Trappping Rats Around a Village

The focus of the search for the wild animal reservoir of monkeypox was on rodents that lived around the villages and in the nearby agricultural fields. Mungbau, the chauffeur, is seen with the live traps that we loaned out to the village youth to set in the surrounding area. They were given in batches of ten to fifteen traps per trapper.

Mungbau, (with the supervision of the team's pet genet), is checking each trap to make sure that they are in order before they are handed out. The traps were numbered to help track them. The local hunters were easy to train, and we paid them for their knowledge of the forest and the wildlife via the catch they brought in each day.

The villagers used their own bait and knew how to mount traps high up in trees, along waterways, around trails, and in brush piles. They had a much higher catch than we could have realized if we had done the work ourselves. The rats were identified, euthanized, and processed for their organs and blood for identification of monkeypox virus and antibodies.

Photo by D. Messinger

Water Conservation in the Savanna

While a Peace Corps volunteer in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, I had the opportunity to travel widely. I learned to appreciate the geographical, political, and cultural contrasts in that huge nation, the third largest on the African continent.

Although the Congo is known for rainforest in the center "basin," the north, east, and, especially south, has large stretches of scrub land and savanna, where water is scarce. In such a landscape the villages are few and far between. Here, the people are linked to the nearest permanent water, which might be a sweaty, hot, one-hour trek. In these places, bathing and washing clothes was done at the "source" while drinking and cooking water had to be hauled back to the huts. Water was transported in pots, pails, pans, and gourds, carried on women's (and girl's) heads. .

Water was so precious that I once stopped to take a picture of an ingenious method used for a thatched roof in the southern Bandundu region of the Congo. The thirsty people had fashioned a sort of gutter with split giant bamboo. A leaf spout connected it to a gourd. One also notices the use of bamboo and grass instead of the wood and clay from the wet regions to the north.

Photo by D. Messinger

Bonobo Lucy Walking with Ball

Lucy, a five year old bonobo at the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens shows off her ability to stand upright while she passes a ball behind her back, then continues to carry it in front. Her capacity to walk upright while manipulating a large object is unique, and something that the local peoples of the Democratic Republic of the Congo comment on as being "human-like."

Photo by M. Brickner

Rain Rain Go Away

The world's rainforests straddle a narrow belt along the equator, and represent only six percent of the earth's landmass. I do not know exactly how much it rained where I was, but I guessed that it must have been around 100 inches a year. There was the "big wet" which was around six months long, the "little wet," around three months long, and the "dry" season, also three months long.

Traveling and working among the local peoples of Zaire, now the Democratic of the Congo, slowed me down and made me appreciate the elements. For example, no matter the urgency, everything came to a halt when it rained. Weather it was working, or meeting, or going to school, conducting business, or taking a trip -- nothing happened when it rained.

The above photographs shows a village, where I was cooped up in a hut for several days, while it rained, and rained, and rained. I was working with the local people, trapping small mammals for a monkeypox study, and we were all stuck. Such was the life of the village -- people were not bored; they sat around and talked, sang, worked on small projects, ate, and slept. The kids fiddled around with small home made toys or helped the women with indoor tasks.

Sometimes I use these images in presentations to describe the life in a Congolese village. The last photo comes with the remark, "Well, at least we had running water!"

Photos by D. Messinger

Monkeypox Office at Night

In this photo, I am preparing the notes from the day's work, during a long field trip in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) to study human habits in relationship to the rodents found around the villages and agricultural areas. Because there was no electricity where I worked, lighting was limited to kerosene lanterns.

The large notebook mapped out the location of nests, and distance from a point along a transect, of the rope squirrels that we were studying. Due to many variables, the time spent in an single location was too short to learn actual density of the squirrels, but this was a quick way to get relative density indications for various areas that I studied.

The folding table belonged to our team and was the "office." This photo was taken outdoors, in front of the main house of the village chief. Like other local activities such as cooking, relaxing, working, and visiting, my study was not done in a hut. Mud huts were primarily for sleeping and for escaping the torrential equatorial rains.

One of the things not seen was my audience. The people -- adults, kids, and assorted dogs and chickens hung around to see what I was doing. They would quietly talk, work, or play and keep me company, partially as a favor. In the culture, being alone was anathema. And I was a stranger, doing strange, and unfathomable things, that would be talked about for years. I always had onlooking eyes, even here in the soft nighttime air under the stars.

Thank You, Forest Doctor!

