First Day of Work

Today was my first day at my internship with the Kenya Sykes Monkey Research Project. It turns out that there is a woman staying at the same place as me who has done research on Sykes monkeys before! After finding this out, she decided to join me and show me how to get to the place. We flagged down motorbikes and took the 20 minute ride to Gede Ruins, where the Monkey Office is located. I was welcomed into the office by my new coworkers, Kalama (research assistant/my supervisor), Lia (also a research assistant...from Poughkeepsie!), and Leley (who is only there for another week, conducting her own research on seed dispersal). I got a grand tour of the ruins, the butterfly garden, and honey/wax production projects before heading to a small Kenyan restaurant for lunch.

In the afternoon, I was introduced to the research project that I will be helping with. The study focuses on the Activity Time Budget of individual Sykes monkeys. The researchers spend their days in the ruins going on "follows" (which is exactly what it sounds like, following an individual monkey for 30 minutes, recording its behavior every minute). The different activities include: grooming, eating, suckling, moving, aggression, and resting. In addition to recording their behavior, they also record what plant species the monkey is eating. This seems to be the most difficult part of the research, since there are so many plant species in the area and additionally, Sykes monkeys are generalists and will eat almost anything. The list of plant species they gave me is about 5 pages long. I will try my best but I don't think I will be able to know all the plants any time in the near future. Oh! One of my favorite parts of the project so far is identifying the monkeys. There are 3 troops: East, West and South. East has about 30 individuals, West has 47, and South in the 20s. Today I learned to identify some of the individuals in West, using different features like the distinctiveness of their tails, nipples, faces, or any other notable quality. Here are some of the names I remember: Simba (Swahili for lion), Paka (cat), Poa (cool), Sema (speak), Eva, Swapo (derived from swapping, since this is a dominant male who is apparently interested in a lot of females) and last but not least my personal favorite...Harry!