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Research Adventures in Japan Chapter 9: A Summer Well Spent

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 Konichiwa and sorry for the MAJOR delay in my final update. For some reason it took me a bit longer to adjust to being back than it did for me being gone! Research Update   We collected data from pileated and white-handed gibbons. They quickly became one of my favorites (I don't think they overtook ring-tailed lemurs but it's a solid tie!)! These gentle apes were full of curiosity and personality. We had storms come through during data collection two of the days and not a single of the seven gibbons I worked with would stay out in the rain with me for some peanuts. Every single one of them retreated to the trees while I got soaked! They were a great species for me to end my research on but we're hoping the study will continue with the help of current JMC staff and future students! It was so great working Drs. Hayahsi, Tomonaga, Shintaku, plus all of the great staff at the JMC, so thank you so much to all of them!!! This was one of the first buildings I saw when I got into ...
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Research Adventures in Japan Chapter 8: Swinging in Toward the Finish Line

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 Konichiwa and thanks for sticking with me until week 8! I will be flying out of the country next Thursday so there will only be one more update! Research Update   We continue working with the chimpanzees but they are less interested in the tasks than the other species. We have started preparing to test gibbons, another ape species. Gibbons are really interesting because they are the most speciose ape genus (~16 species) and they are the only one that uses brachiation (swinging from arm to arm -- they'd be awesome at monkey bars!) as their main mode of travel. So they don't get in the way, their thumbs are very small. A siamang infant and her parents. JMC Within the same family as gibbons are siamangs. They're built very similarly to gibbons but are larger and have throat sack that help them sing! The main topic of their songs "It's my territory and I can cry if I want to" or something like that...The main purpose of their songs is to establish their territory...
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Research Adventures in Japan Chapter 7: Fish and Chimps

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Konichiwa and welcome to week 7!  Research Update   This week I started collecting data from chimpanzees with the help of Dr. Tomonaga. Chimps are our closest living relative and have been seen -- both in the wild and captivity -- with some of the most extraordinary "advanced" behaviors so I was really excited to work with them for the first time. In the wild, chimps have been seen to use sticks as termite dip-sticks, use "spears" when hunting smaller primates, and have border patrols between their and other chimp groups' territories. Additionally, not a behavior unique to chimps, but seen more in captive chimps than other primates, is feces throwing. This can be used to communicate a variety of things including social status or just trying to get some one's attention. I experienced this behavior firsthand for the first time this week and was very lucky the chimp trying to get my attention missed me! One of the chimps at JMC showing off his lettuce -- I know...
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Research Adventures in Japan Chapter 6: History and Fish

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 Konichiwa and welcome to my 6th update! Project Update This week we collected data from another Japanese macaque to help boost our sample size. I've redone data analysis with our new samples and results are still fitting into the literature! We're meeting with the mandrill and chimpanzee keepers to plan out data collection for this week. It will be my first time working with a great ape (I've previously worked with "lesser" apes which are gibbons). Sekigahara Historical Battlefield Sekigahara (Gifu province) is a small town of ~8,000 people in central Japan. It's situated in a valley surrounded by tall peaks, at least for a Midwesterner used to flat cropland. You might not be surprised that it doesn't pop up on the top tourist blogs or Google searches of "What to do in Japan." However, this valley was the site of one of the most important battles in Japanese history! Sekigahara has a museum about the battle. On your walk from the train station t...
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Research Adventures in Japan Chapter 5: The Old World

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 Konichiwa and welcome to my 5th update! Project Update We collected data from 5 more individuals this week! Three Japanese macaques and two mandrills. Both of these species are considered Old World Monkeys (OWM). Another thing both of these species share is red coloration driven by sexual selection -- so males in both species who have redder skin are preferred by females and are more dominant in social groups. However, the blue color of male mandrills is yet to be explained. Their coloration is so striking that Charles Darwin wrote in his T he Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex,  "no other member in the whole class of mammals is coloured in so extraordinary a manner as the adult male mandrill". There is one famous mandrill for us 90's kids, and that's Rafiki from The Lion King (if you're one of those folks who think he's a completely made up monkey, look at the live action version -- he's definitely a mandrill). A male mandrill from JMC -- j...
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Research Adventures in Japan Chapter 4: Numbers and Museums

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Konichiwa and welcome to my 4th update! Project Update This week I finished data collection for the marmosets and lemurs! Whew! Two species down! I did some quick data analysis just to check how the preliminary results are looking. I don't want to ruin any possible publications so we'll just say that the data is fitting into the existing literature which is good! We've set up a meeting with the macaque keepers for Wednesday and should be starting our next species soon. Meiji Mura Since I had a few days off I made a couple of day trips to near by locations. The first was Meiji Mura which is a collections of over 60 Meiji period (1868-1912)  buildings mostly from Japan but also from places like America (in those cases they're building built or used by Japanese immigrants). Some of the buildings were famous individuals' residences while others are just examples of what buildings would have looked like during the period. There's several restaurants with both modern ...
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Research Adventures in Japan Chapter 3: Leaping Lemurs and "American" Eats

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Yokoso (welcome!) and thanks for joining me for my 3rd update!  Project Update This week I trained the lemurs and marmosets how to make selections and started trials. I've had the help of two wonderful researchers at the JMC Drs. Masaki Tomonaga & Yuta Shintaku  who study primate cognition and morphology respectively. I've collected all of the data for two lemurs and two marmosets and partial data for a couple of marmosets. These guys have lots of personality and their interest in interacting with me, how excited they are about the testing apparatus, and how long their attention span lasts varies a lot individual to individual! I don't have a lot of pictures of the actual research since I'm handling food and have gloves on covered in mashed fruit and crickets most of the time -- sorry!  I did also walk through the center to plan how to test the larger primates. The facility has over 50 species of primates -- the largest variety in the world! Some famous resident...
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