In the early 1990's, The Zairian Institute for the Conservation of Nature sponsored a educational pamphlet tied to a census of eastern lowland gorillas led by Jeff Hall of the Wildlife Conservation Society (Bronx Zoo). Kizito and I wrote and illustrated a culturally sensitive story that talked about gorillas and elephants. We used a play on words with "Monganga" which was the word for "Doctor" as well as the brand name of a popular bar soap.

The cover featured a forest scene with a village family. The riches of the forest were symbolically represented with a spear, fish, and a basket heaped with the harvest. The text reads:

"WE SHARE THE FOREST We have known our forest for many, many years. It is our home and will be the home of our children and children's children. The forest is bountiful to those who understand it. Here we find everything we need. We hunt and fish for the animals that feed us. Our forest gives us medicine, fruit, rope, nuts, paints, and candles.

"In return, we share the forest with other creatures. We need to take good care of our land so it will continue to sustain us. The following pages will describe the two largest animals we find in the forest. See how they are part of our world.

(Page two) "THE GIFT OF THE ELEPHANT The elephant is the largest animal in the forest. He is also its great protector. He could be called "Monganga Ya Zamba" (Forest Doctor) for the care he gives it.

"He is practically the master constructor of the forest, if you like. He knocks down trees to eat, which makes clearings for the sun to penetrate and start new plant life.

"But the greatest gift of our doctor is in his droppings. For these contain large seeds of giant fruits which only the elephant is capable of eating. These seeds are not digested, but deposited in the dung, which is ideal for germination. Some trees in our forest can only be planted by first passing through an elephant. (The illustration here is of a seeding thinking, "Thanks, forest doctor!" as it sprouts up from an elephant pile, complete with flies).

(Page three) "The gorilla is renown the world over for his huge size, his strength, and his intelligence. In truth, the gorilla does not use his enormous powers for aggression. The dominant male will charge anything that endangers his family. But he stops short, only to threaten with a roar. His size alone is enough to deter enemies.

"Gorilla infants pass their childhood with few worries. They spend their first years learning how to be a gorilla. They follow the family's examples to learn what is edible, what to fear and avoid (like snakes and toxic plants) and most importantly, how to become good parents themselves. Gorillas eat leaves, fruits, shoots, stems, flowers, and ants.

(Page four) "This man is a zoologist. His name is Sabuni and he is studying the relationship between large mammals and plants. In this image you can see that Sabuni has a certain rapport with an adult male gorilla! This is, because, near Bukavu and near Goma, specialists have habituated some groups to the presence of humans. Quietly and calmly approached, the gorillas do not flee.

"Often the zoologist wonders about the use of the surrounding forest. How will man take care of it in the next century, he asks? What will happen to us that depend on the forest if gorillas and elephants were no more?"

Our pamphlet was a labor of love. It was printed in Swahili and tested for interpretation by the intended audience. Humans and the relationship with and benefit from the forest was emphasized. It was printed in at a Kinshasa printer, and used only two colors, green and black, which meant delicate half-tones done by hand to achieve the greys and light greens. It. Even the spacing of the text around the half circle above the gorilla had to be adjusted one letter at a time on a template, due to lack of sophisticated computer software.

Lucy Bonobo Bonded to Mother

Lucy, a five year old bonobo at the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens is still bonded to her mother, as seen in the top photo where Lucy has her arm draped over Lorel's back. In the middle, the two each have an arm over the other, while Lorel carries a coconut in her other hand. In the bottom image, the two have reverted to a earlier time when the mother carries her baby, piggy-back style. Lucy is getting too heavy for this, but the behavior is still seen from time to time. The weaning of a young bonobo is a slow, gentle process.

Photos by M. Brickner

The Snorting Gazelle

Speke's gazelles were named after John Speke, an African explorer who looked for the source of the Nile, but ended up naming a bird, a rodent, and an antelope. Speke's are endangered, and the wild numbers are estimated in the low ten thousands. They are found in small, fragmented populations in the horn of Africa, (Somalia and Ethiopia). The largest threat to their survival is the loss of grazing due to the encroachment of livestock.

This little female Speke's gazelle was born at the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens last week. She is getting a daily catch-up and weighing (she is around three pounds; the scale reads in metric) for the first week of life, following a protocol established by the St. Louis Zoo.

Only four founding animals had been imported into this country in the late 60's and early 70's, so the resulting inbreeding led to problems including low birth weights, lack of viability, and low fertility. In the 1980's, under guidance of the SSP (Species Survival Plan) the St. Louis Zoo instituted a risky, but critically important program to rapidly breed all of the animals, to produce a large number of offspring, quickly. Over one hundred Speke's gazelles have been born at the St. Louis Zoo. Those with fatal defects did not survive, but the others had not inherited the harmful genes. The plan worked and over two to three generations, the problems had largely disappeared.

