Animal Encounters

So I am back in the city after another month of hard field work in the forest. This past month I have completed density transects. Density transects can be used to determine approximate population densities of mammals in the forest. Typically, researchers walk transects and while doing so they are looking or listening for any animals. Accordingly, Helen and myself walked every transect twice (60 transects in total = 30 km transect distance), once in the morning and once in the afternoon, and we looked for any primate species and upon a sighting we recorded a bunch of data, such as height above ground and distance to primate. This sounds fairly simple and easy to do; however we finished with little data as the primates fled upon hearing us approaching. Furthermore, both of our focal primate species, the Thomas langur and gibbon and siamangs, are highly arboreal species and consequently they behave cryptically in response to human presence. So even if they were close to our transects they made it impossible for us to spot them. After finishing our transects, our bodies are sore and we are completely exhausted, since on average we walked about 10-15 km a day in rough terrain, mainly hills and steep slopes.  All I can say is that I felt my buns burning while climbing the hills and the only way I got through to completing the transects was thinking about the thighs of steel I must be getting!! The lack of success on our density transects dampened our mood at times, however, we bit the bullet and finished them.  On the bright side, we strengthened our friendship even more (if that’s even possible since we are practically attached at the hip 24/7) and also gained some incredible memories with some close animal encounters!

Enjoying the torrential downpour 

Helen and myself experienced one particular animal encounter that was both fantastic and terrifying. We were returning from a density transect that was particularly difficult and we had no luck in finding any primates. We walked in silence back to camp, as we were annoyed and frustrated with our fieldwork. As we were walking, we heard a loud crashing nearby. We stopped dead in our tracks and took a look around. To our surprise, there was a herd of WILD elephants only 10 METERS away from us. The herd of elephants included about 4-5 adults and 2-3 young. The presence of the young elephants made this situation much more dangerous as the mothers can become aggressive. Without thinking properly, we remained silent (you should make noise to alert the elephants of your presence) and watched the elephants eat. However, in the midst of eating a plant, the elephant closest to us turns its head and stares straight at us. Next thing we know, the elephant is trumpeting and within seconds the entire herd charges. It is by the grace of god that the elephants charged in the opposite direction of us or else we would have been trampled and possibly not alive. Our hearts were beating wickedly fast as we ran for our lives away from the elephants and once we stopped running we both looked at each other in disbelief and laughed nervously. 

This experience was an important reminder for Helen and myself – we are working in a forest with many wild animals and we must remain informed as to how to behave if and when we encounter any kind of animal. Putting the element of danger aside, I must say that this experience was life changing and will be a story I tell for many years to come. What strikes me the most is the simple fact that it is possible to encounter wild animals, such as elephants, in this forest. This makes me tingle with excitement from head to toe and gives me hope for the future towards conserving forest habitats for all animals.

An orangutan casually passing by camp!

 After being in the forest for so long, we sometimes forget all the magic that the forest has to offer us, as well as how lucky we are to be surrounded by the wonderful works of mother nature. Living in the forest isn’t always a breeze -- compromises have to be made to survive, such as having cold showers, eating a monotonous diet of rice, being sweaty 24/7 or best of all being revolted by your own smell. On the other hand, what the forest gives back to you is much much more rewarding and the drawbacks of forest life become negated. One particular morning I woke up on the ground, my body aching after a rough night sleep. My bed (air mattress) had broken for the second time within 3 days of purchasing it, whilst all the mattresses’ of everyone else were perfectly fine. The mattress breaking AGAIN makes me infuriated for some reason and I decide I need to be by myself for a little while. I gather all my dirty clothes and go down to the river to wash them by hand. After an hour of scrubbing and rinsing my clothes I am finally done...that is until a bunch of butterflies come over and decide to poo all over my clean clothes. My day off has not started on a good note. I decide to just rinse them and let them be. I go back to camp and begin organizing my field bag for the next day and while doing so I drop my Swiss-army knife on my big toe. I moan in pain and decide to sit still by the camp kitchen for a while. After a few minutes, I begin to calm down and soon I hear a rustling in the trees. I immediately think it’s just a squirrel and pay no particular attention to it. It is only until I notice the branches moving wildly that I notice it is a wild orangutan, approximate 5 feet above me!!! WTF, how can this be happening!?!?! The wild orangutan moves from tree to tree, directly in front of me in clear view, like its no big deal. It even decides to rest in a tree and look directly at me. As the orangutan looks at me, I realize how silly I was acting for being angry over little non-important things. I decided to embrace this orangutan encounter as a reminder that life could be worse. I am incredibly blessed to be in such an enchanting place and I have been offered an opportunity of a lifetime. I am also so thankful for having such a supportive family that encourages me to follow my wild dreams of working with primates. 

Another, but similar encounter I have experienced relates to a siamang, which is one of two primate species I am researching. Siamangs are highly arboreal primates and are typically found in the higher canopies of forests, which can reach heights up to 60 or more meters. Siamangs use brachiation as their method of locomotion, and accordingly move swiftly between trees with gracefulness and ease. 

photo credit: Thomas Geissmann Gibbon Research Lab, www.gibbons.de/

The siamang ready for its photo shoot!

This primate encounter starts off once again with Helen and myself walking towards one of our transects for a morning walk through. As we are walking, I hear a very faint rustling above my head. I look up and it is a bloody siamang hanging right above my head. I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS!! This primate encounter is very special for me, as I have only seen siamangs on few occasions in the forest and for only brief seconds before they brachiate away. This siamang is hanging by its obscenely long-arms (an important anatomical adaptation for this species related to brachiation) and looks at us like it is ready for its photo shoot. I continue to take pictures for 10 minutes or so until Helen has to pull me away so that we can continue going towards our transect. I am unable to put it in words how heart-touching this moment was for me. In a way, this encounter validated all my hard work thus far and gave me a new wave of energy and motivation for the next phases of my fieldwork.

