Arrival and Identifying Baboons

I remember straining to look out the window of the airplane down on Cape Town below as we approached. It is a land of tall jagged mountain peaks that meet the southern sea and cradle the city of Cape Town in a protected valley against the bay. The mountains rise up immediately from the flat earth, creating steep slopes and vast cliffs. The tallest mountains were dusted with a thin layer of snow, indicating the advancing winter in the southern hemisphere. I suppose the summer time I spent in Costa Rica will make up for the cold weather I am about to encounter. 

The forest and mountains

Larissa Swedell, the researcher and professor I am working for, retrieved me from the airport in her small car and we set off on the contradictory South African roads. I’m still not quite sure how I am going to drive stick shift on the left hand side of the road… Although the good thing is that the roads are nothing like eastern Africa. Everything seems pristine and organized. However, as we kept driving farther towards the ocean and the Southern Suburbs (where I am living and working), the discrepancy between poverty and wealth became obvious. Not too far from the airport, we dipped into a lower valley full of slums and piled with litter and debris. Then, almost immediately we were surrounded by pristine mansions and meticulously manicured lawns. How very odd. Larissa pointed out that there is a gradient between the rich and the poor. The wealthiest neighborhoods flank Table Mountain and the Tokai forest. Gradually the affluence diminishes as you cross the suburbs and townships to the East. I’m only beginning to understand the arduous history this country has. The city is lovely in spite of the spread of wealth. The mountains create an irregular horizon across the sky with their serrated ridges and bare stone peaks. Some of the mountain silhouettes look rectangular, some triangular, and some appear complexly asymmetrical.

The view down my street at sunrise 

Larissa drove me right up to my front door in the neighborhood of Kirstenhof. The area is beautiful and quiet, with a park right down the street. Every home is shrouded behind tall walls and electric wired fences. A small blond girl opened the sliding gate to the house and led me inside to my flat. It is right across from the main house and consists of a tiny bedroom, bathroom, and a little kitchen-living room area with a couch and small counter space. It isn’t much, but it will be perfect (although cooking with only a microwave and no stove or oven has proven to be a mild complication). Krysten, the sister of my landlady and her friend Carry live in the main house. They are both native South Africans and have dainty little African accents. Carry asked me to come inside the house to make me lunch. All she had was tuna, onions, and tomatoes. I think the cat meowing at my feet while I ate must have been the intended recipient of the fish. Regardless, the two girls seem about my age and were very warm and hospitable.

I had barely begun to unpack when the other field assistants working on the baboon research buzzed the gate. I climbed into the truck bed of the car they were borrowing from a South African and they took me to the Blue Route Mall down the road for grocery shopping. Lucy and Ilana shopped with me. Lucy and I will be working on the same project for Larissa together. She arrived three weeks ago and stays through November. Ilana is working for Larissa’s collaborator, Steffen Foerster, and has been here two weeks and leaves a few weeks before me. The other field assistants working in the field now are finishing in a few days. Lucy and Ilana are wonderful and it is comforting to know that I will be spending these next three months with them. On our way home from extensive grocery provisioning, we were laden with heavy bags. A kind lady and her son offered us a ride back home. The boy was learning how to drive and he seemed eager to test out the cars abilities on the roads. Lucy and Ilana live just a few blocks from my house in Kirstenhof. I need to explore more in order to be able to find my way around.

Monterey Pines in the Tokai forest

Eating pine cones

I was up bright and early this morning to begin baboon research. The other assistants said I could take the day to rest, but really… I was too excited to sleep! One of the current researchers named Catherine is a South African and she has a car, so they picked me up just before 8 AM and we drove to the lower levels of the forest. We parked the car at a local research center and began briskly walking up the road. The Tokai forest lies within the Table Mountain National Park and much of the area where our baboons range is composed of an odd mix of native and non-native vegetation. For example, large plantations of Monterey Pines are planted on the lower slopes of the mountains. Fortunately, the baboons love these areas. Unfortunately, they are condemned to be cut down by 2016.

 

My first sighting of the baboons was group JT1 that were foraging in the pines near the research center. Some of the young juveniles quite boldly approached us and we had to stamp at them to avoid any direct contact. Their wide brown eyes were curious and playful. I fell immediately in love. It took us more than an hour to locate our target baboon troop for the day, MT1. We marched through eucalyptus groves and planted pine plantations and native fynbos scrublands. We crossed over rushing rivers and hiked through twisted paths overgrown with vegetation. The morning sun was bright and golden and highlighted a spectrum of colors along the mountain ridges. The bright green vegetation and the yellows, oranges, and blues of the rocks and steep cliffs were stunning. We finally found our group foraging in a clearing and began data collection immediately.

he was playing with the pine branch

Caitlin is training Lucy and I on the project before she leaves on Sunday. Apparently, this means that I need to learn very fast. The project I am working on is two-fold. It gathers data that focuses on male-female consortships as well as male raiding behaviors (basically the males snatching food from human sources). This supposedly will have implications for management of the baboons as well as illustrate whether adult male baboons preferentially will engage in raiding behavior over female consortships. The primary data collection focuses on male focal follows, and the goals is to follow and record specific data on each subadult and adult male every day.

Hamlet, the dominant male of MT1

While Lucy and Caitlin began their ethogram data collection, I began to learn how to identify individual baboons. This meant that the greater portion of my day was spent meticulously drawing baboon ears and tails, as those are the distinguishing features that help to discriminate one individual from the next. Each animal has a specific name and before I can begin gathering data and samples, I must learn all the females and males in the MT1 and JT1 troops. It is actually quite a bit harder than it sounds…

Egyptian geese

Baboons foraging

Besides an hour break for lunch, we spent the day running after the baboons, as they decidedly trampled through plantations and horse stables and forests and parking lots and mountains. Before I knew it, it was 4:30 and the sun began to set. This was our signal that it was time to go home. Just in time too as we could see a thick layer of storm clouds rolling in over the mountain ridges. I am going to have to prepare for rain tomorrow…