CSU Fresno’s budget issues and frustrating bureaucratic decisions led to the Primate Behavior class being canceled. As a anthropology major with an emphasis in biological anthro, I needed this class for a few reasons: educationally I needed to learn the material, but  in a broader way, I needed to know what I would be doing after graduation which was, at the time, right around the corner.

I had wanted to—and still want to—partake in a primate field school, but cost was/is an issue. So, I asked around to get opinions. I needed to know if, once I got my BA and was looking for grad schools, skeletons would trump primates, or vice versa. One of my professors, Lisa Anderson, was very helpful in figuring out possibilities to “replace” the class I couldn’t take. One of her suggestions was to contact the zoo and see if I could work with them and focus on primates there. I had not thought that as an option because I didn’t like the zoo. For her class back in 2007 I went there for an observation assignment and, prior to going, I was excited, but once there I did not like what I saw. That was a very emotional day. I was definitely reluctant to go there for learning purposes, but I got started with the volunteer application and called regularly for updates as to the orientation and start date.

Prior to my zoo days, my favorite extant primates were lemurs (specifically the aye-aye and the sifac), douc monkeys (they are beautiful), Japanese macaques (they make snow balls!), gorillas, and orangutans–though I am quite taken by all of the non-human primates. Of my favorites, the zoo has two lemur species (red-ruffed and ringtail) and orangutans. When I got news that I would be volunteering in the section with the two ape species and other mammals I was inexplicably excited. I didn’t really know what my duties would be, but I knew I’d be closer to them than the public.

I started out working mornings and leaving at noon. This meant I cleaned holdings for two tigers, a leopard, a bear, three siamangs, and four orangutans. That was it. One Saturday, after I had been there a few weeks, I stayed all day and, once the cleaning was done, I was able to do the fun stuff–enrichment for the apes. I instantly changed my schedule to work afternoon to closing. I quickly loved the new schedule because in the afternoon I am able to help the orangutans and siamangs more, watch them, and get to know them–and they can get to know me.

I’m getting a bit ahead of myself, though. Let me be kind and rewind.

Lyn, the senior mammal keeper, knew why I was there. When I spoke to her on the phone prior to the orientation, she informed me I’d be working in the mammal section and not “float” like the typical volunteers who spend a couple months in one department and then move to another. I asked if I would need to dye my pink hair to a “natural” color and she informed me no, “the apes will love it!” I saw this as a good sign, that at least Lyn didn’t care and was just looking forward to the help.

As a volunteer there are things I’m not allowed to do and things I’m not allowed to talk to the public about. I’m not allowed to touch any of the animals, or get close enough to the fencing for there to be any contact. I completely respect the imaginary boundaries and don’t move, often forcing the zoo keepers to swerve around me. They can get close, and, since this is the case, I am not jeopardizing my safety or the trust I’ve built up with the keepers by being polite and getting out of the way. I can’t ask the apes for, or directly give them, anything. I’m not trained for direct interaction and there are protocols and methods. The zookeepers are trained and work up to the positions they are in. I could get hurt very easily by the orangutans, even though they can only get their fingers through the fencing (on exhibit they can get their arms out, so it’s more dangerous.) The same is true for the lesser apes, the siamang gibbons. Even when I am not near the holding rooms and am standing in the hallway, I have to be hyper aware of what the orangutans are doing. I have seen them stick bamboo and other sorts of sticks through, I do not want to be on the business end of that stick if there is full orangutan force behind it, even if it is all in fun and they just want to play. I quite like not being injured.

The mundane parts of the day, boring and mindless, are equally important as the fun parts of my day, so I do them. As mentioned, cleaning holdings daily is necessary. When I go in, if holdings need to be done, I start with them. Siamang and tiger are the holdings I usually do. Sometimes I clean colobus (which is in the other mammal section) and help with orangutan holdings, but not often. I also clean the overhead “tunnel” area that connects siamang and orangutan holdings to the exhibit.

