Science Diary: Lemurs of Madagascar – Night Hunt

Ambience: Crickets and River at Night

“It’s about ten o’clock tonight and right now I’m walking in an area of the park very close to the big river. What we’re doing is we’re looking for evidence of the Mouse lemur. The Mouse lemur’s a nocturnal primate.”

Welcome to Pulse of the Planet’s Science Diaries – a glimpse of the world of science from the inside. Summer Arrigo-Nelson studies the tree-dwelling primates known as lemurs in the forests of Madagascar.

“The Mouse lemurs in this area of the park have become really fat and lazy because they used to be a tourist attraction. So what we’re out here to do tonight is to just take a look and see exactly what it is they’re doing and if they’re able to make the transition back to having to hunt on their own successfully. It’s 11:20 right now, and what I’m doing is I’m writing down in the data book that we saw were these two teeny-tiny little glowing goldish-orange eyes, but then as soon as we saw it, it was gone. And so what we’re doing, is I’m waiting to see if maybe the animal will come back out, if we’d be able to catch another glimpse of it.

Oh well, it’s 11:30 now, and I think I’m going to call it a night. We’ve been waiting here for about ten minutes, but it hasn’t made a sound, which either means it ran off and we’ve been sitting here for ten minutes like idiots, or it means that it’s still there and it’s just so good at hiding that it’s worn us down and we’re gonna give up. Now if I really studied nocturnal species I’d like to think that I wouldn’t give up this quickly, but the fact is that I still have to hike back to camp tonight, which is another half an hour, and then I have to be up early tomorrow morning so that I can go out with my day active lemurs, and collect the data that is actually part of the project that I’m supposed to be here working on.”

Our thanks to Earthwatch. You can check out Summer Arrigo-Nelson’s blog on pulseplanet.com. Pulse of the Planet’s Science Diaries are made possible by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.

Science Diary: Lemurs of Madagascar - Night Hunt

Shh! We're in the rainforests of Madagascar looking for nocturnal lemurs.
Air Date:03/08/2007
Scientist:
Transcript:

Ambience: Crickets and River at Night

“It's about ten o'clock tonight and right now I'm walking in an area of the park very close to the big river. What we’re doing is we're looking for evidence of the Mouse lemur. The Mouse lemur's a nocturnal primate.”

Welcome to Pulse of the Planet’s Science Diaries - a glimpse of the world of science from the inside. Summer Arrigo-Nelson studies the tree-dwelling primates known as lemurs in the forests of Madagascar.

“The Mouse lemurs in this area of the park have become really fat and lazy because they used to be a tourist attraction. So what we're out here to do tonight is to just take a look and see exactly what it is they're doing and if they're able to make the transition back to having to hunt on their own successfully. It's 11:20 right now, and what I'm doing is I'm writing down in the data book that we saw were these two teeny-tiny little glowing goldish-orange eyes, but then as soon as we saw it, it was gone. And so what we're doing, is I’m waiting to see if maybe the animal will come back out, if we'd be able to catch another glimpse of it.

Oh well, it's 11:30 now, and I think I'm going to call it a night. We've been waiting here for about ten minutes, but it hasn't made a sound, which either means it ran off and we've been sitting here for ten minutes like idiots, or it means that it's still there and it's just so good at hiding that it's worn us down and we're gonna give up. Now if I really studied nocturnal species I'd like to think that I wouldn't give up this quickly, but the fact is that I still have to hike back to camp tonight, which is another half an hour, and then I have to be up early tomorrow morning so that I can go out with my day active lemurs, and collect the data that is actually part of the project that I'm supposed to be here working on.”

Our thanks to Earthwatch. You can check out Summer Arrigo-Nelson’s blog on pulseplanet.com. Pulse of the Planet’s Science Diaries are made possible by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.