Working out the kinks..

Zdravstv,

Or for our non-Russian speaking readers: hello.
According to my blogging statistics (which are very accurate I hear) I have one reader who is in Russia. I know nobody in Russia, I suspect they got lost and found my blog by accident. But in case they're still reading: hello Russian friend!

I have now progressed into the Preliminary Observations stage of my project (do I hear a yay?). If you think that means I will talk less about how much reading and writing I'm doing and instead talk about the actual gibbons then you would be wrong!! Sorry. Unfortunately I still spend the majority of every day with my head burrowed in a book or my eyeballs slowly melting from hours of reading journal articles on my laptop.


I do have one small victory to report. I am winning the turf war between me and the pelicans. I got to the enclosure before they woke up and when they realised they couldn't sit at their roosting spot they had to go over and sit on the less comfortable poles. Suckers. They sulked and glared at me for over an hour.

Look at them. Losers.

I battle through pelicans and my lack-of-sleep induced haze to visit the zoo about four days a week which makes for a lovely way to spend each morning. And when I say morning I don't mean the civilised hour of 10am. I mean 7am. For now. Unfortunately my gibbons begin their daily activities around dawn every morning and dawn, in summer, is around 6am. So I need to be ready and watching before then. This I can handle and I did sign up for it. I did not, however, sign up for 3am wake up calls.

Some little male gibbon, whose name shall go unmentioned, has decided to flout a few thousand years of evolution and start his morning calls at 3am. Then call, non-stop, for an hour and a half. Gibbons typically call around dawn as way of strengthening their pair bonds and reminding everybody in South Perth that they are, in fact, in Gibbon territory. Calling at 3am, while it is still dark and while any sensible primate is asleep, serves none of these functions. The closest rationale I can come up with is that he is hunting for a mate. Since he is only just a sub-adult, he hasn't quite figured out that any potential single ladies are not keen on a male who interrupts their beauty sleep. Needless to say, he and I have had words. He has been informed of my feelings about this wasteful practice and hopefully if the fancy strikes again his mum or his sisters will tell him to shut his gob and go back to sleep like a sane gibbon.

Now before I proceed any further I must make one point abundantly clear: gibbons are APES. The 16 gibbon species are known as the Lesser Apes. The Great Apes are the Chimpanzees, Bonobos, Gorillas, Orangutans and Humans. If you want a rule of thumb: monkeys have tails, apes do not. So do not tell your small children to "look at the pretty monkeys" nor tell them "aren't these monkeys so cute and silly". You are teaching your children lies. It's like, racism, but for primates. Are you a racist? Do you want your children to be racist? No? Then learn the difference between an ape and a monkey!!!

Despite all their quirks I do love all my little gibbons. Even Kit, whose customary greeting is to stick her butt at me, and adjust everytime I move so its always pointing at my face. Still that's her way of saying hello and after a few minutes she will turn around to give me a proper good morning, she just likes to make sure I remember where I stand. Every morning.

Kit says good morning.

Jermei on the other hand is more contrary. She knows, somehow, when I am actually observing her, and she does anything except what would be interesting or useful for my research. Don't ask me how she knows what I am looking for, but she does. If she can't sit around and do nothing for ten minutes, she moves to an area where I can't see her and then engages in some interesting behaviour that I can't record. The moment I decide to record Lily's behaviour, however, it is an entirely different story.... 

Hey! Whatcha doin'?? Look at me! Hey!!

It's absolutely adorable and it does crack me up but if she keeps messing up my observations by sitting in front of me so I can't see anyone else then my data is going to look exceptionally odd.

Unfortunately I now have to return to the dreaded land of microsoft word and finish my work. I have my first assignment due tomorrow. I would much rather spend my afternoon hanging out with my ape friends but I doubt that I will pass honours if I neglect to write anything.

I will however be back in at the zoo tomorrow morning at the godawful hour of 7am to watch the mentally stable members of the silvery gibbon family calling. Hopefully our unnamed male will figure out that he's the only animal in the whole zoo calling at 3am and join in with his family's calling. You never know, miracles do happen.

Now I am off to drink more coffee and slog through my work.
Dasvidania!
xxx