Oh tiger, lovely and scary tiger. They are gorgeous and powerful. There is fencing which separates them from people, but it’s not solid. The image of their massive paw clawing at the fence and lacerating any one close has played out in my head a number of times. When I walk by them, my flight response is on 100%. I can’t seem get comfortable around them, and I see this as a good thing; it’s how it should be. I am the prey and I know my place. They silently demand respect and reverence, I gladly give it. When seeing them on exhibit, it’s hard to really conceptualize just how large they are–especially if they are lounging in the shade near the back of the exhibit, which seems to be what they do when I happen to see them. Behind the scenes, walking in sync with one of them, or whilst they lay in the shade in holding, it still amazes me just how big they are. They are the smaller of the three species of tigers. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to stand 5 feet away from the largest one.

Dried blood sometimes graces the floors in their holdings. There may be a special surprise of uneaten meat with eggs from the many flies if it’s hot out. Yum. I have the pleasure of getting that out. Luckily I don’t have a weak stomach and I’m not grossed out easily. The smell, oh it is such a lovely and distinctive smell (/sarcasm). If I am ever in the jungle, I think I’ll be able to sniff a tiger out in no time.  Despite sweat running into my eyes, accidently spraying myself with the hose (usually in the face), soaked pant legs and feet, the assault my olfactory gland takes, and the length of time it takes I know it’s important and I’m more than happy to help the zookeepers and tigers out.

Siamang and colobus are easy to clean, and they don’t smell, so it’s an in and out process. When I help with orang holdings it’s not too bad either. As an aside, since I already discussed poop, orangutan feces smells like horse feces. This is strange to me because the diet isn’t the same. The first time I noticed, it threw me.

The other boring job is washing dishes. I hate dishes in general, so it’s not my favorite task at the zoo. In fact, I’d rather clean tiger holdings multiple times versus doing a sink full of dishes. This is especially so if there is dry meat, fatty film, and blood involved. It’s mostly containers that held fruit and veggies, so it’s not awful. I just don’t like doing them. Another task is diets. Which is simple. I cut up and/or weigh the appropriate amount of food for the apes. It takes a while because each ape is done separately. On days that I have to do diets, holdings, dishes, and enrichment, all in four or five hours, I feel very rushed and stressed.

Now, on with the fun stuff! Atop of the other tasks I have, I also have the privilege of enriching the orangutans holdings—I may refer to them as rooms, too. Enrichment comes in many forms and serves a crucial purpose.

In the wild, all species of all intelligence levels and cognitive abilities encounter a cacophony of smells, variety of sights, other animals, and any number of varying experiences. Animals not in their native/natural habitat, like those in zoos, are limited to the space and objects provided. They require stimulation, and without it psychological problems will likely occur. Consider yourself, if you’re bored, what do you do? How do you solve the dilemma? Perhaps you engage in some social activity with friends, read, watch televisions, listen to music, spend time on facebook, or some other activity that uses your brain and takes some focus. Animals in captivity don’t have the option of leaving and trekking through the jungle a few miles, or brachiating through the canopy, or taking a swim across a river while catching salmon. While enrichment is very important for all animals, its necessity and the sort needed increases as the animal’s intelligence level increases. For primates, specifically apes, an enriched environment is dire for the animal’s health and well being.

Enrichment takes many forms. The exhibits themselves, filled with foliage, grass, rocks, branches, ponds/pools, the size in height and perimeter, fire hoses for brachiating, and any other object is enrichment. Olfactory enrichment stimulates the sense of smell and can be anything from perfumes and/or body sprays, herbs (dry or fresh), and even prey/predator scents. Sounds are enriching because, as is the case with all enrichment, it’s something different that they don’t get everyday. It can consist of nature noises, like the sound of a trickling brook, or jungle animals. (I don’t play CDs for them, but I have my own version of sound enrichment that I’ll get to later.) Visual enrichment is just as it sounds. Anything that makes the room different than the it usually looks, so it could be simply hanging a poster of a cat from a calendar. Drawing on the floors with chalk is also an option. As simple as it sounds, it changes their environment. Since primates rely on their vision heavily, it makes for a scenery change.

Foods are also used for enrichment. The type of food—If it’s something they don’t get often—as well as the manner they are given the food are the basic methods of providing enrichment. It’s important to note here that, since the animals in captivity are provided their diets, they are not spending any time searching for food as they would in the wild. Because of this, it is important to ‘hide’ the food in order to get them to forage in some manner. It gives them something to do, and that’s the nuts and bolts of enrichment. Other things that enrich their environment (specifically the apes I work with) includes clothing, sheets, boxes, plastic containers, barrels, buckets, tubes, and puzzle feeders. The puzzle feeders resemble large spools and have holes in them; hay and shredded paper is stuffed into them along with their dinners. The orangutans must pull the hay out to get the food out. It’s not challenging and they know what to do when they have them, but it takes time and engages them in an activity.

