Friday, December 7, 2007

Monkey Survey

Habri gani?
In Swahili this means literally How's the news? Today we did our first field surveys of the monkeys. First I had to identify a female monkey. Once I find a monkey I then have to follow the monkey for a minimum of 20 minutes. Every 60 seconds I make note of the behavior e.g. grooming, resting, standing, feeding, moving. If I lose track of the monkey for more than ten minutes I need to find a new subject. I am in the K group which is by the main buildings. The K group monkeys are very active, especially when tourist come to the ruins. When the monkeys hear buses coming up the road, they will run out to the main road to see who is coming to visit. Today we saw several tourist groups come to the ruins.

A tour guide often brings a small bag of bananas to give the monkeys. This is mainly done so that the monkeys will come out and be close to the tourists. Either the guide or the tourist will hold a banana and try to get the monkeys to jump for the banana. Certain monkeys will become more aggressive during this time so that they are able to get more bananas than other monkeys. I am not able to post a picture today because I am using the town internet cafe. It is really slow compared to what most of you are use to. It is amazing, though, that I can keep you up to date daily of what I am doing while I am here in Kenya.

I am sorry I have not been able to look at all the comments you are writing to me. I will get to them so please keep writing me comments. I hope you are all doing a good job on the projects and papers while I am hear in Kenya. I will try to call all the class today, your Friday.

Baadaye! See you later!

Today's question: Name at least two of the main tourist sites in Kenya

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