Chimps: Nawapenda

There have been quite a few changes at Ol Pej since I left last year, some at chimps and some at research.  We have a new cook at research, Eric, who makes us some pretty amazing meals.  He really loves through food evidently, and is definitely going to cut into the research-weight-loss-plan that we all tend to get on out here.  There have also been mosquito nets mounted above our beds, which, if you had asked me a year ago, I would have said were completely unnecessary: I wasn’t bitten more than ten times in three months.  This year, however, there seems to be an absolute plague of the biggest mosquitoes I’ve ever seen in my life, I’m constantly smashing them as they rest on the walls in the mornings, and I’m really glad we have nets.  Gorbachev, the blind elephant, is also back to research.  He was relocated last year (I wrote about that here) to a fenced area in the northern part of the conservancy, as he was becoming incredibly destructive around the research center, staff camp, and Ol Pejeta house.  He seems to have broken out once more, despite having his tusks cut down, and is now back to his old habits of wandering around control and visiting us.  I’ve encountered him several times on foot, and after the initial heart-attack of seeing a huge bull elephant and wondering where you’re going to run to if he charges, it’s pretty cool to get to see him so up close and personal as he goes about his daily business.

The research center skulls, an Oryx, Steenbok, and Impala, with Magic Mike, the unicorn beanie baby given to me by Madelynn and Alana (my riding trainer).  Expect to see Magic Mike around, as I plan to take pictures with him all over the place.

At chimps, the new house for the young chimps is completely finished and it is beautiful.  There are twelve spacious rooms for the chimps to sleep in at night, a full bathroom, a clinic, and hopefully sometime in the future: a lab space!  Currently there’s no electricity to the house though, so we can’t move the lab in there just yet, but it will be wonderful when we can.  Also, my old nemesis, the weir! the weir! aka the river crossing, is no longer something I have to face daily.  Since January the river has been much too high for even the experienced-stepping-stone-jumping keepers, and one of the stepping stones got washed away, to boot.  So now there's a gap that's basically unjumpable, and too much water flowing for it to be safe to try to jump or wade across.  This is actually somewhat annoying, because I wanted to get a picture of me conquering the river crossing, and I also now need to drive all the way around to the bridge when I want to get data on the young chimps by the river.  I can't hate that I have no opportunity to crash to my death at the bottom of those rocks any longer though...

My old nemesis, the weir.

Many of the chimps have changed too, especially the young ones.  There’s Angela, of course, who is about twice as big as she was last year, though still quite small.  Ajabu has started walking everywhere on her own, which is a huge change from last year when she would primarily ride on Cheetah, Victoria, or Julia’s backs, and only hitches a ride when she is feeling excessively lazy.  Vicki has also grown quite a bit, and is now almost the same size as Julia, one of her age-mates.  This is only remarkable because Vicki has always been a fairly small chimp – her growth was stunted by the bullets that were lodged in her skull when she was brought to Sweetwaters, and the several operations she had to have to remove them all (poor baby). 

Vicki has gotten quite smart in the last year though.  She has always been a very submissive chimp, willing to give up her food to pretty much anyone.  Even Ajabu can take bananas from her in the night-house and often the guys have to peel bananas for Victoria and stuff them directly into her mouth to make sure she gets her fair share (or keep her separated during feeding time, which is only sometimes feasible as she likes to be with Alley, her foster-mother).  Last year she would often have large portions of her lunch stolen by Oscar, the alpha.  Vicki is so submissive that she wouldn’t even take food if Oscar was looking at her, and if he so much as stepped towards her she would run off screaming.  Just last week though, I saw Oscar do exactly this when Vicki was thrown her bananas at lunch: he stood up and took a swaggering step towards her.  Vicki glanced at him and didn’t move, so Oscar moved towards her a bit more.  She ran off then, but as she was running she pulled one banana off of the bunch of four that she was holding and placed it behind her, right in Oscar’s path.  Oscar was distracted by the banana that Victoria left on the ground, and she managed to keep the rest of her lunch.  I was very proud.

