part II: "field methods in primatology" course

Wednesday we were out all day with the capuchins. We did not find them at the site we thought they might be sleeping, but after breakfast we found them. In the palmtrees stuffing their faces with the fruits. One of the females threathed us with her mouth full of fruits which was quite hilarious. At one point most of them were gone so we decided to go back for lunch and than we came accross them again this time in the bamboo, they eat the young shoots. They were quite relaxed in our presence.

After lunch we went of trail hoping to find them and when rebecca made a contact call they responded. One male came really close to us and when he realised we were not capuchins he was really pissed off, but his face when he first realized was sooo funny. It was an amazing goodbye to this group.

Thursday we travelled to Pilar, which got quite exciting. As we came back from the forest at 6.30 a storm was comming in and this was a big one. We had planned on having breakfast, pack the last things and go instead we had to hurry and get out before the storm was hitting. In Paraguay the storms can get really bad and live stops basically. While we driving out all hell broke loose and the rain was insane… We made it out thanks to rebecca’s driving skills.

In Pilar where Para la Tierra (organnazation i am doing the course with) is based we had a tour around the house, which is really big. It got donated to them and its easy to get lost here. They have a museum, lab and a library. . In the house they also have a bar which opens on Saturday night and a lot of local people come to play pool and hang out with the staff and interns. As they are a conservation organazation they have different interns doing different projects, we got a little insight in them today. Really interesting things going on… As it has been a very long time ago research was done and for some species research was never done its really important conservation work they do.

They are discovering complete new species, species that were unknown to exist in Paraguay and by this they are trying to protect important habitats. The sad thing is though that there are some very greedy people in Paraguay. 80% of the land is owned by 2 % of the population and they grow soy, or have cattle ranches.. Forest and even the trees in the chaco (north) are dissapearing rapidly and there are no good laws to protect natural reserves as also these are mostly privately owned. The indiginous people are poor and get very bad education. For example all the teaching material they get is in spanish, but they speak guarani and do not understand spanish. Some lost the land they were living on as the goverment just sold it as if it was theirs. Which creates another problem. There is litterally people here that have nowhere to go, they are called the camposinos and they squatt peaces of land to live on and get evicted over and over again.

Ok some more about the rest of the course now. The town is small but very nice and the howler monkeys are right here in town which is really odd to see. On Friday we got some presentations on how to prepare our projects as we were suppose to do a mini research with the howler monkeys.

So we presented our projects to each other and basically we had 3 days for observations with a minimun of 20 hours. So the Saturday, Sunday and Tuesday were spent on observing the howlermonkeys which was a really cool experience. I observed 2 different groups and basically wrote down what they were doing every 5 minutes. And as I never worked with this species before I learned so much about them. Its amazing to see how they live right next to people and seem to be very adaptable. They also hardly ever fight, the dominant male will displace or vocalize to other members if he wants to make a point. Also I saw the juveniles playing on top of dad, wrestling with him or just falling asleep on top of him, my heart was melting soooo sweet. I will post some pictures soon.

Our research assistants were several dogs from neighbouring houses. Most people here in Pilar like the howler monkeys and they tried to talk to us about what they eat where they sleep and where they travel too, some of the people also let us in their gardens to have a better look at them. And one morning I even got some ice cold water from a woman, really really nice.

On the Monday we went to a ranch called santa ana, this is a cattle ranch but he does it in an environmental friendly way with the result that there a several howler groups on his property.

But also rhea (a big bird, from the ostrich family), anaconda, lots of small mammals and birds. One of the birds they found was not even known to live in Paraguay and is rare anyway. Rebecca taught us there how to set a transsect, and all the different transects methods that there are. She showed us how to measure trees (also height) and describe vegetation. Pfff never realized how much work this is…. But nevertheless really interesting.

On Wednesday we went with one of the interns, he is doing fecal sampling with the howlers, was very interesting to see his project and worked with him in the lab.

The next day we locked ourselves in the library and got a presentation on statistics which was suppose to last 45 minutes but ended up being 7 hours! Pffff that was a hard day, trying to understand it in dutch is probably already difficult enough so I had a double difficulty. We calculated our results together with the guy that gave us the presentation. After that we had time to work on our posters, which we did till bedtime, next morning we finished them. And while becca went to the printers we started working on our presentations, which we had to give at 3 the same day. All of us were stressing and nervous but we nailed it😊

We got lots of compliments about our projects and presentation, which was nice. In the evening we had our posterpresentation and it was also open for other people involved with PLT. With a beer in my hands I stood next to my poster answering questions. To start with I was quite nervous but actually it was very nice to talk to a few people at a time. All 3 of us were proud but exhausted that night.

Saturday morning we joined the eco club, its comparable to roots and shoots projects and young kids come in and they empower them to do things for animals or nature. They teach them through games. This time the older kids (9 till 13) of the club had prepared a monkey song, dance and some games that we were going to do at a school for single mothers on the outskirts of pilar. These children varied from 3 till 7 so still very young. It was amazing to see how the older kids were explaining the games, getting the younger kids involved and the older kids had gone through their toys and clothes and at the end of the morning they were giving it a way to these kids. We were singing as well in our best spanish, hahahaha. And the games were so much fun, was a very good morning. In the afternoon i went kayaking with 2 other people to try and see the otters, we did not see them but I did see the toco tucan, the biggest of the tucans and lots of other birds. It was very nice to be on the water and just listen to nature… When we came back we had a bbq and we got our certificates and a big applause😊

Than it was time for alcohol and the bar opened, later that evening we went dancing in one of the bars and it so much fun to go out dancing here with the south american music but also the people that are teaching you the dances and I just had so much fun…

After a short night i packed my bags again, and went to encarnacion. But i treated myself to a massage first….