Injuries and Survival

Hyenas are tough, way tough. We’ve all heard stories about such and such hyena that recovered from such and such terrible injury, but I had never seen it before until Moon Pie.

Moon Pie has always been a pretty solitary hyena. She’s relatively low ranking and most times we track her she is sacked out. She also manages to look more like a rock than any other hyena I’ve met yet. We have been tracking her and driven up to rocks that we think are her and passed by her thinking she’s a rock. Multiple times. It’s quite embarrassing.

One day, we tracked Moon Pie and found her sacked out, as usual. We didn’t drive too close due to her being sacked out in a swampy area. When she lifted up her head I started laughing immediately. It looked as if she was making some sort of silly face and I couldn’t imagine why she was doing that. But, at the time we didn’t think too much off it. We really did think that she was just kind of sticking her tongue out at us.

A few days later we tracked her again. This time we got a little closer and were surprised to see that she was still making that same silly face. But it wasn’t a face that she was making. It was just her face. It looked like someone had punched her with a concrete block. The left side of her face was completely swollen, her jaw was out of alignment and a few of her teeth appeared to have been broken or had fallen out.

We were pretty sure that she was not going to make it. We tracked her whenever we could for a week or two and any time we saw her she was sacked out and not really moving but, she always seemed alert. And then the swelling started to go down. And then we saw her moving around. And then we saw her chewing a bit. She still doesn’t look great by any standards. Her jaw is still out of alignment, her cheek looks painful, she has lost quite a few teeth, and those she hasn’t are perpendicular to the direction they should be pointing. But, she’s up and about, feeding, and pooping so it looks like she’s going to survive this one.

Necropsies: a scientist's chore (Warning: This blog contains pictures of blood and guts)

First, a little background:

I am a field scientist, but sometimes I am a wussy field scientist. I find bugs fascinating but, spiders terrify me. I’ll bathe in a crocodile infested river if I have to, but only if the water is clear enough to see the crocs coming. Perhaps my strangest “atypical for a scientist” trait is the fact that I passionately dislike doing necropsies. I am enthralled by the inner workings and details of the animal body, no matter the species, because they all have unique adaptations. I love reading about those adaptations in books and seeing diagrams and even pictures but, when it comes to cutting open an animal and seeing it all for myself, I can’t handle it. It’s not the blood and guts; those don’t bother me. Somehow I manage to freak myself out with the idea that this was once a living breathing animate creature, and now it’s not. I get light headed and nauseous and I am deeply affected by the “smell of death” (whether it’s real or imagined, I’m not sure).

I learned this lesson early on when I had an unexpectedly difficult time dissecting a fetal pig in my high school biology class. That knocked veterinarian off my list of possible “things I want to be when I grow up” and made room for research biologist.

Next, to the story:

On obs one day in December we came across one of our collared females who had been wounded by lions. She was in very bad shape, so bad that she didn’t move when we drove right up to her or when we got out of the car. Unfortunately, in this situation, even if there had been anything we could have done, it would have inappropriate to do so and interfere in the natural process. We resumed obs and by the time we came back to check on her an hour later, she had passed away.

For me, this experience was sobering enough without having to also load her into the car and take her back to camp for a necropsy. As a scientist I completely understand and appreciate the wealth of data that we collect during a necropsy but, I just can’t get excited about helping to perform one. I was in a state of utter dread the entire ride back to camp. I was convinced I was going to throw up, pass out, or both in quick succession. I quickly made my case to Sean and Kasaine and allowed them to take on the jobs of flensing the skull and cutting so that I could maintain my distance from the specimen by doing the paperwork and sample labeling.

Part of the necropsy involves determining the cause of death. That was easy: lions. Lions are the number one cause of death of hyenas and the lions hadn’t left much to the imagination. Our poor females had puncture wounds from claws and teeth in her neck, chest stomach, and inner back leg. One particularly nasty wound on her neck was the probable cause of death and seemed to have been bleeding the most.

Next, we had to take body measurements such as body length, height at the shoulder, leg lengths, and head circumference. Then, Sean cut off the hyena’s head and began flensing the skull. At this point, I mentally checked out. Our last task was to take organ and tissue samples. I focused on labeling my vials for the samples and recording how many of each we collected. After about an hour or so, I was so busy that I forgot to feel sick and light headed. By the end, I was surprised to find that the collection of our last few samples was captivating.

Kasaine had done a fine job locating all the vital organs that we needed to collect samples from, until we reached the sex organs. This is where my junior high and high school sex ed classes, and mammology class came in handy and gave me the advantage. I knew generally where the uterus and ovaries should be and what they should look like, while Kasaine was completely clueless. We located both, dissected the uterus and found a fetus! I realize how strange it is that this was the most exciting part for me and I can’t really explain why I didn’t find it even more depressing to find the fetus. I think it was the exploration of finding the correct organs and confirming our suspicion by finding the fetus itself.