Oscar snuggling with Angela.  The biggest chimp and the smallest!  It's unlikely that Oscar is Angie's dad, since they look nothing alike, but he does love to cuddle her and he's always so gentle.

Another big change is Niyonkuru, the alpha of the young chimps group.  Last year, Niyon was a very aggressive and dominant chimp: he would display immediately after coming out of the night house, often throwing rocks, sticks, or dirt around and charging everybody out of his way.  All of the female chimps, and most of the males, would be politely subordinate to him at all times, almost as if to circumvent his unpredictable temper.  This year, Niyon seems to have settled down a bit and is more relaxed over all.  Possibly this is because he is getting older, he is at least 20, and the prime age for chimps is 15-20 or so.  Though they can live much longer, especially in captivity, age is tough on chimps: they can accrue a lot of injuries, especially males who have been in a lot of fights, their teeth start to fall out from the lack of consistent brushing and flossing, and all of the rough-and-tumble play (falls from trees, wrestling, fights with baboons) can really catch up with them.  Additionally, Niyon has started to be challenged by some of the younger males.  Cumbo and William are really becoming fond of the idea that they might not have to be subordinate to him forever, and have been displaying and challenging Niyon more often.  Just a few days ago I heard two chimps screaming off in the bush, and shortly afterwards Niyon and Akela came hustling out of there – not quite running but definitely not walking – screaming, grimacing, and looking behind them.  Following was a very piloerect Cumbo who was swaggering in a half-display and walking them up the fenceline.  Interestingly, Cumbo was also grimacing and screaming/whimpering a bit, which made me think that he wasn’t feeling quite as brave as he was trying to let on.

Chimps have a much harder time controlling their vocalizations than humans do, and many of the vocalizations they make are completely involuntary.  A good example of this are food grunts – chimps seem physically unable to control their appreciation of good food, and will happily grunt and event hoot sometimes when they are eating.  Jane Goodall wrote about this in “In the Shadow of Man,” when one of the younger males at her field site (I think Figan maybe?) would cover his mouth to muffle his excited grunts and hoots when he was given extra bananas after the dominant males left the provisioning area.  The first few times they tried to give him extra, his vocalizations called the dominant males back and his new bananas were swiftly confiscated, but he was unable to completely control his excitement and had to find another way to make himself be quieter, so he physically limited his noise production with his hands.

Unrelated to chimps: Sunrise in the marsh

I am not sure whether Niyon is mellowing out because he is being challenged more often – you would think that an increase in challenges would increase his aggression – or if he is being challenged more because he has mellowed.  Either way, it will make for an interesting five months of data collection if an alpha turnover really is to happen, and I’m excited to watch it.

The lion-tracking that I mentioned last week was pretty fun, if not particularly fruitful.  I followed in Elsa (Kim’s car) with Youngin and one of the current volunteers while Duma took the Oxford students (did I mention that there are four Oxford MBAs here right now doing a project on property size, land use, and productivity right now? They will be here until the end of August, and next week we’re going to the Mara to see the wildebeest migration!) in an Ol Pejeta truck.  We tracked for about two hours, driving all over the East side, before we picked up a signal close to Sweetwaters Tented Camp.  We then moved about fifty meters back into the bush from the road, driving very slowly around all the Euclea and carefully keeping an eye out for suspicious grass (an indication that there might be an aardvark hole there), and finally saw them: a male and a female quietly napping in a small clearing.  They both looked up when we arrived, but neither moved, and the male especially was keen to resume his napping.  Duma suggested that they were probably alone together because the female was fertile and they were “courting.”  The female did move over to the male a few times and nuzzle him, but he wasn’t buying what she was selling, so eventually she just moved off towards the road, probably to start hunting for the evening.  Since I was driving I really didn’t get any good pictures, but I did see six lions a few days later, and got much better pictures then.

