Monkeying Around

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...

 Konichiwa and thanks for joining me for my 2nd update!  Project Update      We are currently awaiting some approvals of protocol and had to meet with keepers to talk logistics. Although not always exciting, science moves slowly, carefully, and ever onward. I did successfully build our testing apparatus for the smaller species (pictured below)! We will probably have another one or two bigger models so bigger species, likes chimps, can receive a bigger food reward and don't completely destroy it! We are going to be testing one portion of primate cognition -- whether they can tell the difference between different quantities of food or not. So to test this we needed a platform they can make clear choices from. Nothing fancy but proof from last time that I was able to construct our choice apparatus.     After some more consultations with keepers, we're hoping to start testing mid to late next week. The first three species we'll be starting with are ring-ta...

Konichiwa! Thanks for joining me on my adventures in Japan this summer! I'll be posting every weekend for the next 9 weeks. In general, you can expect a good mix of science and cultural experiences with plenty of pictures of both! This first post is going to be heavy on the culture since I just arrived 3 days ago. So to start things off: Why am I in Japan this summer?     I received a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Fellowship to perform scientific research. JSPS uses these fellowships to further scientific research and build lasting collaborations and relationships with scientists across the globe. So huge thanks to them for this opportunity! Okay...So What's the Science?     I'll be spending the next 9 weeks under Dr. Misato Hayashi  at the Japan Monkey Centre . We'll be comparing the cognition of different primate species across groups (so our goal is to use lemurs, monkeys, and apes). This weekend I'm starting construction of our test...