Beware Those Crazy Ground Apes

By now, most people know that Jess is off monkeying around in Borneo. But what am I actually getting up to day in and day out? Well, it's taken me some time to get to the bottom of this riddle myself, but I've finally worked it out. Basically, I am here to play hide and seek with the orangutans. Usually, the auburn apes like to do the hiding and I try to find them before it gets dark. If they win, I go home and count to eight hours of sleep before trying again. But if I win, I get to follow them around the forest all day! 

This bold little girl gets bored of hiding all day - she'll come close and try to push down a tree nearby to get your attention.
© Jess Stitt/OuTrop 2012

Miraculously, this game of ours lines up with the two main activities I am assigned to do here in camp: Mencari and Menikuti.

Mencari (to search) involves walking slowly along transects cut through the forest, with lots of pauses to listen for orangutan sounds. The acoustic clues include tree swaying, branch breaking, and snag crashing - which all happen to sound like the wind when it gusts through. So it also helps that the orangutan is a messy eater: dropping lots of fruity bits from the canopy onto the dry leaf floor below, chewing loudly, and "popping" the seeds of certain fruits (they use their massive jaw strength to break open a seed and access the tasty nutrient-rich core). When they go a-hunting for rayap (termites), they make sounds strangely similar to someone tearing apart rotten wood… likely because  they are using their impressive upper body strength to tear apart rotten wood. And push down big dead trees. As such, it's usually best not to stand too close when they're binging on invertebrates.

The whole family goes wild for a big dead tree feast ful of termites! Even the littlest learns how best to pick them out of the wood. (Females pictured, from top to bottom: Georgia, Gracia, & little Gretel)
© Jess Stitt/OuTrop 2012

Menikuti (to follow) starts once the jig is up and we've tracked down/stumbled upon an orangutan in the woods. A team of observers (usually two humans) will follow the individual all day, taking data on the activity and location of the orangutan every five minutes. This is the heart and soul of the orangutan behavior project, and it (usually) is as fun as it sounds to follow a wild orangutan around the jungle all day. There are endless awesome ways of traveling through the treetops to witness, a bit of quadrupedal walking on the ground to try to keep up with, lots of feeding on fruit and flowers (to sample), and every once in a while a social get together! The juveniles will play together and sometimes the adults join in - swinging upside down, grabbing at the young hooligans, and play-biting each other. And you never know who will show up to hang out: maybe an aunt, perhaps a cousin or two, or why not a big flanged male to really stir things up? By the end of the day, when all the feeding and moving and playing is done, and the sun is setting over the equator, orangutans will go their separate ways and clamber up a tree to build themselves a night nest. Expertly engineered, they pick specific tree species with just the right amount of bend to their branches. Some of the good ones have really big leaves that make for great padding. There are a few females here who like to "sing" to themselves while they work, blowing raspberries as the fold and snap and twist the branches. (I just read a paper all about the awesomeness of orangutan nest building recently, let me know if you want to have a nerdy conversation about arboreal architecture!)

Once the nest is built and the simian is done singing and snug in their swaddling, we observers are free to head home. We mark the tree where the nest's been built, to return to again in the morning. Orangutans tend to be up from sunrise until nearly sunset and, as it happens, those two are equidistant from each other year-round here at the equator. So 12-hour days are common for nest-to-nest follows; ample time to amble with such amiable acquaintances. 

An unflanged male turning the tables to observe us. I bet we make a fascinating study species.
© Jess Stitt/OuTrop 2012

I often find myself wondering what the orangutans think of us as they peer down upon the hairless hominids who always seem to struggle stepping through the swamp and brambles on two legs. Why us crazy ground apes don't just shimmy up the nearest pohon (tree) is probably beyond our graceful great ape cousins.

A Forest Fit for Fancy Footwork

Moving around the forest here is not as linear as you would expect. The hiking tends to be a bit more like rock climbing mixed with a slalom through small trees, which suits me just fine. However, there are no rocks here, and the ground is quite flat. Everything is biotic, meaning it is, or once was, living material - often mixed with a healthy dose of water in the form of mud. I like to think of my daily treks as Bio Bouldering ... notched up a level if it's done in the dark!

The ground around you is peat, mud, leaves, fallen trees bits, and roots of all sorts ("normal", buttress, stilted, pneumatophore, secret tripwire, etc.). The "walls" of your clambering cathedral are vines, lianas, tree trunks, small pointy plants, and branches - sometimes covered in ants or caterpillars, sometimes not. Most often, spider webs are strung up across the path to shower whoever gets to walk through the forest first that day in celebratory streamers. The invisible threads tend to go well with the confetti of dirt and leaf litter that rains down upon you all day to add to the mud, sweat, and scratches.