A young male lion I found at the quarry

Next up, poop club! I didn’t mention it at all here, but I’ve been collecting fecal samples for my project and that’s been making me keep looong hours.  It’s a whole blog entry of its own though, so get excited!

TIA

This is Africa.

Sometimes I feel that I’m not experiencing the right amount of appreciation that I’m actually here: actually in Kenya, doing research on chimps, and being pretty independent about it to boot.  Every once in a while I’ll be walking along one of my routes and remember, oh yeah this isn’t California, or I’ll be sitting having lunch with the chimps and remember that I don’t get to do this back at home, but in general I just get into my data collection groove.

My daily routine is pretty monotonous, but a lot of fun.  I wake up in the morning (feeling like P-diddy) and eat a quick or leisurely, depending on if it’s an early day or a late day.  Early days start around 7:30, though I try to get to the young chimp house before then.  I watch the chimps eat their breakfast (or find their breakfast if it has been distributed in the enclosure) and write write write for my data collection.  Around 8:30 we head towards the visitor’s platform for the caregivers to greet visitors and take them on tours, and for me to look like a dorky researcher with all my gear hanging off me and walk around by myself.  Because there is a sign at the entrance to the visitor’s area that says “DO NOT WALK WITHOUT A GUIDE.” People are constantly amazed that I am walking around alone, although all the dorky gear does make me stick out as someone more experienced than a simple tourist.

\

Cinnamon breasted bee-eaters in the walkway at chimps. 

When I’m with the old chimps I usually just walk the fenceline through the forest looking for chimps as they relax or play on the outskirts of their enclosure.  On young chimps days I walk the scenic route through the forest-walk, as the young chimps’ enclosure borders the river so I have to look for them along the river.  Because of the way the walkway twists and turns through the forest, I only have about five places that I can really get a good look at the chimps.  On any given day I usually spend a part of this time birding, as chimps are often not to be found but there are always birds around me.  I’ve actually seen more than 100 species of bird since arriving at Ol Pejeta five weeks ago, the vast majority of them in this walkway.  Whenever I find a group of chimps I stop and observe them for around ten minutes, then continue on my merry way to find more chimps.

Found these cubs when I went lion radio-tracking with Duma and some Earthwatchers.

On young chimps days I get to conquer my old nemesis: the stepping stones.  This is the way all the caregivers cross the river, and I’ve only fallen in once all year: Stephen and I both blame that fall on my shoes (I was wearing my Keen rip-offs instead of my usual sneakers).  After going through the walkway I head back to the night house and walk to the New New Nighthouse to check for chimps along that fenceline.  Usually there are none, although occasionally someone follows me over to the nighhouse to see what I am up to.  On old chimps days I also walk back to the night house, and then convince the person guarding the night house to come with me for a walk to the Southernmost corner of the enclosure, where I can usually find at least one chimp (sometimes all of them are there!).  This walk is about a kilometer each way, so I consider it part of my daily exercise routine, and sometimes even if I know none of the chimps are down there (I’ve seen them all go off to the northern enclosure) I still insist on going for the walk.  It’s a good opportunity for exercise and a great time to chat with the caregiver who accompanies me.  I really enjoy talking to all the caregivers, most of them are intelligent, curious about wildlife in the US and are happy to give me their opinions on chimp sanctuaries in general, silly tourists, or teach me a little Swahili while we walk.

Snoozing black rhino on Scott's plain 

In the afternoons I repeat the exercise – walking to the platform and then past the night house to the outer-most-reaches of the chimp enclosure – regardless of which group I am studying.  On early days I often skip this, as I will have been at chimps from breakfast until after lunch.  On late days I stick around and collect data until the chimps get dinner, unless I have something else pressing to do, and when I’m at the old house will give the guys a ride back to their living quarters.  Occasionally I am invited to take tea with someone after this, which is flattering and really enjoyable for me.  Sometimes we lack for things to talk about, but I’m pretty comfortable with the guys at this point so we usually do all-right in amiable silence.

