Matt's Intro to Lorises

Our new volunteer Matt is having a great time getting to know our lorises.  After only a few weeks of observations he’s already picking up the individual personality of each loris.  See an excerpt from his personal blog below:

Matt and Jennifer in the field.

The last three nights of observation have been amazing.  Each night, I’ve thought to myself wow, I’m so lucky- I’m sure they don’t get this close to the animals every night.  But each night has exceeded my expectations.  It’s just amazing to see these creatures move through the trees right before your eyes.  They seem like little teddy bears climbing through the branches, but with a precision and grace that I never thought possible. They seem to anticipate where every tree and every branch is before they reach it.  More times than once, I found myself thinking that the animal was going to slip and fall 7 meters to the forest floor below, but each time they seemed to know just the right place to grab to steady themselves and keep moving.

Each loris that I’ve observed so far has seemed to have its own distinct personality. Tahini is the most accepting of the presence of humans watching her, and just goes about her business as if nothing is amiss.  She is also a tireless climber who never seems to take breaks.  She travelled over 200m for the few hours we were observing her the other night.  

 

A curious Tahini.

 Ena is a bit older than Tahini, and definitely not as active.  When we watched her the other night, she was just curled up in a ball from 10:30-11:30pm (an hour when lorises are usually very active) just watching the world go by.  Maybe she was just looking out for her daughter, Wingki, who was climbing around 20m away.  

 

Good mother Ena.

 Charlie, who we followed last night, seemed to resent the spectators.  She (yes, Charlie is a girl!) was very alert when the red lights were on her – red parafilm is used over our spotlights so they don’t disturb the animal – and always seemed to be staring at me during the times I was staring at her.  When I turned my lights away from her to write down a data point however, she liked to high tail it out of the area I was in.   

Our girl Charlie.

Finally Mo, who we only observed from about 4:30-5:00am last night, was just getting ready for bed so I didn’t really get a good sense of his personality. There are a total of 10 lorises with the radio collars, 4 of which I have already observed.  I am looking forward to learning the personalities of all the others!

Fond Farewells and Happy Greetings

As often happens in field projects like ours, we’ve had a shuffle of old and new volunteers and PhD candidates these past few weeks.  We said goodbye to Johanna Rode who has finished with her field work and is back in England to begin the write-up of her results.  We welcomed old friend and new PhD candidate Tatiana Iseborn who will attempt to learn even more about these elusive species.  Our beloved volunteer Jennifer has left to visit family in Surabaya before heading back to America and we greeted new volunteer Matt Leonard who is currently soaking up all he can about lorises.  Many fond farewells and happy greetings for the month. 

T. Iseborn in the field.

Tatiana Iseborn completed her Master’s in Primate Conservation at Oxford Brookes University in England.  Her field studies focused on population surveys and acquisition of local hunting patterns of pygmy slow lorises in northeastern Cambodia.  While there, she closely lived and worked with Julia Hill (our field station coordinator in Java) who was completing her own Master’s project assessing the local knowledge and trade routes of local primate species.  Living and working together in the stressful conditions of the field is not easy, but these two have a strong working relationship and are looking forward to their time together in Java.

Tatiana will be continuing the nightly observations of our lorises and adding a few new research questions of her own.  Her first visit to the forest for observations was very successful and she was amazed by how easily you can spot the lorises here and was able to spend time with our loris Shirley and family.  During her time in Cambodia she was able to see only 5 lorises from afar so you can understand her excitement!

T. Iseborn schooling volunteers on insect trapping.

Great teamwork with T. Iseborn and J. Hill!

Matt Leonard comes to us from Brown University in America.  He will be staying as a volunteer for 6 weeks and assist us with our nightly data collection, education programs and online media outreach.  His enthusiasm and willingness to learn and try new things is exactly what we look for in a volunteer and we look forward to getting to know each other better in the next 1.5 months.  Lucky Matt was able to see lorises his first night in Cipaganti! 

T. Iseborn, Matt Leonard, Jennifer and tracker Aconk.

Consistency is never the norm in field work and we look forward to working and living with our new arrivals while saying a fond goodbye (for now!) to our departures.

The Horror Show: Fuel for the Fire

Juvenile long-tailed macaque.

This month there has been a lot of focus on the illegal wildlife trade in Indonesia.  Jakarta is home to some of the most notorious animal markets in the world while Bali, which claims to be a peaceful vacation destination, has civet farms and sells traditional medicine containing the body parts of endangered species.  Though many species are protected by law (e.g. Javan slow loris) this does nothing to curb the trade because there is no enforcement.   Going on market surveys is a necessary and painful part of the job which allows us to gain even more resolve and ammunition in our fight for conservation.

Entrance to animal market.

Jakarta is home to three infamous animal markets known for trading exotic and endangered species.  This week, we visited the bird and animal markets in Jatinigara.  The animals are displayed in tiny cages lined up alongside a bustling roadway.  All cages are in full sun and most have neither food nor water for the animals housed inside.  These markets cater to all manner of customer.  You can find a domestic cat or dog and for the more adventurous they offer slow lorises, monitor lizards, long-tailed macaques, owls, otters and civets.  Though we saw nearly 20 slow lorises, an infant leopard cat and 4 otter infants the sellers did not allow us to take photos of most illegal species.  You can see a wider variety of beautiful and endangered species in an animal market than you could see in a month’s worth of searching in Java’s remaining forests. 

Juvenile civet.

Infant tree shrew.

Infant long-tailed macaque.

Adult monitor lizard.

Infant turtles.

Green tree lizards.