I doubt I’ve completely cured myself of my necropsy handicap but at least I know I can survive them and find something positive in the experience.

Video from BBC's Big Cat Live

The segment from the BBC's Big Cat Live filmed with the Holekamp Lab in 2008 is online:

More videos form the Big Cat series are at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bigcat/video/

Requited Love

Previous bloggers have expressed great admiration for certain male hyenas that hold special places in their hearts. And while I can see where they're coming from, I must confess that I cannot agree with them. In my experience I find that love/hate relationships never work out. It takes a strong woman to move on from an unhealthy relationship to one that is requited and, therefore, fulfilling and worthy of the investment of her time.

Which is why my heart has been stolen away by Rough and Ready. He is an amazing specimen of all the qualities I could ask for in a male hyena.

He has the most amazing spots you can imagine and was even dubbed "Awesome Spot in our data collection until we deemed him worthy of an official name (Immigrant males have to earn their name by sticking around for a few obs sessions and proving to us they have integrated into the clan by their behavior towards the other hyenas.). His spots are so amazing that is easy to identify, even when completely caked in mud.

Which brings me to another point. He is NOT afraid to get a little dirty. He's a real man's man of a hyena, not a wussy boy who's afraid to get a little mud on his paws.

He showed up in Prozac territory acting like he owned the place, amicably hanging out with the other males, following the alpha female around, and sacking out in the center of the action without a care in the world. Not only that, but he has covered a lot of ground to get to where he is today. Jeff and Dave have confirmed that he is the same hyena that they had previously seen on the other side of the Mara and named Acme. He seems to have been trying out different territories to find the perfect fit (or he was looking for me!).

In contrast to some other males I know, he LOVES the car. You can't get close enough to bother him without consciously trying. He'll go about his business like you are a part or it, or as if he's glad you're there to witness and share it.

Ours is a love/love relationship and I couldn't be happier.

Who be that?!

One of my favorite parts of my job, silly as it seems, is naming hyenas. We have a fancy naming scheme to help us keep track of which hyenas are related. As soon as a hyena has her first litter of cubs we assign her a 'lineage' theme. These cubs and all the cubs she has after are given names that relate to this theme. For example, Murphy's (the alpha female of the Talek West clan) lineage is "Greek gods and goddesses" so her cubs have been named Helios, Adonis, Artemis, Morpheus, and Dionysus, just to name a few.

Immigrant males require a different system because the vast majority of the time we do not know their mothers. All immigrant males are named after cities and towns.

I get irrationally excited about naming cubs and thinking up new lineages. The hyenas can't mature fast enough for me to run out of lineage ideas that I want to use and the adult females can't pop out enough cubs for me to run out of name ideas for the lineages I really enjoy. Plus, when conversation gets slow around camp and we're looking for entertainment, cub names and lineages are inexhaustible discussion topics.

I'm also very proud of the hyenas I have had the honor of naming so far. My favorite hyena has turned out to be Gambit, a hyena I named in the Fig Tree clan. He/she (we're not sure what sex it is yet) was the first cub born to Potter so I was able to start the X-men lineage off with him. Not only was Gambit born on the day of my arrival in Kenya, but he/she has also turned out to be a pretty spunky little cub. Gambit is always "play romping" and "play biting" with the other bigger cubs at the den and even has the gall to be pesky to Carol Doda, one of our most grumpy hyenas.

Other successful naming endeavors include Wozzeck, The Cunning Little Vixen (both from the operas lineage), Aero, Krackle (chocolate bars lineage, Levi's, Wrangler (brands of jeans lineage), Cherry Garcia, Karamel Sutra (Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream Flavors lineage), and Rough and Ready (immigrant male lineage; and yes, this really is the name of a town in California. It's a great place, look it up).

Camp Conditions in the Mara

One of the first questions I asked Kay when trying to figure out what I was getting myself into was "What are the living conditions of camp?" Her response was vague but I was excited to hear that we would have actual beds and our own tents. A bed was more than I had initially hoped for. When I made it to camp, I was in for a big surprise.

We are spoiled!

Not only do we get our own tents, my tent has turned out to be bigger than any room I have ever lived in by myself. There is plenty of furniture in each tent, making it possible to unpack. It's amazing how much unpacking your bags completely can make you feel settled and at home. AND the tents have electricity.

We have a shower AND it has HOT water!

We have amazing cooks that prepare all our meals and wash all our dishes. AND mamas come in from Talek to take care of our laundry.

Camp is located within a restricted area of the park so the only visitors we have are animals. My first week here, on our way back from evening obs, we had to go through a herd of giraffes that were just hanging out in our driveway. There was one just a few meters from our tent. There are tons of animals that live or visit camp. In Talek Camp, we get vervets, baboons, bush babies, genets, puff adders, elephants, giraffes, fruit bats, and more species of birds and insects than I could ever identify or list here. In Serena, the boys get lions, leopards, elephants, hippos, and much more. For a biologist, sharing your living space with so much wildlife is paradise.