My routine is broken rarely, only by Sundays, which I take off to catch up on data entry and see a bit more of the conservancy (helps me learn my way around as well as see more animals!) and days in which for some reason I can’t come to chimps.  There has only been one of these days, when a lioness managed to get herself trapped in the visitor area of chimps and refused to leave despite being chased by cars for half the day.  She was eventually convinced to leave by some armed askaris on foot after spending another night in there, but her presence meant that I wasn’t going to be hanging out at chimps for at least a day.  Lions around chimps are actually a somewhat-common occurrence, and the guys seem completely unphased by their presence.  As long as the lions aren’t just hanging out and move along on their merry way, they are happy to open chimps to visitors.  I yield to their superior bushcraft and knowledge of the behaviors of lions and accept that I’m safe (but keep a watchful eye anyway).

Cheetah mama and baby on Sidai plain 

The other day there were also about 25 elephants hanging out around the entrance to chimps.  I am a chicken, so elephants scare the crap out of me.  I have no desire to be charged and have my car flipped or impaled by ivory, so I act very cautiously.  These elephants were basically completely unconcerned by me and, once again, the chimp guys were unconcerned by them.  I also saw wild dogs at the chimp enclosure!  This is my only one-up on Kim as she gets to do all the fun stuff and see all the good animals, but wild dogs at Ol Pejeta are rare and awesome.  I saw them at the entrance to chimps one morning and pretty much immediately followed them on a private access road towards the old chimp house, and caught them in the open as they crossed a road that leads back towards Sweetwaters.  It was so awesome.

Life here has settled into a pretty awesome routine.  Sometimes things go wrong, more often I figure them out, and most days what needs to get done gets done. Sometimes it doesn’t but we don’t worry about it too much. TIA

The moon rising over Mt Kenya with a cattle dip in the foreground

Babies, babies, everywhere!

So far, one of my favourite things about Kenya has been the number of baby animals there always are here.  Because there is not much seasonality, there isn't really a baby "season" here, more of a birthing peak around the rainy season (because it means so much more food).  It's a typical girly thing to say, but baby animals just make everything better.  And they're always cute.  Think about it.  Baby giraffe? Cute. Baby chimp? Cute.  Baby warthog? Cuuuute.  (Baby jackal, baby zebra, baby baboon, baby lion... the list goes on.)  And though I don't drive around a whole lot on the plains, what little driving I get to, I almost always see babies.

One of my least favourite things about Kenya has been the mud.  I'm not opposed to rain and mud in general, but since I have to drive in it, it has become much less favourable.  Furthermore, a couple of the roads I have to use pretty much daily turn to slush after a good rain, and I'm always at least the second car through there, which means I get to deal with other people churning it up for me.  The car I'm driving is all wheel drive, but that doesn't mean my stomach doesn't flutter when I'm driving on the roads listening to the sounds of mud hitting the undercarriage and slipping and sliding all over the place.  Sure, it can be fun, if you know that you're not going to hit anything and I'm not the one driving.  Plus I'm not honestly sure what I am supposed to do if I do get stuck...  On the upside, I love the thunder and lightning we get with the rain, and last night it gave us a pretty wicked sunset.

I've done a bit of adventuring around here this week as well.  A couple of days ago we had some visitors from the Zoological Society of London, and I accompanied them to the chimp feeding that evening.  The chimp night house is very nice and newly renovated, the only problem is that for me to stay out of the grasping hands of chimps I have to walk a very narrow drain down the center of two aisles of rooms.  On Tuesday evening, one of the younger chimps, Victoria, managed to get her entire arm out of the room she was in and I turned around to see her hand just a few inches from my face.  I think she was just begging for more bananas, but I was pretty startled to see her hand so close to me.  After feeding, we got a tip off that there were some lions on Morani.  I had no idea where Morani was, or what it even was (I assumed it was a plain), but we followed some signs, took a brief detour to the Sweetwaters Tented Camp, and made our way there.  We didn't see any lions at first, just Max the white rhino, a kori bustard and some impala at a water hole, but as we were leaving a whole bunch of tourist buses tipped us off to the presence of lions.  It was the same female and two youngsters I'd seen last week, and they casually made their way across the road and down another road.  We followed them, because that road was our way home, and eventually they ducked back onto a plain.  I managed to make it all the way back to research without the assistance of my GPS, which I was pretty proud of, since my exploring here is pretty severely limited to driving to chimps and back.

