New York Times: Scientist at Work

The first of Kay Holekamp's entries in the New York Times' Scientist at Work series was published on June 20, 2011. Read her story The Land of Dik Diks and Pangolins.

The female hyena calls the shots

Check out hyenas from a Kenyan p.o.v. in an article (featuring Kay) in yesterday's Nation!

http://www.nation.co.ke

Alumnus' Research on Sexual Deception in USA Today

Wiline Pangle is an alumnus of the Holekamp Lab where she received her PhD in 2008. While living in Kenya, she collaborated on a topi sexual deception study published in the July issue of The American Naturalist journal and featured in an article this week in USA Today.

The life story of a hyena

http://www.slate.com/id/2249557/

This link is to a Slate web article that my boyfriend sent me. Not sure how he found it before any of us.

A change of scenery

The public's (or at least the media's) interest in hyenas continues! I spent the last three days with a TV crew filming hyenas in Amboseli National Park.

While I love the Mara, I have to admit that the Amboseli scenery is absolutely stunning. The picturesque park lies at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa.


Beyond its gorgeous scenery, the park is known for its elephants. Thousands of these massive creatures call Amboseli home, and it's the best-studied elephant population in the world. Their presence is amazing, since they really dominate the landscape. They're everywhere...swimming in the swamps, resting under acacia trees, and lumbering across the dusty plains.


The "small" crew I was supposed to join - director, cameraman, sound guy - quickly doubled with the addition of a local producer, two drivers, and a (heavily) armed ranger escort. There's a thriving population of hyenas in Amboseli, so there was lots of good hyena action to film. The show is about animals with formidable predatory abilities, but I think the crew was much more captivated by the hyenas' charm than the "threat" they supposedly represent. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that the show will manage to portray hyenas not only as fearsome predators, but also as intriguing and charismatic creatures.


The show should air on Discovery Channel in March - we will update you with details as soon as we know them!

A week with Animal Planet

Since we know more than anyone else about one of the most misunderstood animals around, we feel it's our responsibility to help educate people about hyenas. So when Animal Planet came to us with a project, we jumped at the chance. I spent the last week with a TV crew filming a whole hyena episode for a new show called “Night,” which documents the bizarre lives of nocturnal animals. I was called in as kind of a human-hyena liaison, working to help find hyenas and explain their behavior. But I had NO idea what to expect.

Here in the Mara we have enough trouble watching our hyenas on a day-to-day basis due to rough terrain, bad weather, and their somewhat unpredictable behavior, so I didn't know how a TV crew could get much decent footage. Plus, this whole show had to be shot at night, which made everything way more complicated! We went out every evening at dusk, spent all night out filming, and rolled back into camp for a few hours of sleep just as the sun came up.

In order to actually capture nocturnal behavior on film, the crew had all sorts of fantastic gadgets like infrared lights, night vision, and heat-sensing cameras. Since this kind of equipment is really expensive (the thermal video camera alone cost more than $50,000) and is usually reserved for military purposes, I was really lucky to be able to play with it all for a week! I also had the crew teach me all about cameras, sound equipment, and the process of directing a TV show. Here’s a photo of me playing sound technician for a day (the host, Brandon, is in the background hamming it up for the camera).



I thought I’d just be bringing some hyena knowledge to the table, but they wanted me to have a lot more on-camera time than I had anticipated. The host and I were constantly being filmed on this “quest” to uncover the truth about hyenas. I’m definitely no actress, and I think these 15 minutes of fame were enough for me! It’s nearly impossible trying to say anything serious on camera with 6 crazy guys standing on the sidelines trying to crack you up. I’m totally prone to giggling attacks, and I ruined more than a few takes that way. On the other hand, it turns out practical jokes are WAY funnier when you’ve got a director and camera crew in on them.

The focus of the entire episode was to dispel the myth that hyenas are merely cowardly scavengers, so our goal was to film an entire hunting sequence from beginning to end. Of course, it wasn’t as easy as it sounded. We found hyenas every night, but we were foiled by rain three times, lions twice, and darkness once. I think we were all feeling the pressure on the last night, but we finally captured some great footage. But I won’t spoil it…you’ll just have to watch the show to see what happens!

BBC comes to Kenya

It’s been a rather hectic few days here at camp, because BBC has been here filming our hyenas (as well as us!) for a short documentary. It’s been really interesting to work with the film crew – I had no idea that so much time and energy goes into a 4-minute TV segment! There were two producers, a cameraman, an audio guy, and a driver, along with a LOT of impressive camera and sound equipment. They taped several hours of footage of us darting a hyena, working at camp, and conducting our hyena “intelligence tests.” I don’t think the crew was prepared for all the logistical difficulties of working out here in the field, as their grand plans were repeatedly challenged by bad weather, rough terrain, and rather unpredictable hyena behavior!

However, in the end they got some great footage, and it will be fun to see our hyenas star on TV. The segment will air in early October during a special live episode of Big Cat Diaries. If you have access to BBC, be sure to watch!