Some of the flora underfoot: a lovely set of pitcher plants!

But back to the Bio Bouldering. In rock climber lingo: edging, high stepping, and crimping come in handy (and footy) for your traverse. Precise foot placement is important, as you don't want to miss that slippery root you are aiming for, since a knee-deep mud hole certainly awaits your misstep. Or that seemingly-innocuous dry leaf could be covering yet another deep peat dip, so step carefully and stick to the sticks. The childhood game of "the ground is lava" comes in very handy here, as said ground is an unknown mix of mud and material in various stages of decomposition to slow your travel. Now, as many know, I am a big fan of mud, and gravitate towards it wherever I can find it. Yet this slog in the bog can be a bit heart-wrenching at times, as every sink into the substrate completely saps any forward momentum you may have had. But there's no denying the cooling capabilities of a good ol' mud wallow. Babi the forest pig might be onto something...

Many a fallen tree bar your path, so the higher your leg can reach to help pull you over, the better. Going around the downed giant is not an option, as it has a huge root structure at one end, and a massive tangle of branches at the other. Upper body strength is always welcome to aid in pulling yourself over or out of the mud, and help surmount those fallen trees. Finger and grip strength assist in these endeavors as well - at least when the tree being gripped is not fully rotten. Core body strength seems to help across the board, as balance is paramount, especially on early morning boardwalk walks.

Two boards side by side on the boardwalk is a luxury that lasts only a few dozen meters into the woods.

Two additions to make the scampering even more fun-filled are those small pointy plants, known as Pandan and Rattan. Pandan  (Pandanus sp.) is kind of like a little palm fern which can cover large swaths of the forest floor and grow taller than a person, but seems to like stopping its growth at eye height. It is covered in smallish spikes that all point outward and make bushwhacking through its green opulence a scratch-tastic experience. Those eye-level tips of the fronds are also sharpened to a spike, and have jabbed more than one wary walker right in the cornea. The only retaliation we can take against it seems to be either stepping on it at the base, thereby flattening it momentarily, or pulling it out at the root and eating the base of the plant. Not too flavorful, but it could sustain you for a time. Plus, biting down and impaling the plant with those spikes of your own tastes of sweet and refreshing revenge. 

Rattan is thankfully a less common companion in the forest, but one you don't quickly forget. It has very thin tendrils covered in very sharp spines that will ensnare you for a solid (painful) minute if you are caught unawares. The best/worst encounters are when both you and your fellow observer get caught in the same set of tendrils and alternate yelping until breaking free of the tug of war with the near-invisible menace.

After the first couple weeks, the maneuvering becomes a tad easier, and as it is the dry season, the mud holes have been shrinking. However, I haven't been in camp for several days and the rains have been coming in more frequently ... if the rain spirits decree, I'll get to soak up more thigh-high mud again soon!

A Breath of Fresh Air

Coming to you live from the edge of delicious rainforest, with this first report of life in the peat-swamp forest of Indonesia. And life is good.

The Sabangau forest and the facilities at Base Camp both are above and beyond my expectations – with a wealth of biodiversity and fun muddy terrain to greet me in the forest, and delicious food plus good company to welcome me back to camp each night. Though the highlight for me might be waking up to the singing gibbon duets almost daily ... more to come on that in a later post. 

The mosquito-free accommodations where I'll be  kicking back in for a spell.

Base camp itself has no internet access (let alone electricity for more than a few hours per day), but every couple weeks I take a day off in the nearby town of Palangka Raya to recuperate and reintegrate (briefly) into the wired world. [Hooray for US Women’s Soccer and the landing of a rover on Mars!] Blog posts are born during these brief stays in town; I head back into the great green garden again tomorrow. 

A small little pitcher plant I managed to capture and take as my prisoner.

Gaining access to the canopy-covered camp, where the orangutans dwell, has three steps:

Step 1. Take a local taxi to the outskirts of town to get to the harbor.

Kereng, the town on the edge of town. They have the boats.

Step 2. Board a klotok (small outrigger canoe) for a delightful journey down a broad river flanked by dense palm-like pandan.

The sun and the breeze are quite divine when traveling by klotok.

Step 3. Hop out of the little boat and hop into a “lorry” (mini-train) to chug up an old logging railway and reach base camp once more!

Down the track, clackity clack.