It seems that in getting used to my research, I've also become quite forgetful.  Yesterday I left my car door open for at least twenty minutes at chimps, until one of the caregivers asked if I was planning on closing it at all.  I sheepishly told him I was trying to catch a baboon.  I had also lost my watch and voice recorder until I found them yesterday in my shower bag, which was in my car... why was my shower bag in my car, you might ask?  Evidently I had just thrown it in there with my backpack and all the rest of my observation materials yesterday in my rush to get out of the research centre.  Then, when walking from the young chimp house to the observation platform, I promptly fell in the river at the stepping stones.  I didn't fall in all the way, I just took the first stepping stone jump poorly and when I realized I was going to slip stepped down into the river.  Stephen blamed it on my shoes, which I also blame (they were caked in mud), but I've made that jump so many times recently that I should have been able to do it.  The rest of the day went all right, though, but the morning was a bit frustrating.

The chimps have also been quite frustrated recently, not with mud but with baboons and warthogs.  On both sides of the river live baboon troops, and they are quite happy to scavenge the chimps' leavings after meals.  You would think that the 20-food electric fence would stop them, but a few clever adult males have figured out ways to get around that particular problem.  In each chimp group, males have figured out how to get up on top of the night house (using the stairs at old chimps and a tree and pipe at young) and then the quickly run across the roof and take the 20 foot drop down into the enclosure.  (Curiously, the baboons will not do this if you take a photo of them while they're making their way across the roof... in that case they will just drop off the roof onto the outside of the enclosure.)  Mostly they stay away from the chimps, but one morning the chimps had been given sweet potatoes for their breakfast.  It seems that sweet potatoes were just too delicious to ignore, and three big male baboons made their way into the enclosure for a bit of a snack.  Shortly about 12 warthogs also emerged from the bush to enjoy what the chimps were dropping also.  Only neither the baboons nor the warthogs were going for what the chimps were dropping, they were literally stealing sweet potatoes out of the chimps' laps!

This photo is in no way relevant to these paragraphs. I just put it in 

here 'cause it's cute and it breaks up the monotony of text.

Of course, this enraged a few of the chimps and they quickly chased their thieving friends away.  This worked for the baboons who ran away quite quickly from even the smallest of the chimps, but the warthogs were completely unphased.  Even when some of the very large females started screaming and slapping the ground in front of the warthogs, they just skittered off a few feet and then moved right back in for more potato.  Breakfast was punctuated by the sounds of screaming chimps and solid slaps as the adults finally resorted to full on attacks of the warthogs.  The hogs were afraid of only one chimp: Jane.  Jane is one of the youngest chimps in the young group, and was fostered onto Akela when she was just three.  Earlier this year Jane decided that the warthogs would be her new friends and apparently "adopted" a young baby warthog.  This adoption wasn't really mutual, as Jane simply grabbed the warthog one day despite his parents' objections.  She would then run around with him, and when he got too big to actually hold would drag him around by the leg.  This play seems to have given the warthogs a healthy fear of Jane, and even the adults will scatter when she comes barreling through.