Interaction is that last thing I’ll address here. I believe this is a form of enrichment too. This can include interaction with another orangutan, the siamangs (who share the exhibit with the orangutans), the random squirrel of lizard that gets into the exhibit, or humans–obviously a new human, one they haven’t met is more enriching than one they see everyday, but in both cases they are experiencing something and not just sitting there not stimulated. Sometimes the enrichment overlaps. In cases when a zookeeper and I draw with them, we are creating visual enrichment and also interacting with them. Food may be hidden or smeared on magazine pages. Sheets used for bedding is sprayed with perfume.

Now that the general stuff is out of the way, maybe next time I’ll introduce my lovely red-headed cousins.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – On a misty mountaintop on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, scientists for the first time in more than eight decades have observed a living pygmy tarsier, one of the planet’s smallest and rarest primates.

Over a two-month period, the scientists used nets to trap three furry, mouse-sized pygmy tarsiers — two males and one female — on Mt. Rore Katimbo in Lore Lindu National Park in central Sulawesi, the researchers said on Tuesday.

They spotted a fourth one that got away.

The tarsiers, which some scientists believed were extinct, may not have been overly thrilled to be found. One of them chomped Sharon Gursky-Doyen, a Texas A&M University professor of anthropology who took part in the expedition.

“I’m the only person in the world to ever be bitten by a pygmy tarsier,” Gursky-Doyen said in a telephone interview.

“My assistant was trying to hold him still while I was attaching a radio collar around its neck. It’s very hard to hold them because they can turn their heads around 180 degrees. As I’m trying to close the radio collar, he turned his head and nipped my finger. And I yanked it and I was bleeding.”

The collars were being attached so the tarsiers’ movements could be tracked.

Tarsiers are unusual primates — the mammalian group that includes lemurs, monkeys, apes and people. The handful of tarsier species live on various Asian islands.

As their name indicates, pygmy tarsiers are small — weighing about 2 ounces (50 grammes). They have large eyes and large ears, and they have been described as looking a bit like one of the creatures in the 1984 Hollywood movie “Gremlins.”

They are nocturnal insectivores and are unusual among primates in that they have claws rather than finger nails.

They had not been seen alive by scientists since 1921. In 2000, Indonesian scientists who were trapping rats in the Sulawesi highlands accidentally trapped and killed a pygmy tarsier.

“Until that time, everyone really didn’t believe that they existed because people had been going out looking for them for decades and nobody had seen them or heard them,” Gursky-Doyen said.

Her group observed the first live pygmy tarsier in August at an elevation of about 6,900 feet.

“Everything was covered in moss and the clouds are right at the top of that mountain. It’s always very, very foggy, very, very dense. It’s cold up there. When you’re one degree from the equator, you expect to be hot. You don’t expect to be shivering most of the time. That’s what we were doing,” she said.

(Editing by Sandra Maler)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081118/sc_nm/us_primate_indonesia

Hello Ashlee:

(I hope I copied the email address correctly). I want to thank you once again for taking time from your day to speak to my students. They enjoyed your presentation and talked amongst themselves about the things they heard and saw after you were gone. In another city I lived and worked, I used to lead an after school program that brought in guest speakers to teach the students about various careers related to math and science. Your presentation was the type of information that would have been ideal for such a program. In fact, I am thinking about maybe starting up something similar on our campus. If so, I would love to use you as a speaker.

When I did my research for my master’s thesis (in education), the focus of my study was the factors that seem to keep girls and minorities out of the traditional science careers. One important factor was the lack of role models. I think the students saw “one of them” talking passionately about science, and hopefully, it might spark an interest, or at least broaden their horizons of possibilities.

Again, thank you for visiting us!

Nita Lorenzana

Sometimes known as the corpse whale, the narwhal has a long spiral tusk. Laidre acknowledged they are “not that cute,” which makes it harder to interest the public in their plight. Stanford University biologist Terry Root said she is afraid the narwhal “is going to be one of the first to go extinct” from global warming.