On the charismatic megafauna front, many lovely beasts have made themselves known in the forest thus far – from gibbons to a wild pig (who I think is charming) to the star of the hour and/or next six months: the orangutans! My tally to date is three separate females, each with a young baby; one juvenile male; and one shockingly large flanged male.* I am still in training, learning how to walk in the muddy forest and search for the big red apes, and how to follow them once I find them. Add in a dash of trying to identify the different individuals by sight, plus learning basic Indonesian on top of it, and you’ve got one tired new orangutan intern. A daunting learning curve to be sure, but one that requires me to sketch lots of ape faces for practice! Photos are also encouraged. The project I’ll be working on will have me trying to find as many females as I can and hopefully witness some of them interacting to gain a better sense of female social networking out here.

Mom & son (Feb & Fio), snacking on some flowers, as orangutans are wont to do.

Other fun creatures seen include a whole bunch of new birds like the Brahminy kite (looks a bit like a bald eagle), a teeny pit viper or two among other snakes, praying mantises, tree shrews, fire ant armies, macaques, turtles, and a species you’re certain to hear more about from me: red langurs – cool little monkeys that are fun to follow too!

Babi the Pig is a stunner ... staring you down out behind the kitchen.

I’ve linked this post to some of my photos up on Picasa – they sum up my time going from Jakarta to Palangka Raya to Base Camp pretty well … but are a tad lacking in forest photos as of yet. Though I tossed in some baby orangs to make up for it for now!

Small Fio learning termite etiquette.

As well as the art of true downtime.

Enjoy the photographic journal I’ve made you, and “sempai nanti” (until next time), 

Jess, signing out!

*What the heck is a flanged male you ask? Here’s a sketch I did of one a little while back: 

Flanged males: they've got big cheek pads (flanges) and throat sacs, and some also sport inspired hairdos.

Jess in Jakarta!

Jess here, out and about in a new place across the Pacific! I am dusting off this blog in an effort to record my new adventures following orangutans around the Indonesian wilderness. At present I am in Jakarta, capital of Indonesia. This post is intended as an overview of what I would be up to, if things manage to go according to plan!

       

WHERE: I am going to be living in Indonesia, an island nation (made up of ~20,000 islands) just north of Australia. Specifically, I will be on the biggest one, known as Borneo. It is shared between a few countries, and the Indonesian share is called Kalimantan, which encompasses the southern two-thirds of the island’s landmass. Within Kalimantan, I will be working in a tropical peat swamp that is part of the Sabangau Forest. Lots of acidic water, relatively “flat” marsh/land, and copious amounts of wildlife! I think. Photographic evidence forthcoming.

WHEN: I arrived in Jakarta today (19 July), where I will be until paperwork clears; once that hurdle is overcome, I shall head on over to the far less urban jungle. I'll be staying at a field station in the Sabangau Forest a large majority of the time, making forays to the nearby village/town/city of Palanga Raya every few weeks. The camp does not have internet, and so it will only be during trips into town that I may update this lovely electronic diary of my monkey-minded mania. The plan is to remain at camp until mid-December, whence I intend to begin my journey back towards the Americas. Five-ish months.

WHAT: I will be working as the orangutan intern at camp, taking part in research on mainly the orangutan population’s behavior and ranging within the Sabangau Forest. This means trekking around muddy woods staring up at apes in trees for twelve hours a day. Needless to say I am excited (mud, trees, apes, what’s not to love?). There are only two places in the world where orangutans live, and both are located within Indonesia. The islands of Borneo and Sumatra each hold one of the two subspecies, found living in pockets all over each island. I shall be endeavoring to add to humanity’s cache of knowledge regarding the Bornean orangutan.

WHO: Me, Jess extraordinaire. I will be working with an organization called the Orangutan Tropical Peatland Project, OuTrop for short. They have been monitoring orangutans at this site for nine years now, and are the reason this forest is protected as well as supported by the World Wildlife Foundation. In addition to recording “Days Of Orang Lives” as the local soap opera, they also run studies on gibbons, biodiversity, the forest ecosystem, red langurs (type of monkey), and a clouded leopard study using camera traps! Needless to say, lots of exciting things.

WHY: Getting the chance to work with orangutans has kind of been a life passion of mine. Not to mention, getting to sit and walk around a jungle for almost half a year does a naturalist’s mind good. Lots of food for  PhD. directed thought. In addition to conducting field research, I hope to squeeze in time to not only take an absurd number of photographs, but also do a fair bit of sketching!

                  

When I was in the US, I was practicing my visual observation skills by visiting zoos wherever I happened to find myself! Here are some sketches I’ve done traveling around the US…

Out in Seattle (Woodland Park Zoo):

Komodos & tapirs.

All sorts of birds.

