Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Hapalemur Halloween!!

Finally, finally, after several consecutive days of rain (6? 7? 8? I lost count and went a little stir crazy), the clouds briefly opened to a beautiful blue sky, and we were able to get back in the forest to continue our search for the hapalemur. Though the past few days have been restful-- what else to do on a rainy day but settle in with a good book?-- we have gotten a little restless, knowing that there were still a few animals out there that we need to collar before we can begin with data collection. Originally our goal was to collar all the animals by the end of October, so this morning was our last chance to reach that goal.

Before the rain started: 0.2 meters deep

This morning. 1.8 meters deep-- for the record I am 1.72 m tall!

Believe it or not, we were somehow magically able to capture the remaining 3 hapalemur, measure, and collar them. We reached our goal despite the week of rain, and the previous week of missed targets :) What a great treat for Hapalemur Halloween!

This means that next week (of course the rest of this week would be a holiday...) we can start with data collection. We will be working 6am to 6pm, collecting data on the animals' behavior and feeding patterns; more details on this to come soon!



2 comments:

  1. congrats on meeting your lemur collecting goal. keep your feet as dry as you can! Hope your data is full of surprising information.

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