was key!

Alfredo, taking the eggs that Oldemar found.

Meet Las Moneras!

2009-04-09T14:03:00.017-05:00

Anyuri, Me, Nena and Lucia

I feel incredibly lucky to have found the most amazing monkey chasers! Anyuri, Nena and Lucia started working with me in early January, and after only a week on the job, which was primarily focused on learning to navigate the trail system on Barro Colorado Island and to tell the difference between adult male, adult female and juvenile capuchin monkeys, were promptly tested with a trial-by-fire: Darting!

Bob came down to Panama again, probably against his better judgment, to help me put radio-collars on the capuchins.

The batteries in all the radio-collars I used for my dissertation research have died and so, to track the movements of my study groups using the automated telemetry system on BCI, I had to replace the collars. Catching monkeys is tricky and tiring at the best of times, but this round of darting easily outstripped all its predecessors in terms of difficulty. Dipteryx, tall canopy trees, had started to fruit, but weren't producing large fruit crops so the monkeys were very hungry and spent all day running from the top of one tall tree to the next. For safety reasons, we can't try to capture the animals when they are high up, or when they are moving, and thus we spent seven days running up and down hills covered in liana tangles after monkey groups, desperately hoping to be in the right place when a capuchin decided to pause for a few seconds. We got lucky five times, averaging out to approximately 15 miles hiked per monkey captured.

How many blondes does it take to collar a monkey?

Because capturing capuchins is so labor intensive, we tried out two new break-away collars that are designed to fall off by themselves (hopefully AFTER the batteries die), so we don't have to recapture the animals to remove their collars. As you can see, it's a pretty low-tech solution--just a weak point built into the tubular nylon collar material that should eventually rot and fall off.

Several higher-tech break away collars have been designed which allow you to program the collar to fall off after a specified number of days, or to trigger them to fall off remotely using radio-signals. Unfortunately, for the moment, all these mechanisms are too heavy to use with animals as small as the capuchins. So, we crossed our fingers and (although we knew better), hoped that the capuchins wouldn't pull the collars off the second they woke up. . .and as it turned out, it took the first monkey almost a whole 6 hours to get his collar off (please note, that is half the time it took us to catch him)! On the other hand, the other monkey with a break-away collar (Ulpiano) was either weaker, lazier or got a better constructed version, because he is still wearing his, almost three months later.

Rose and I putting a collar on Saladino (named after the first Panamanian Olympic gold medalist)

George and Rose weighing Loretta.

We had a frustrating week of darting. I'd been hoping to get new radio-collars on monkeys in my original six study groups and, perhaps, if we were lucky, add an extra group or two. Field work requires flexiblity though, and by the second day it was clear that these goals needed to be adjusted. In the end, we captured 5 monkeys from three social groups, and felt like we'd succeeded. I get to work with amazing people: even after 7 exhausting, frustrating and somewhat disappointing days they still smile (and speak to me).

L to R: Bob, Nena, Oldemar, Anyuri, George, Carrie, and Lucia

(Actually, they were smiling because I'd just promised them we could go home to rum and cokes!)

(I'm smiling because I finally get to take the heavy backpack off!)

Alarm!

2008-12-06T21:02:00.003-05:00

I finally got recordings of alarm calls!

After weeks of always being just a couple of seconds too late, or having other monkeys crashing around in the trees obscuring the vocalization, I finally managed to record alarm calls today! (click the "video" above to hear them--the website won't let me upload audio files, but will let me upload video clips, so this was my solution!)

Now, to be honest, these vocalizations aren't from one of my study groups. The only group I could find today was Scarface (named after their severely disfigured alpha male), so I followed them in part to figure out if they might be a good group to study in the future. They aren't very habituated, however, and these alarm calls were actually made at me! A female with a small baby on her back took one look at me and started alarm calling, and then ran away.

I am pretty excited to have gotten my first recording of an alarm call--it almost makes up for yesterday, when I was sitting interviewing potential field assistants in Panama City, and a friend called me from the forest on BCI so I could listen to the intergroup fight two capuchin groups were having right in front of her.

Who is the who?

2008-11-26T20:42:00.004-05:00

This is my dilemma.

I've spent the last month trying to figure out the best way to recognize individual capuchin monkeys. Is it the slightly different shape of the intersection between the black and white fur on their foreheads? or the size and protrusion of their brow-ridge? How stable are these traits? will a juvenile I recognize today look similar three months or a year from now?

