Oh Poop!

There are certain things that happen that remind me that science might be my correct path.  In the pressure of writing grants, collecting data, entering data, working on publications, ect, sometimes the day to day (or should I say the data to data) of it makes me forget the reason why I became a scientist in the first place.  For me this week, it was poop that reminded me.  For those of you who know me from a certain period of my life this statement shouldn’t surprise you.  You were there when I was crowned poop queen many months in a row. For the rest of you, yes there actually is something called poop queen and yes I have been it, and yes poop reminded me why I recently repacked up all my possessions to go live in a tent in the middle of a tropical forest. 

So to explain why I found poop so exciting, I need to take a step back.  Recently, I have been on this path to try to figure out why proboscis monkeys sleep in certain trees and not others.  It has been in the back of my mind since I started studying proboscis monkeys, but I began formally collecting data on sleep tree selection, when sleep time was the only time I actually saw the monkeys.  Initially, this sleep tree project was supposed to be a little side project.  It was going to be a finite set of data that was fairly easy to collect with fairly simple data analysis so I could write it up quickly or present it at conferences (the dataset for my actually dissertation seems anything but simple-if anyone knows how to deal with both temporal and spatially auto correlated data- send me a message); however, recently my sleep site project has been taking over (maybe there is a correlation between how much Katie is not sleeping, and how much she is thinking of primates sleeping).  Most of the literature to date state that most primates select sleep sites as a way reduce predation risk.  This seems like a fairly reasonable assumption- primates have lots of natural predators (raptors, snakes, wild cats, to name a few), and if one is going to have to turn one’s back to predators (or in other words- close its eyes and catch some zzzs), it is going to want to have some way of reducing the fact that it is sleeping prey.  The problem with this idea is that no matter what the data shows- people just wave their hands and say, “Oh it must be antipredator behavior”.  It could be, and I am not saying it is not, but as good scientists we should be testing these ideas and leaving the hand waving to the magicians of the world.  So to make an already long story about poop – a little shorter- I plan to to set up a couple of little experiments to test some alternative hypotheses of why proboscis monkeys sleep in certain trees (for those of you that are interested- some other ideas are thermoregulation, anti-disease vectors, social interactions, or optimal foraging).

To do some of these little experiments, I needed some proboscis monkey poop.  Sure it sounds like an easy thing to do, just get some poop, but with the fallen logs, dense vegetation, and quick sand mud, I am having a hard time following the monkeys in the forest.  If one is sitting on a boat and sees a monkey poop, it is a bit hard to then find said poop on the leaf covered forest floor (it is so much easier when you are under the monkeys and they just poop on your head).  So you all can imagine my surprise and excitement when I went to my favorite spot along the river to bath, and realize that my bathing site is covered in proboscis monkey poop.  Half clothed wet Katie is jumping up and down in the forest because she found poop.   I spent the rest of my time bathing figuring out what I wanted to do with this poop.  My assistants thought I was a little crazy when still dripping wet, tangled hair probably accented with leaves (I was too excited to comb my hair or properly dry off), I go directly to my tent and grab my latex gloves and a zip lock bag; turn around going back into the forest proclaiming, “Saya temuka kotoran bekantan! (I found proboscis monkey poop).”

In the end, my little experiment didn’t discover anything interesting; however, finding a pile of monkey poop did allow me to rediscover my exciting and joy of science.  

The disappearing forest

I try to make my field adventures into funny stories, but there are a lot of things about my life that are not so funny.  As I am studying proboscis monkeys’ responses to changes in their environment, I need to work in a place that is experiencing those changes.  This means that on a daily basis, I am experiencing and recording the destruction of the habitat of the proboscis monkeys. It is extremely frustrating that I am collecting all this data, and realizing that the data will not do anything to save this endangered species or the ecosystem that it lives in. Therefore, I am going to share with you what I am seeing .  First, I hear a constant choir of chainsaws.  The sound of chainsaws has become as much a part of the choir of the forest as the song of the gibbons, the chirp of the cicadas, and the honk of the hornbills.  Although I hear the chainsaws everyday and see the piles of wood lined up along the river, the extent of the logging didn’t really hit me until the loggers cut down some of the trees I monitor.  They cut down and damaged 20% of the trees in one of my botanical plots.  Just to collect my monthly data now I need to climb over the fallen trees, and try to figure out what tree stump goes with what tree tag.   The area where the loggers cut down the trees is in a small corridor that was initially damaged by giant forest fires in 1997 and 2002.  This area, after the loggers came through, no longer contains any large trees- which for the primates mean that food sources have been reduced, travel paths have been reduced, and places to sleep have been reduced.   To add insult to injury, a mining company has started initial operations in my backyard.  When I brush my teeth on the back deck, I hear the bull dozer building roads and plowing down a stand of trees to prepare the area for the soon extraction of minerals from the soil.  Although the mining company has the potential to bring jobs to the area, I believe the negative consequences will far outweigh the small paychecks and unsafe working conditions for the local people (much like the palm oil plantations- but that is a topic for another blog).  A large mining operation will have an effect on the local population of both people and primates.  The people are connected to this forest as much as the primates, they gather leaves to build their roofs, wood to build their houses and cook their food, they bath in the river, and they fish in the river.   The mining will damage their environment as much as the primates.  Finally, in the past couple of months, hunting has started.  I now hear gunshots as I am walking transect, have found way to many traps (and am afraid that I will end up in one of the traps), and have seen dead animals being rowed downriver.  I am not against hunting; however, the rates that the animals are coming out of the forest are not sustainable.  Although logging, destruction of habitat, and hunting are some of the proximity causes extinctions of animals- they are not the ultimate causes.  I am always challenged with what we can do to curb these proximate causes; however, to really make a difference we need to deal with  the ultimate causes… the poverty, corruption, and globalization (to name a few)…some reason I think knowing what the monkeys are eating isn’t really going to help.