One of my favorite things to do is to lead a class on an outdoor field trip. If I could get paid for any job in the world, that would be the job, that or being the next David Attenborough! Today, even though I didn't get paid and I'm not even an official GSI (graduate student instructor), I did get to co-lead the Behavioral Ecology class at Berkeley on a field trip to Point Reyes National Seashore, one of the most beautiful pieces of land here in northern California.
The class is learning about how biologists study animal behavior, in class, in lab and in the field. My advisor, Eileen Lacey, is the professor, and together with the two GSI's, we took them to a place called Chimney Rock, famous for the elephant seal haul out where male seals establish territories in order to watch over their harem. The students got a chance to observe males duking it out for access to the females who had finished nursing their pups and were going into estrous.
Elephant seals are amazing marine mammals. They can dive to depths of 2000 feet and hold their breath for half an hour. Some have surpassed even that. Their physiology is the subject of many studies and scientists are continually intrigued by how they are able to withstand the tremendous pressures of the deep sea. Elephant seals haul out for a period of time twice a year, in the winter for breeding and in the summer for molting. The rest of the time, they are out to sea feeding. The males head off toward the Aleutians while the females feed in the open Pacific or Hawaii. These animals were once hunted to near extinction but after given official protection, have rebounded to substantial population numbers and are still growing.
The purpose of today's field trip was to give the students a chance to observe elephant seal behavior, to construct an ethogram by naming and defining behaviors, and then to ask a question and develop hypotheses about interactions between males and females, males and males, females and females. Next, they were to choose one of 3 data collecting techniques they had learned about earlier in orde
r to answer their question. Finally, they were to collect the data, which we would analyze later. Designing a research project is pretty difficult, even for those of us who do it regularly. For many of these students, it was the first time. However, they did great and I think they learned a lot. The seals did great, too, and gave us a lot of behaviors to watch. We saw some serious fighting. We saw some serious mating. We heard some crazy vocalizations. And we had a great time. On top of that, the sun came out! What a way to spend a Saturday in the middle of February!
So, I'm diverting a bit from Argentina to go to Africa... ok, not really. Believe it or not, we have hyenas in Berkeley! Today, our sophomore seminar class went to visit them at the field station in the hills behind campus. These are some of the most amazing beasts I have ever seen, and though I've been privileged to get to visit them fairly often with class field trips, it never ceases to amaze me how cool these guys are, especially for those of us who study hormones and behavior.
The spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta) is native to Kenya but for the past 25 years, there's been a colony housed in a large facility above campus. One of their big claims to fame is the high levels of androgens that are present in females, causing masculinization of the genitalia. In other words, the girls don't look much different than the boys! Hyenas live in a female dominated society where the higher you are in rank, the better access to food and other resources you have. Males disperse from their natal colony to seek matings with females from other colonies. The lucky ones get the higher ranked females, whose offspring will inherit the rank of their mom.
The benefits of this abundance of androgens is that females are large and powerful but there are costs too. Birthing cubs is extremely difficult and often, the first cub to be born dies. If more than one cub is born, they come out fighting, sometimes to the death ... having been bathed in utero in this hormone that seems to be associated with aggression. Much of this research has been done using the hyena colony at Berkeley, and in fact, it is the only one of its kind in the world.
Hyenas are fascinating and as much as I would love to pet one, their massive jaws warn me off, especially after watching a demonstration of their ability to crush huge cow bones. Still, the Berkeley hyenas seem to have a playfulness that I can enjoy behind the fence. Their whooping and laughing and chasing one another are fun to watch on any day in Berkeley... as it was today.
So, while we were in the high mountains of central Argentina to study the tucos, they weren't the only mammal to inhabit that region. Two different camelid species can be found, the vicuna and the llama.
Llamas are raised for their wool and meat, and they were everywhere. Often they grazed quite close to our tents and we would waken to the sound of crunching and munching. Vicunas were pretty abundant too but much more skittish. They resemble the guanacos we see in Patagonia and their behaviors are quite similar. We saw young males chasing one another with the typical style of lowering their heads and charging.
One of my favorite mammals, which we found scurrying around the galpon, or storage building where we did our cooking, was the cuy, a cute little wild guinea pig. I tried to get close but these guys are extremely shy and would run into a nearby hole or tunnel to hide. This picture was actually taken through the window of the galpon. 
We also saw lots of birds, many new species that I had not seen before, but also familiar ones. The area is known for a large laguna that attracts thousands of flamingos and we often saw flocks of them flying overhead. On the tuco field, an interesting combo of birds, lizards, and frogs shared the large gravelly bed and the holes where the tucos lived. We saw lizards chasing birds and birds hopping after tucos. This was definitely a strange, new Argentina that I had not expected but which is full of possibilities for those of us interested in animal behavior!
One of my favorite things to do is to lead a class on an outdoor field trip. If I could get paid for any job in the world, that would be the job, that or being the next David Attenborough! Today, even though I didn't get paid and I'm not even an official GSI (graduate student instructor), I did get to co-lead the Behavioral Ecology class at Berkeley on a field trip to Point Reyes National Seashore, one of the most beautiful pieces of land here in northern California.
r to answer their question. Finally, they were to collect the data, which we would analyze later. Designing a research project is pretty difficult, even for those of us who do it regularly. For many of these students, it was the first time. However, they did great and I think they learned a lot. The seals did great, too, and gave us a lot of behaviors to watch. We saw some serious fighting. We saw some serious mating. We heard some crazy vocalizations. And we had a great time. On top of that, the sun came out! What a way to spend a Saturday in the middle of February!