Turtles, vipers, tree kangaroos, & horned lizards, oh my!

African oddities: the hippo & the giraffe.

Down in DC (National Zoo):

A few relatives lounging about.

Close ups of gorillas.

Menagerie of small creatures: tenrec, marmoset, burrowing owl, naked mole rat,  meerkat, oh and the not-so-small cheetah.

Sun bathing sun bear.

Around NYC (Bronx & Central Park Zoos):

Fangs & monkey frogs.

Primates, pythons, & a parrot.

Life Aquatic: puffins, a funny bird, & a seal.

Red pandas,  snow monkeys, and the emperor himself.

Hopefully this serves as enough of an intro to keep your interest for a while; I likely won’t be updating again anytime soon until I get settled in at camp, and figure out just what is required of me. But I intend to return triumphantly with smashing snapshots, daring drawings, and less embarrassing employment of the Indonesian language.

Goodbye for now! Selamat tinggal!

New Year, New Look, New News!

Oh, hey there 2011. How's it going? What's that you say? You're almost over?! And it's been exactly a year since my last post?!  Wow. Crazy how things work out sometimes.

Well then, I better get to it.  Long year short: I've been living it up in Seattle since my previous post (over a year now); I completed my superawesome scientific illustration program (I got certificated and everything...all sorts of pictures and ridiculousness can be found at the dedicated site); I am getting my barista skills on at a fantastic local coffee shop known as Fuel; I'm volunteering in a UW lab doing conservation work in the form of scat analysis (heck yes); oh, and in T minus 117 days, I will be headed to the South Pacific island nation of Indonesia to study orangutan behavior for six months. At a field station. In the jungle. So, things are pretty much business as usual for Jess.

The scariest part of all this to me is how freakishly accurate my timeline in a previous post was: 2010 Life Plan
Art school in 2011? Close enough. Tropical field internship for 2012? In the works. Grad school in 2013? That's the plan. Seeing as I have trouble structuring any given day, this disturbs me. These things are way more concrete than intended... moral of the story = be careful with the colorful flow charts I make in the future, lest they determine more of my life than I bargain for.

Anyways, I'll be soaking up as much of the Pacific Northwest life as I can until February, when I make my pilgrimage back toward Eastern shores for a bit.  Can't predict when my next post will be, but I intend to lay out a new & improved timeline for those who are curious, and there is sure to be a plethora of words and photos once I am immersed in equatorial green hell once more.

Up, Up, & Away

Fall 2010 has been rather busy as I picked up and moved across the country!

Now living in Seattle, I am enrolled in a Natural Science Illustration program at the University of Washington that lasts from October through June. And I'll have a shiny new certificate at the end to show for it! I will also have a portfolio of art work, consisting mostly of ... natural science illustrations. These pieces are attempts at accurate depictions of plants and animals that can be used in textbooks or scientific papers - or even National Geographic! (NatGeo does awesome stuff like this)

In an effort to document my work, I'll be keeping another page dedicated to Science Illustration, consisting mostly of the pieces I create for my classes these next 9 months :D Here is the link to that if you feel so inclined to check it out:

http://professorsweetlovin.blogspot.com/
(UPDATE: new site name for my blog -http://orangutangled.blogspot.com/)

In addition to taking awesome art classes, I am also searching for a job, and getting ready to move into my first ever studio apartment so that I can fully grasp how it feels to be an artiste.

Getting to Know US ... and IT

For purposes of symmetry, after a cross-country trip along latitudinal lines and a jaunt down the West Coast Amtrak-style, I needed to balance out my movements with some north-south train travel on the East Coast as well. I ventured down to Baltimore and Washington D.C. to kick off August in capital fashion, visiting with friends and family (and the free Smithsonian museums filled with awesome knowledge), and quadrupling my collection of silly bands! And then for good measure, I flew across the Atlantic to the Italian countryside with my family -- throwing my symmetrical plans all asunder. But the pasta was good.

Trips to such historic places as Pompeii, Roma, and the ever-dramatic isle of Capri left me feeling inspired by great figures of literature, and I decided to embark on an odyssey to Ithaca, in homage to Homer. But I chose the city in New York, not in the Mediterranean to drop in on once I returned to the States. And so, with trips to several states & multiple continents under my belt by the last day of the eighth month, I considered my summer travels to be a success.

This summer, I traveled. And I learned. These two great ways to love often transpire for me into appreciation of my two greatest loves, Science and Art. As I continue in my ever-elusive quest to unite my disparate passions, I certainly have traveled and learned a lot on the way. But most of all, I have loved every minute.