This morning was slow for most of us, 5 late risers stayed in bed until 8am. Doug the early bird got up and walked down to Pipeline Road while we slept. His proverbial worm turned out to be a troop of Capuchin monkeys, who rustled branches and displayed aggressive postures to assert their dominance over their territory. Steve later told us that he had once challenged a branch-wielding Capuchin by shaking a stick he was holding, only to be rushed by the monkey.
We spent the day doing some of Teri's mini-projects. Jenna and Andrea placed bowl baits to watch Drosophila copulation (to no avail), Joel and Doug keyed flies we collected in El Valle and Boquete, and Katie and Alec calculated Fisher's alpha for data sets that Teri sent us. We were also assigned the topics for our presentations, which we will give to the professors on Monday.
Dinner was at Los Lagartos, a restaurant with a deck overlooking the Chagres River. Four guys were throwing bread over the railing and turtles swarmed the water below. Before we ate, we found a crocodile hanging out at the bank of the river so we threw bread bits to a nearby bird in hopes of luring it to the croc (again, to no avail).
We wrapped up the night with Steve giving a talk about the Barro Colorado Island (BCI), which we'll be visiting tomorrow. The whole thing was pictures of adorable animals and a hilarious story about he and a colleague being chased into a tree overnight by hoard of snarling, chomping peccaries. Tomorrow should be amazing, there will be tons of pictures!
1 comment:
cannot wait to hear about September 8th entry... although i have to say that i couldn't help but envy all of you...seeing and experiencing all those animals.. and being reminded why we think that Biology is just the most exciting field in the world...
Gabriele
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