Sometimes, when I get really lucky, individuals have scars or moles, which makes it much easier to tell who is who. For example, this male from TB group has a nice mole on the right side of his face. Very convenient, as the other big male doesn't have any moles.

Unfortunately, the mole is very small, and as soon as he turns his head--you'd never know it was there.

I'm not convinced I'm going to be able to recognize even distinctive individuals in the middle of hectic intergroup fights, so a good part of last week was spent reading about various methods for marking animals. Ear tags, tatoos, flash freezing their fur--all these require catching the monkeys, so I've been considering the super-soaker and hair dye approach.

My time online has introduced me to a very strange pet-subculture:

I have learned that there are many people who seem to spend a lot of time on online discussing how best to dye their pets strange colors. My personal favorite post was the following:

"My pet Pekingese is starting to go unfashionably grey and it is seeming to age him prematurely. He's become quite reclusive and shy about his appearance and refuses to go out. We've been dying his hair with boot polish and it appears to do the trick."

Ahhh, the things you learn while doing "science."

Santa Rita Ridge

2008-11-23T17:22:00.025-05:00

Last weekend, I took a vacation from BCI with some of my friends, and went to visit one of the STRI staff scientists in his weekend home near Colon (on the Caribbean side of Panama).

Dave has a beautiful house on a hilltop in Santa Rita, with a pool and gorgeous views out to the ocean. . .

. . .which is a good thing because we had to brave the Transismica!

The Transismica is the road that runs more or less along the canal from Panama City (on the Pacific side) to Colon (on the Caribbean), and it is in excruciatingly bad shape. Excruciating because more of the road is pot-hole than not, and a 35 minute trip took four hours.

Please note the sign that says "excavacion profunda": what they mean is "we dug a hole that will swallow your car if, for any reason you get to close to the curb.

Dave studies stingless bees, and keeps a lot of colonies at his house in SantaRita.

They live in boxes, like these--and you can lift up the lid and see what they construct. It was very cool!

There were great some moths around the house at night:

Panamanian road kill--averted

2008-11-15T11:32:00.003-05:00

There has been a lot of road-kill on the Gamboa road this fall. I don't know if it is related to the time of year, or the general lack of food in the forest at this moment, but lots of animals seem compelled to travel, crossing roads and often getting hit by cars. Somehow, when it is an "exotic" animal like a monkey or an ant-eater, this seems even more tragic. The sloths are particularly heart breaking, as the slowly, deliberately try drag themselves across the wide strips of pavement.

It made me happy, therefore, to be able to save at least one. We came across this sloth on a drive back from the beach at Galeta on the Caribbean coast.

After a few photos, we looked both ways and gave it a lift to a tree on the other side of the road.

Election day in the canal

2008-11-15T11:16:00.008-05:00

Thanks to streaming internet video, we watched election results live in the BCI lounge and

unlike when I was here four years ago, were able to celebrate with the rest of the country!

One small difference, perhaps, being that we opened our bottles of champagne with a machete--a great party trick courtesy of Meg Eckles!

2008-11-12T22:07:00.000-05:00

I've been having a lot of fun with my new camera.

Leaf cutters outside the shade houses, decimating a tree. There were so many ants in this one tree, you could actually hear the click, click of them cutting the leaves as you walked by.

I took a few minutes out of following monkeys to follow a line of army ants back to their bivouac. These writhing balls of ants always kind of creep me out!

Some other cool things I saw in the forest.

Tetragonisca angustula--a (relatively) docile, stingless bee

And a couple of spider monkeys behaving themselves. We like them a lot better when they aren't raiding our labs.

Here we go again. . .

2008-11-12T18:24:00.000-05:00

Five years in the middle of the Panama canal chasing monkeys!

I'm back down on Barro Colorado Island as a post-doctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, continuing the research I started for my doctorate on how, and when, and where and why monkey groups fight with one another. If you missed the first installment of this blog and are interested, check out Panamania: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/crofoot/

My time here started auspiciously, with spider monkeys raiding the labs.

The airconditioning wasn't working last weekend making it remarkably hot and unpleasant in all the offices. Most of the researchers living here had their balcony doors open in a vain attempt to get some air flowing through their labs. The spider monkeys, who have develloped the habit of hanging around the balcony searching for food and cigarette butts, seized this opportunity and rushed through a couple of the open doors and grabbed stuff that was out on the desks! One stole a bag of seeds for Kristen's experiments and, for the first time in my life, my area of academic expertise had a practical application. How do you get a monkey to give back something it stole? Offer it something it wants more!

So, we traded the monkey a tree tomato for a bag of seeds.

Such is life in Panamania!