The most noticeable feature of this nearly two foot tall antelope is the three to five folds of skin that form the bridge of the nose. This can be inflated into a resonating chamber for the loud, explosive gunshot sneeze that the gazelle uses in alarm. It is also thought to be used to help in cooling because Speke's gazelles live in hot, dry semi-desert habitat. They are also crepuscular (active at dawn and dusk) to help conserve moisture.

Both sexes have S shaped horns, but the male's is noticeably heavier at the base. The gestation is six to seven months and the single, (rarely twin) offspring is weaned at two to three months, Their lifespan is twelve years.

Our little female is staying in an off-exhibit area that is visible from the train. She is often hidden in the grass (a protection defense to avoid predation), but has already started playing, and "pronking" about the yard, with all four feet raised off of the ground in a series of high bounds (also adaptive, to escape predation when being chased).

Photos by Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens

Elvira Jaguar: Mistress of the Night

Martin Main, Ph.D., from the University of Florida, and Ph.D graduate student, Emiliano Ramalho, study jaguars in a flooded rainforest in central Brazil. Jaguars are nocturnal, elusive and solitary, and little is know about their population density. The Amazon basin is critical to jaguar conservation because it holds the greatest numbers of animals. The Amazon contains large stretches of intact habitat that communicates with other important ecosystems.

Main's team captured the beautiful female jaguar pictured above on Halloween, 2008. Fittingly, she was named "Elvira," and fitted with a GPS collar that will record her location every two hours for a year. The data collected will establish her range and movement with the change in water levels that flood up to 36 feet every year. (The area is so inundated that Mr. Ramalho stays in a floating research camp.)

Typically, infrared "camera traps" are used to photograph and identify individual free-ranging wild animals. Scat (feces) is also collected to study prey species eaten. The jaguar is a top predator that also takes domestic stock, and is killed by ranchers and villagers. Mitigating jaguar/human conflict will become a primary concern of conservationists, as the human population is ever increasing in central Brazil.

Dr. Main is also looking at other, complimentary techniques to camera trapping and radio collaring. Another student has done trials at the The Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens with non-invasive collection of hairs, which will provide DNA material that will provide information on parentage and familial relationships.

For further information:
http://international.ifas.ufl.edu/focus_newsletters/2009/February2009/Jaguar.shtml

Photo by M. Main

A Prickle of a Porcupine

This photo is of a young brush-tailed African porcupine. Newborns are precocial, being well-developed, but of small size. They are born with soft hair that hardens over a week or two. This animal weighed about a pound, and already had the quill development of an adult. The brush-tailed porcupine is not well known outside of west and central Africa where it ranges, because it is rarely seen in captivity. An adult weighs six to eight pounds, while the better known black and white African crested porcupine is much larger, at 40 to 60 pounds.

Unlike its name "porcupine" which means "quill pig," porcupines are not pigs, but rodents. Due to their taste for roots and tubers, they have a light, sweet meat that is favored by local populations, and they are frequently hunted. In Zaire, porcupines were flushed by dogs, to be captured by small hoop nets on the trails that the animals would use as escape routes.

The meat is so favored that one project in Gabon has tried farm raising brush-tailed porcupines, with limited success. The fact that they only produce one or two offspring, with a relatively long gestation of 100 or more days is not promising for efficient production (compared to rabbits, for example, that can produce 6 to 10 young after only a one month gestation).

The brush-tailed porcupine has short quills and a tuft of flattened, pale quills at the end of its tail. Like all porcupines, its defensive behavior is to turn around, stamp its front feet and raise and shake the quills to produce a menacing rattle and increase its body "size." The animal will also hiss, and growl. Finally, if the aggressor is not convinced, the porcupine will back up rapidly and ram the offender, leaving some quills behind.

The brush-tailed porcupine lives in burrows, and is strictly nocturnal. It travels in small family groups and is mostly terrestrial, but can climb, or swim, with webbed feet. In researching the natural history of the species, the most interesting fact I uncovered was that a group of porcupines is called a "prickle," an apropos description for such an unusual evolutionary survival tactic.

Photo by D. Messinger

Telecel Bon Voyage

To make ends meet, Kizito and I created ads for Telecel, a telecommunications company. At that time, in the mid 1990's, Telecel ran a monopoly in the capital, and did not really need to advertise. But Jim Galan, the American director, had a soft spot for our conservation projects and orphaned bonobos. He paid for a dozen one page cartoons and then hired us to manage the postings in the local newspapers.