All in all, this past month has been incredibly difficult for Helen and myself; however, these numerous animal encounters have made every moment in the forest special and memorable.

Living the Jungle Life!

So a month has passed and I have been living the jungle life. A month in the jungle seems a lot longer than it really is but it’s an experience I wouldn’t trade for the world. This month has been hard work but we have made lots of progress with our research.

Going into the field
Top Left: our 8 month supply of stuff. Bottom Left: My custom-fitted mosquito net!
Right: Opening my backpack that has been packed from Canada for 6 months already! It has been on 4 planes in this condition! 

For a quick recap, my research is interested in determining the densities of gibbon and siamang groups across 3 sections of different forest types. Once we determine primate densities in each forest type, our data will help elucidate if they prefer one forest type to another and higher densities in said forest would demonstrate this. We are also collecting vegetation data within each forest type so that we will be able to characterize the types of trees found in each forest and what tree characteristics the primate may be actively selecting.

Spatial organization of our 30 vegetation transects in three different forest types

That is the premise of my research and so what have we done during this month? Well, so far we have completed collecting the vegetation data. We spatially organized and laid out 30-vegetation line-transects (10 in each forest type). For those who don’t understand what I mean by a transect: a transect is essentially a straight line that is cut through the forest. However, the cutting of transects is very minimal and it is just enough to be able to walk. Each transect is 500m long and on each transect we collect vegetation data for 40 trees. Examples of the type of data I collected include: tree height (some reach heights over 50 m!), canopy width, % canopy connectivity, branch sizes etc…. This means we have collected data for a total of 1200 trees! The work itself is not laborious but it is time consuming as it takes us about 6-8 hours per transect. Also, getting to and from each transect can be a nightmare as we are going off-trail the majority of the time and have to work our way through fallen over trees, massive spines, tangled vines and much much more! On average, we walked approximately 6-8 km a day, however it was not a straightforward path like one would walk on the road. Our 6-8 km hike entailed climbing and descending steep-vertical slopes, walking across landslides with fallen debris, walking through knee-deep mud, hopping over or crouching under fallen over trees (some trees can have diameters over 3 meters!), and fighting your way through walls of entangled vines. To top this off, we hiked in 40°C heat with high humidity and a limited water supply. However, a valuable field lesson one learns while in the field is that half the battle of the getting through difficult field days is remaining mentally strong. As one can imagine, these hikes change you as a person and they help build your mental strength in times of giving up.

A typical field day.
Bottom right photo: I am looking worried because I
had to collect data amongst thorns and spines that were at least 2-3 inches long

Many people ask me what a day in the forest for me is like? Well, a day in the forest for me is not complete without ants in my pants (literally, and ant bites are VERY painful, more so than wasp stings, but I have also experienced those in the forest), losing one or both rain-boots (wellies for those English folks) in the mud, getting entangled in vines, and subsequently landing face first on the ground. As those of you who play soccer (football) with me or have watched me play, I spend a good majority of my time rolling on the ground and bouncing back up. Well, not to worry, this has also been happening in the forest. The field assistants simply laugh at me and don’t even bother to ask if I am ok as it happens so frequently.

After a long day of work we finally return back to our camp. Our camp is simple, yet so wonderful. Our camp is a wooden cabin alongside a beautiful river. The first thing we do when we return to camp is take off our sweat-drenched clothes and jump into the river for our daily bath. We relax and decompress in our natural bathtub! After that, we go back up to camp and we usually enjoy a nice bowl of mie (noodles, even though I am gluten intolerant! Hahaha) and we spend the rest of our evenings listening to the field assistants playing guitar, reading a book, playing with the field station’s cats, Raquel and Lucy, or watch a movie on our laptops. Lastly, my time spent in the field has allowed me to form special bonds with the field assistants. They are able to relate to my field experiences and the daily struggles I encounter more deeply than the average day person would and so these bonds between us eliminate the need for vocal communication. Instead, a simple gesture like a grunt, or a smile, or a tired nod of the head will deliver and express a message and we are all comfortable sitting in each other’s presence without speaking and just enjoying the sounds of the jungle and the peacefulness of it.

Top Row: Helen relaxing after a long hard day, Lucy in a rainboot, Logga playing guitar
Bottom Row: Ricky by the fire cooking our dinner, and Irfan and I getting ready to go out far into the jungle.

As I have described above, life in the jungle is simple and basic, but so relaxing as it is free from drama and the everyday commodities that tend to make our lives more complicated like the Internet. It is rare that we have any truly exciting events such as special animal sightings, however, one did occur while we were sleeping. To make a long story short, a wild elephant tried to break into our camp during the night!! As we were sleeping we heard crashing sounds and at first I thought it was thieves trying to break into our camp as our wood wall was smashed in and our clothing lines outside (with all our clothes) was destroyed. Only later did I understand that it was a wild elephant that did the damage. This sneaky elephant also happened to bugger off with our papaya plant! This is both exciting and scary news because wild elephants are very dangerous and encountering one in the wild alone is different than the elephants we see in the zoo. However, I find this event to be more exciting than scary as it reminds me that we are living a jungle with wild animals even though we don’t get to see them very often. 

A wild elephant's footprints in the mud

For those of you interested in wildlife and conservation, attached below is a link to a documentary about Indonesia's orangutans. My research is made possible by the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme (SOCP), which is the NGO featured in this film, which is called: The Last Orangutan Eden. 

Please watch and enjoy! :) 

http://video.pbs.org/video/2365432375/