FORT-DE-FRANCE, Martinique (AP) — Aimé Césaire, an anticolonialist poet and politician who was honored throughout the French-speaking world and who was an early proponent of black pride, died here on Thursday. He was 94.

A government spokeswoman, Marie Michèle Darsières, said he died at a hospital where he was being treated for heart problems and other ailments.

Mr. Césaire was one of the Caribbean’s most celebrated cultural figures. He was especially revered in his native Martinique, which sent him to the French parliament for nearly half a century and where he was repeatedly elected mayor of Fort-de-France, the capital city.

In Paris in the 1930s he helped found the journal Black Student, which gave birth to the idea of “negritude,” a call to blacks to cultivate pride in their heritage. His 1950 book “Discourse on Colonialism” was considered a classic of French political literature.

Mr. Césaire’s ideas were honored and his death mourned in Africa and France as well as the Caribbean. The office of President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said Mr. Sarkozy would attend Mr. Césaire’s funeral, scheduled for Sunday in Fort-de-France. Students at Lycée Scoelcher, a Martinique high school where Mr. Césaire once taught, honored him in a spontaneous ceremony Thursday.

Mr. Césaire’s best-known works included the essay “Negro I Am, Negro I Will Remain” and the poem “Notes From a Return to the Native Land.”

Born on June 26, 1913, in Basse-Pointe, Martinique, Mr. Césaire attended high school and college in France. In 1937 he married another student from Martinique, Suzanne Roussi, with whom he eventually had four sons and two daughters.

He returned to Martinique during World War II and was mayor of Fort-de-France from 1945 to 2001, except for a break from 1983 to 1984.

Mr. Césaire helped Martinique shed its colonial status in 1946 to become an overseas department of France.

He was affiliated with the French Communist Party early in his career but became disillusioned in the 1950s and founded the Martinique Progressive Party in 1958. He later allied with the Socialist Party in France’s National Assembly, where he served from 1946 to 1956 and from 1958 to 1993.

As the years passed, he remained firm in his views. In 2005 he refused to meet with Mr. Sarkozy, who was then minister of the interior, because of Mr. Sarkozy’s endorsement of a bill citing the “positive role” of colonialism.

“I remain faithful to my beliefs and remain inflexibly anticolonialist,” Mr. Césaire said at the time. The offending language was struck from the bill.

Despite the snub, Mr. Sarkozy last year successfully led a campaign to rename Martinique’s airport in honor of Mr. Césaire. Mr. Césaire eventually met with Mr. Sarkozy in March 2006 but endorsed his Socialist rival, Ségolène Royal, in the 2007 French elections.

Article from NY Times

http://morph.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Transformer/

DNA from fossilized human feces found in an Oregon cave is 14,300 years old, at least 1,200 years older than previous evidence for humans in North America, researchers said Thursday.

The find provides the strongest evidence in an archaeological controversy about whether people of the Clovis culture, which manufactured distinctive stone tools and weapons, were the first to populate the Americas. The new evidence, reported online in the journal Science, indicates they were not.

The fossilized DNA “represents, to the best of my knowledge, the oldest human DNA obtained from the Americas,” said geneticist Eske Willerslev of Denmark’s University of Copenhagen, a co-author of the paper.

“If you are looking for the first people in North America, you are going to have to step back more than 1,000 years beyond Clovis to find them,” added archaeologist Dennis L. Jenkins of the University of Oregon, the lead author of the report.

The find is “a smoking gun” for the pre-Clovis colonization of the Americas, said anthropologist Ripan Malhi of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who was not involved in the research.

In addition to changing ideas about when humans arrived here, the new research will also change ideas about how.

Archaeologists theorize that humans from Siberia and eastern Asia migrated to North America across the Bering land bridge when a global warming episode melted the glaciers that had blocked their progress and stranded them for thousands of years in the area known as Beringia.

If humans were on this continent 14,300 years ago — at least 1,000 years before that melting episode — they had to have come before the glacier blocked the route or by a different pathway, Willerslev said.

He argues that a strip of land along the western coast of North America was exposed during the Ice Age, allowing migration along the coast rather than by the favored inland route. Archaeological artifacts from that trek are now submerged under the Pacific Ocean, he said.