This four color ad fit in with the "social marketing" that we used for our copy. Each told a good story, gave some interesting lesson (here, it was geography), and advanced our overall goal of creating interest in reading.

In Bon Voyage, TELECEL, a jumbo jet is deplaning passengers. The first pane announces, "A tropical morning....the arrival from Europe." Then we see a man, dressed in a puffy jacket with a Topeka Zoo and happy face patches, waving good-by to the air hostesses, "See you next time, my dears!"

In the crush of passengers, he exclaims, "AWESOME! HO! My brother is here!"

The two meet, the loud bother greeting the conservatively dressed brother with, "What's up, Bro?"

They hug, and the brother asks, "How was the trip?" "FANTASTIC!" (The man likes to talk in capital letters.)

The next scene is a depiction of the crazy hubbub at the Kinshasa airport, where the two brothers are seen as tiny figures in the background, laughing.

In the third row, left pane, the two are waiting for their baggage. The loud brother throws out his arms, "I was in London, Madrid, Athens, New Delhi, Paris, Brussels...!!"

He continues, admonishing his stay at home brother, "...you need to get out and breathe the air of progress in exotic places, isn't that so, brother!?! His brother raises one eyebrow and responds softly, "Maybe..."

While the loud brother is laughing in an uproar, we notice the other brother's hand holding a cellular telephone that suddenly begins ringing, "Lo lo lo lo! Lo lo lo lo!"

A finger punches a button, while the loud brother, tears still in his eye from laughing, shows surprise on his face.

The quiet brother answers the phone, saying, "Hello... Los Angeles?... O.K.! I'll call Singapore immediately to confirm... Good bye!"

The loud brother, eyes wider, listens to this conversation. Then, with a broad wink, the quiet brother says, "You see, brother... I travel too, with TELECEL!"

The Animals in Our Lives

These cats, from the left, are Kiki, Hurricane, Momacita, and Halloween, a mother and three daughters. They are Sphynx, a hairless breed developed from a natural mutation in a few barn kittens found in Toronto, in the 1970's. An unusual fact about felines is that their skin reflects the color of the fur, which can be easily seen in the Sphynx. In our case, we have tortoiseshells, blue (grey), and calico varieties.

Besides the felines, we have a Doberman and a mixed American bulldog that was rescued from the pound. The cats and dogs get along, and make for a happy, healthy family. Scientific studies conducted by the Centers for Disease Control have shown that pets decrease the incidence and severity of depression, reduces heart disease and lowers levels of LDL ("bad" cholesterol).

The American Veterinary Medical Association has reported that the elderly in nursing homes with well-cared for resident animals have less infections, fewer hospitalizations, and 30% lower staff turnover than homes without animals.

Pets are a marvelous way for humans to build character. They increase opportunities for exercise and serve as an ice breaker for conversation. Pets teach selflessness, responsibility, love, sharing, biology, life, and death. For children, the death of a pet teaches coping skills for the loss of human life.

Pets allow us to see the world through rose colored glasses. Who is the best secret keeper, always happy to see you, and loves you unconditionally? Your pet, of course.

At times we all need a bright spot in our lives when the general outlook becomes cloudy with the demands of work, school, children, finances, and trying to hold it all together. Animals are the bright spot -- a dog cheers us up when he lays his head in our lap, and we relax when a cat curls up and purrs like a motor.

What can you do if you don't have the ability, desire, or resources to have a pet of your own? You can reap benefits by volunteering at the local shelter, interacting with a neighbor's pet, or watching animals in nature. Animals are natural teachers, and even butterflies and other insects have fascinating lives that reveal themselves with close observation.

Whether feathered, scaled, furry, slimy, or (in some cases), hairless, animals enhance our lives. If nothing else, upload an aquarium screen saver on your computer monitor and watch the fish swim.

Photo by M. Brickner

Hands on Bonobo "Exam"

Cooperative participation in medical exams is a primary goal in modern captive ape management. Here, a keeper is focusing on a single bonobo at the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens. A first "anti-distraction" technique is to train these highly social animals to separate from the group. Once animals understand the challenge of training, they often find it so engaging that they may squeal in delight in anticipation of a turn with the keeper.

The photos show preparation for a cardiac, teeth, mouth, gums, and tongue check. The Zoo's two veterinarians stop in frequently to familiarize the animals with their presence, which is something that is needed for "house calls" from a doctor, with the backup training by the keeper.

Photos by M. Brickner