So while everyone else was eating breakfast, Jane was defending their honor.  She chased warthogs and baboons alike, scattering them with somersaults and a rambling run.  The baboons quickly realised, however, that Jane was more bark than bite, and after she had chased them around the shade platform a few times they stopped running from her and started talking back.  Jane was not impressed by this, and when the baboons chased her she quickly ran also.  This didn't deter her from continuing to charge them, but when one baboon didn't run from her charge Jane actually barreled right into him and they both rolled off the shade platform.  Jane screamed and screamed as the two of them grappled -- the big male baboons have quite large canines, though I don't think he was trying to bite Jane at all, and she weighs at least as much as he does -- and her screams brought Chippie and Kisa to her aid.  The baboons have a healthy fear of Kisa as he is one of the largest males in the group, and every once in a while he and Niyonkuru will get so fed up with the baboons that they attack them in earnest.  I believe they've killed at least one, and recently the two of them ganged up and threw a baboon into the electric fence.  Jane was released easily, and sulked for a bit before deciding that she should probably just finish her breakfast instead of chasing off invaders.  The chimps left shortly, and the baboons and warthogs were left to scavenge in peace.

Ali Kaka throws Victoria up in the air while they play

Finally, an addendum:

This morning, while I was writing up this blog I got a call from Kim. She needed me to come pull her out of the mud on Marura dam.  So I jumped in my car and whizzed right up there (fortunately I knew where Marura dam was because it was right by Morani, the plain I had previously determined the location of) and found her knee-deep in a ford. Elsa, her mitsubishi, was stuck and slowly sinking deeper into the ford.  We tied the two cars together and I pretty quickly got her out of there.  It was an excellent adventure, but made me realize a few things:

- Elsa will not be able to pull my car out if I get stuck (darn), which means I will have to call control and get an official truck to help me

- I need rope, and gumboots

- I would never have tried to cross that ford

Zombies are a first world problem

If you’ve spent any significant amount of time with me or, say, happened to take me to see Sean of the Dead, you will know that I am terrified of zombies.  This terror is completely unwarranted, I know, but it has still led me to create numerous escape and refuge plans in case there ever is a zombie invasion in Davis (mostly they involve the primate center).  Since being in Kenya though, the threat of zombies is really diminished, and I have other things to worry about.  Like lions roaring less than a kilometer away from our research center (probably over a kill), or the lion perched on top of the quarry about 500 meters away from the path I use to do my chimp observations.  Kim hasn’t been helping the situation, she’s been jumpy as a newborn lamb at every little noise lately.  Mostly, it’s the water dripping in the shower or the tree brushing the tin roof, but every once in a while there’s the crunch of gravel when a waterbuck walks by, or the weird sound of a zebra getting nervous and alarm barking at, well, anything (I have to remind myself that zebras are like horses, and therefore pretty dumb when it comes to fear), and the other night we heard a zebra galloping down the road that goes to the airstrip.  So walking from my banda to the bathrooms to brush my teeth at night has been an interesting adventure, filled with quick sprints to my door to avoid whatever may be lurking in the dark.

Ultimately, the research center is actually really safe.  We’re one corner of a square that includes the main offices (which are always manned), Ol Pejeta House (a really nice and expensive hotel), and the staff camp, all of which are pretty much always occupied.  Additionally, there’s an electric fence around the entire compound that gets put up at night to prevent the larger of our potential visitors (elephants, rhinos, etc.) from visiting, and Gorbachov the blind elephant has been translocated to a new area.  When it’s swarming with people while Earthwatch is here, and when I will be living in my tent, I will be doubly safe, as most predators have no interest in going near a camp filled with rowdy Americans on vacation.

It’s actually a little hard to remember that I’m in Kenya, doing field work, which I’ve been looking forward to all year.  My life very quickly took on a routine that involves walking, sweating, and writing down things about chimps.  The quiet of the research center, punctuated only by little birds and the generator at Ol Pejeta House, has been a bustle of activity as it is being renovated in an attempt to fix it up before the first Earthwatch group gets here.  The young chimp house is also a bustle of activity, as a new house is being built for them and any future chimps that might arrive at the sanctuary.  Construction in Kenya doesn’t seem to be too much different from construction in the US though: it moves painfully slowly and is never ready when you need it to be.