The feces fossils, technically called coprolites, were discovered by Jenkins in the summers of 2002 and 2003 in the Paisley Caves in the Summer Lake basin, about 220 miles southeast of Eugene. The eight caves are wave-cut shelters on the shoreline of Lake Chewaucan, whose levels rose and fell with changes in precipitation in the region.

In addition to the coprolites, Jenkins also found manufactured threads of sinew and plant fibers, hides, basketry, cordage, rope, wooden pegs, animal bones and a couple of projectile point fragments — but not enough to link the cave’s inhabitants to the Clovis people or any others.

The small number of artifacts in the cave suggests that whoever occupied it did so only for a short period, rather than using it as a long-term residence, Jenkins said.

Organic material from the coprolites was radiocarbon dated, and the oldest ones were found to be 14,300 years old.

Willerslev’s lab analyzed mitochondrial DNA from the coprolites and concluded that it was similar to DNA from both Native Americans and the populations of Siberia and East Asia.

Fearing contamination of the samples, Willerslev also analyzed samples from all 55 people who visited the cave during the excavations, as well as from all 12 members of his laboratory and showed that none of them had similar DNA.

The coprolites also contained DNA similar to that of the red fox, coyote or wolf. Jenkins said the added DNA could have come from human ingestion of the animals or from the animals urinating on the feces.

Critics, such as anthropologist Gary Haynes of the University of Nevada, Reno, argued that the coprolites could be animal feces and that the human DNA was deposited when humans urinated on them much later.

But Jenkins said that the coprolites also contained human proteins in concentrations too high to have come from urine, as well as human hair.

“Whether the coprolites are human or canine is irrelevant, since for a canine to swallow human hair people had to be present in that environment,” he told Science. “Anyway you cut the poop, people and dogs would have had to be at the site within days of each other 14,000 years ago.”

thomas.maugh@latimes.com

Don’t think that I am unhappy with the department, I am not. I enjoy it and the prof.s and students are great (that I have met so far ) . I am learning loads and having a blast, but still… Perhaps I should have gone out of city for school to a college with a more “popular” biological anthro department. So is life I suppose.

At least I’ll get to fill my world with bones and be stressed out and overwhelmed after the summer!

I recently had to read Twelfth Night–which is a great play– twice (once in the fall semester and once this spring) and both times I heard people go on about a scene involving Antonio and Sebastian and how it was “quite obviously” that Antonio had a love that far surpassed “friendly” with Sebastian. Here is a link to the part I am referring to; (http://nfs.sparknotes.com/twelfthnight/page_60.epl).I have to argue that I adamantly believe this interpretation is vague at best and I say this because of the fact that much of the language used, though flamboyant or excessive is characteristic of most characters in Shakespeare’s plays, not just the ones who are “in love” with each other.

My opinion is that the bond shared by the two is one of a brotherly, comrade-in-arms sort of affection. To jump to a conclusion of; “Oh, they are gay!” is so rash and unsupported by the text. Especially because it is such a short interaction and there is little to no character development of either of them. I would have to say that if anyone in the play is displaying any sort of homosexuality it is Orsino and his relationship with Cesario (for those who don’t know the play; Cesario is actually a woman, Viola, who has disguised herself as a man because she is all alone in a strange land and in mourning of her brother Sebastian because she thinks he died in the shipwreck. Of course no one knows that Cesario is a woman.)

Back to my point. I heard from one of my Professors that in England they protray the supposedly gay scene between Antonio and Sebastian as a neutral or simply that the two have become good friends. I think that the varying opinions on the matter reveal something about the ambiguity of the scene as well as, forgive my over generalization her, the mentality of the American reader. Cultural relativism at it’s best. We in the 21st century interact with people differently than in the 1500-1600s. We are imposing different cultural values, morals, and experiences (consciously and unconsciously ) on work that was a voice of life in another time.

Could it be that not only is the artist in his/her art, but also that the analyst is in his/her analysis? I whole heartedly think so. I am by no means saying that if “you” see their relationship as being homosexual that “you” are gay, but rather that there is something in the back of you mind, or something insinuated by your Prof. that Shakespeare was gay, wrote about homosexuality a lot, or whatever the case may be that one will expect to see it.

I’d also like to say that the amount of time spent discussing sexual innuendos, undertones, or double meanings in my English class has led me to wonder how many authors are turning over in their graves at some of the parallels people, myself included, draw.