This really is fisi camp now...

Strummer decided to pay camp a visit yesterday (right outside the lab/dining tent here)! We've had cubs and subadults in and out of camp for the last few days/nights. Strummer is getting close to the age where he and his sister Ramone will graduate from the den, and we were starting to wonder if they'd graduated to camp! (Fisi is the swahili word for hyena). We finally got our answer last night as to why so many cubs were paying us nightly visits; the communal den has been moved to a series of dens in the plains right below camp. Now we just need the hyenas to chase away the baboons who have also been causing shida mingi (many troubles) in camp!

I Hope They Don't Cut the Brakes

Back to Happy Zebra

The Tanzania Express

Long Rains Continue...

DIGS Goes Green

Being a Michigan State University Spartan myself, I'm not sure I've ever been able to get our hyenas out here to shout "go green" to us (in response to us shouting "go white," of course). However this morning an adult female in our North clan DIGS got just about as close as she could to going green. Check it out!

Microryza and an Opportunity to Help

Dear Hyena Fans,

The hyena project is getting involved in crowd sourcing ourfunding once more, and we’d like to ask for your help! We’ve created a research page with the help of Microryza. By visiting our research page, you not only get to see some hyena clips, you can also help us out!

Money has been tight the last few months, and I’m hoping to get some funds to support my PhD research, and the current research taking place in our lab. I’ve blogged about my research before (e.g. A Sentinel for African Ecosystems and Text Messaging with Hyenas), so feel free to check out those posts for more information.

To help out, please consider donating to our project page at Microryza. If we can’t get up to our goal ($2,500US) in the time frame (2 months remaining), unfortunately we don’t get any of the funds pledged in support. This small amount of money will go a long way in our research, so please consider helping us out!

Thanks a lot! If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to post comments to the blog or email me at greend31@msu.edu.

Hope you’re having a great start to the New Year.

Dave

Short Rains and Collaring

Although the short rains came a bit late this year, they have still made it hard for us to get out of camp and do hyena research. That being said, we made it out 2 mornings ago and were on a quest to find the last hyena in the Mara Triangle destined to receive a GPS collar. Her name is JAVA, and she may be the new queen in one if our clans in the Mara Triangle.

Not sure how it worked out...but we found her and the collar deployment was a success! We weren't expecting to find her because she hasn't been spending too much time away from the den (she has a cub that's 3 months old).

We're very excited to monitor her movement and space use with this super cool technology.

We'll keep you posted!

Newborn Zebra

Check out this footage I got of a newborn zebra here in the Mara. It was fun watching it take its first steps (and subsequent spills)!

Rained In, Game On

Hello people!  The start of the short rains out here in the Mara have given me the time to finally contribute some material to this blog.  In all honesty, I've certainly had the time to do this sooner, so lets just say that the short rains have brought on a new level of boredom that has allowed me to expand upon -what some may call- my routine out here.

The month of October consisted of a healthy amount of rain.  There were quite a few times where we couldn't go out due to the rain, but nothing like this.  I think in the last 3 days, we've gone out for a total of 45 minutes.  I never thought I would get bored of sleeping in, but it has happened.  So what have we been doing to pass the time?  Lots of reading, and I know Dave and Julia have been doing work on their own research, but I think that I speak on behalf of the group here when I say that the climax of the days events is when we put aside all personal endeavors and break out the game of games - Settlers of Catan.   Its a board game consisting of building roads and cities, trading resources, and teaming up against the person who is winning (aka Dave).  They told me it was addicting when they taught me how to play... and they were right.  Even now, as I'm sitting here writing this blog, I'm praying that Dave and Julia put aside their real people work for an hour and so that I can get my fix.

Its all made worse by the fact that I haven't even won a game yet.  Hopefully that changes soon, or the month of November is going to be overcast in more than one way.