Plus both camps are in beautiful settings. Talek is on the banks of the Talek River and is a lush green wonderland when it's raining. Serena is located on the side of a hill with views across the Mara to the escarpment.

Both camps have turned out to be much more established and comfortable than anything I had imagined before coming to Kenya. I almost feel silly calling it a "field camp" when I compare it to other camps I have worked out of in the past. We really are spoiled. Conditions like this make living in the bush for a year or more a piece of cake instead of a trial that must be overcome for the sake of the research.

What comes of all this field work, anyway?

Readers of this blog may occasionally ask themselves, "What ever becomes of all the information about hyenas these people are collecting in the African bush?" Well, the answer is that we do a lot of different things with the data we collect in the field. For instance, we help the managers of national parks figure out how best to manage hyenas and other large carnivores, we help develop broad conservation strategies for African wildlife, and we also make our results available to our colleagues in the scientific community. Every year we publish a number of papers in professional journals addressing topics in animal behavior, ecology and evolutionary biology. Our most recent paper, which appeared this week in a journal called Behavioral Ecology, attracted the attention of the BBC. This article, which has senior grad student Jenn Smith as the first author, inquires why hyenas sometimes gang up to form aggressive coalitions against their clanmates. Check out the photo feature about our new article on the BBC website at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8485653.stm

My Arrival

Today is my two month anniversary of my arrival in Kenya. Geez! And it seems like only yesterday...

I arrived in Kenya with the instructions to look for Jeff, a "tall, red-haired" guy. If anything went wrong and he wasn't there to pick me up, there was a back-up plan in place: borrow someone's cell phone. If that didn't work, Kay had given me all the info for a hotel nearby. Knowing how anything and everything that can go wrong, will go wrong when you're doing field work, I was mentally prepared for the worst. But, after traveling from San Francisco, to Seattle, to Amsterdam and finally to Nairobi, I was really, really hoping Jeff would just be there.

It took us a few moments to find each other in the crowd. I was probably the most nervous-looking mzungu (white person) there, so maybe that's what clued Jeff in. I was so relieved that he was there to pick me up that it didn't even bother me when one of the first things out of his mouth was, "So, we're having a bit of car trouble." Evidently Jeff had broken down on the way to the airport and had barely made it there. We were probably going to have to push start the car after we loaded my bags in. I didn't care. I had found him and I wasn't alone in a strange city, in a strange country, on a strange continent.

We did have to push start the car, twice in the airport parking lot and then once again in the gas station we stopped at for food. We tried again for a fourth, failed, and were lucky enough to get a jump start from some helpful Kenyans. I quickly learned "asante sana" meant "thank you very much."

All seemed well until we made our way into the unlit portions of Nairobi, near the cottage we stay in while in town. That was when it became quite obvious that our headlights were barely working. They continued to get dimmer and dimmer. And then, it began to rain. Heavily.

I still don't know how Jeff found the cottage in that rainy mess without headlights or streetlights. Even after two months, I have a hard enough time when it's just dark out. It would be impossible for me without headlights and I might as well not even try if it's raining on top of that! But, make it we did.

And somehow, in the midst of all that chaos, just outside the airport, I saw my very first wild zebras. I am convinced that this whole adventure was Kenya's way of rolling out the red carpet and welcoming me with open arms.

An Introduction

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I have a real treat for you for the next eight months. At five feet, seven inches and 150 pounds, our newest blogger comes to us from Sacramento, California. This blonde haired, blue-eyed Amazonian queen has had a sundry past with research. Her insatiable appetite for adventure and field work has led to her partcipation in no less than five fact-finding missions. These include (1) an investigation of the broad-winged hawk's ability to recognize the coloration of the venomous coral snake, (2) a delving into the growth rates of invasive plant species, (3) an examination of the sexual communication of the greater sage-grouse, (4) an exploration of the long-necked and pig-nosed turtles of northern Australia, and (5) an analysis of the information encoded within the killer whale's call repertoire.

Her work with sage-grouse has been recognized by the Journal of Experimental Biology. And the Acoustical Society of America was honored to receive her in Paris, where she presented the preliminary results of her groundbreaking work with the orca. In 2008, she afforded the University of California, Davis the privilege of counting her among their alumni.

In the year following her graduation, she had a dark flirtation with environmental consulting and let's just all thank our lucky stars she has returned to the world of research to grace us with her presence.

She enjoys reading, ceramics, photography, and contemplating consciousness and the meaning of life. Her heroes include Marie Curie, Amelia Earhart, and Leslie Curren.

It is now my esteemed pleasure to present to you this night, the talented, the amazing, the ever modest, Kenna Lehmann!

To the hyena blog faithful...

...I've officially left Fisi Camp for the last time, thus ending my blogging career. It's been a lot of fun and thanks for reading—stick around as the next generation of hyena researchers carries the torch. In the meantime, it's back to the real world for this Mama Fisi. Had to happen sometime. Catch you on the flip!