Last Sunday we had to chance to watch an elephant darting and translocation.  Alli has the best luck ever in Kenya and she’s seen lions five or six times, cheetahs almost the same number of times, as well as a bat eared fox, patas monkeys, and the rest.  I take Sundays off because they are really busy for the chimp caregivers, and I don’t want to ask them to take time out of their day to follow me around, so I get to stick around the research centre and do data entry or go out with Kim hunting for giraffe.  We were just leaving the Kamok petrol station when we saw a plane, a ginormous truck, and a couple of the elephant trackers hanging out with a large elephant on the airstrip.  The KWS vets darted Gorbachov on foot and after running around frenetically for about 15 minutes he just dropped like a stone.  He took about two drunk steps before that happened – his right hind went wide and then came back under him, and then he collapsed on the forehand.

After he was down the KWS vets sawed off his tusks using a chainsaw, then applied a moisturizer-ish thing to prevent them from cracking.  They took some samples, and we got to touch him, but mostly the point of this job was moving him to a new area.  He’s been quite the pest lately, breaking out of his new confines in search of greener pastures, which is why they took his tusks off.  I pulled a tick off his ear which was alarmingly large, and then killed it because it was gross, and blood spattered all over my shoe.  Getting him onto the truck was quite the ordeal, but the KWS vets were surprisingly tender with him, gently laying one of his ears flat under his body so it wouldn’t be folded over under his weight, and carefully strapping him down so he wouldn’t fall off the truck, all while holding open his trunk so he could breathe.  I imagine that is the last we will see of Gorbachov for quite some time, as he’s been moved to a fenced in area far on the edge of the conservancy, for both his safety and that of others.

This week I have also had the great joy of dealing with car issues, when the rental car wouldn’t start one morning.  It turns out the entire battery had to be replaced, which was awesome.  It lost me a day of data collection, but I did get to go out with Kim and Alli later that afternoon and we finally saw LIONS!  They were adorable, two cubs lying with their mother.  The lioness was quite far from them, and apparently has been making them stay away from her lately, but the cubs were all over one another, licking and nuzzling and yawning and all kinds of awesome.  We’ve also seen a ton of giraffe, including a couple licking the ground, although I couldn’t tell you why.  When I encountered these fellows I was driving along a road and they didn’t scatter the way giraffe usually do when someone drives up, so I was about 15 feet from one of them as he stared in my windshield.  Being used to nasty roos, I was quite wary of his potential to destroy the front of my car, but after staring at us a bit he eventually walked off.

Alley pours dirt on Ajabu

My days with the chimps have been awesome.  Data collection is movcing along nicely, and by that I mean that I could plausibly use some of the data I’ve collected in the last week.  It hasn’t taken me long at all to learn to recognize the chimps, most of them are pretty distinctive, and even I’ve been surprised with my progress.  They are so much more playful than their zoo-housed counterparts, probably because they have a few youngsters amongst them (3-, 6-, and 7-year-olds) who are constantly active and playing.  Ajabu, the youngest at 3, is a typical child: whenever her mother and grandmother lie down for a nap you can see her sitting there, bored with them, and wondering who she can pester to play with her.  Everyone loves to play with Ajabu, and she happily roughhouses with even the biggest males.

Victoria is one of the most playful chimps everrrr

In the other group of chimps, Jane has been happily chasing baboons and warthogs around.  In the mornings, the warthogs and baboons come up to the chimps’ breakfast area and start harassing them to share their breakfast.  Most of the chimps move away from the warthogs, but the hogs are quite brave and will walk right up to a chimp to try to sneak food out of their lap.  This has resulted in a few screams and attacks on the warthogs, as simple threats and displays don’t seem to do anything.  The baboons are even bolder, and Jane chased them around for quite a while until they realized that she wasn’t actually going to hit them.  Then they chased her back, and when one of them managed to grab her she screamed so loudly that at least three other chimps left their breakfasts and came to her rescue.  I’ve been told that the chimps really dislike the baboons, and when truly fed up with them two of the high ranking males have thrown baboons into the electric fence.

Today is a Sunday, so I get to go out with Kim again and hopefully get to take advantage of the last of Alli’s good luck.