The circumstances that these animals are presented in are heart-breaking.  Even more disturbing is the thought of how many more animals had to die in the process of capture or transport.  The faces you see in the markets are not the only victims.  Typically, several animals die in transit or due to stress of capture for every one represented in the markets.  What can be done?  Use this outrage to fuel the fire.  We are working on educating local law enforcement so that they can recognize which species are protected.  Spread the message to anyone and everyone you know that buying an animal in these markets may save one animal but will inevitably cause more captures and deaths to fuel the trade.  Know what you are buying.  Kopi luwak (civet coffee) is sold as a luxury item alongside traditional medicines containing ingredients such as slow loris bones.  Knowledge is power.  Localized education efforts in areas (like Cipaganti) where animals are often captured for the trade can put a stop to this horror show.  Working together we can make a positive impact for these animals.    

Civets, Insects and Babies Galore!

Things are beginning to settle down here after the excitement of Loris Pride Days.  This week it's back to business as usual and that means nightly treks up the mountain to observe our lorises and collect insect abundance data.  We're also lucky enough to have Peter Roberts for another week so we gained some special insights into the local civet population as well (mostly through poo samples!).  Of course, business as usual doesn't mean that life here is any less interesting or exciting.   :)

Spot the civet track.  Photo Peter Roberts.

Peter was able to collect five samples of civet scat (poo) during his time in Cipaganti.  Though this was far fewer than he had hoped to gather, we were still able to learn some interesting things about the diets of our civets.  Our scat samples included seeds from persimmon and coffee beans, body parts from grasshoppers and millipedes, and bones and feather bits from small birds.  There was also a fair amount of civet hair found within the scat that can be attributed to grooming.  Peter was also able to visually confirm at least one civet in our loris territories.  Visual confirmation is difficult because civets are also nocturnal animals but tend to jump quickly from tree to tree.  This means that observations of their behaviour can be quite difficult!  For this reason we have set camera traps to capture our crafty little civets on film.  Photos have already shown a civet with a white tip on his tail.  Individual coat variation or sign of a new subspecies in our area?  Hopefully we'll be setting out more camera traps soon to know for sure!  

Head tracker Pak Dendi setting up a camera trap.  Photo Peter Roberts.

Persimmon (top) and coffee beans found in civet scat.  Photos Peter Roberts.

Our volunteer Mark was working on his biweekly insect data collection this week.  Every two weeks he devotes three days to catching insects and puzzling together what orders the insect community of Cipaganti are made up of.  A very interesting micro-cosmos to look into, the only downside being that the mosquitoes (order Diptera, see it is not that complicated!) seem to be everywhere on your body and surrounding environment, except inside the traps. 

Mark setting our insect trap.  Photo Iing Animallica.

Even something as basic as insect collection can present difficulties because our insects use stealth and deception to keep out of the traps, and walking tea leaves or branches are not an uncommon sight!  So if you want to catch one of these trained commandos, you better be a patient and stealthy observer yourself.  A common insect in our area, and a favorite of Mark’s, is known as the Mantodea or mantis. Mantises are superb predatory beings – even amongst their own kind!  It is not uncommon to find a decapitated mantis body; the most likely scenario being that a female decapitated the male after mating.  It goes to show once again that serious male to female miscommunication is not just restricted to human beings.  ;)  

Mark displaying his favorite insect.  Photo Iing Animallica.

Curious baby Lucu!  Photo Peter Roberts.

This week was especially exciting for loris observations because we saw not one, not two, but SIX slow loris babies! Some, like Ena’s baby, came as close as seven feet to our faces! Peter was able to capture some really great shots of Ena’s baby as it boldly walked on a fallen bamboo trunk right in front of us. We saw these babies grooming high up in bamboo and jiengien (gum) trees, as well as foraging for some insects and nectar. We could tell these particular Javan slow lorises were babies by their fluffier white and black appearance and lack of radio collars. These primates are only given collars after about year, or whenever they mature into adult age, for safety purposes in their growing months. 

Our baby Lucu checking out the researchers.  Photo Peter Roberts.

A particularly interesting moment was when we saw Charlie and her baby, Lucu (which was the winning name of our previous baby loris naming contest and translates into “cute” in Indonesian), foraging for food together despite very windy conditions. These two could be seen grooming each other and cuddling together for heat and comfort high up in the trees.  Absolutely adorable? We think so!

Loris Pride Days!

Finally the event we’ve all been waiting for…Loris Pride Days are here!  An amazing week dedicated to the slow loris in our wonderful village of Cipaganti.  So many events to choose from with our football tournament (junior and senior teams), school visits, parade, kite flying, and closing ceremonies that it’s hard to know where to begin.  And don’t forget the introduction of a certain life-sized loris!

It's our very own Tereh ready to share the loris love!

The first of our big events was the football tournament and we used this opportunity to introduce our amazing new team member Tereh!  She caused quite a stir amongst the children and even some of the adults.  With a little coaxing we even managed to get Tereh to show off some of her dancing skills.  

Football committee showing off their loris pride.

Our visit to the local secondary school was a great success as well.  We visited there to introduce our new children’s book (written by Dr. Nekaris) that will be printed in Indonesian and English language versions.  During the reading, the beautiful illustrations done by Shelley Low and wonderful narrative written by Dr. Nekaris had the kids eating out of the palm of her hand!  After the book introduction it was activity time.  We had 150 students in one large room who were very well behaved and ready to make some loris-themed crafts.  Some of the students were assigned kite-making duties where they crafted kites in the local style using bamboo sticks and string for the framing and paper for the face of the kite.  For decoration they all drew loris faces that will be seen and admired high in the sky!  The other students were given beautiful Tereh and Bunga face masks to be worn during our parade. 

School children showing off their face masks.

Sunday we had the parade, adult football finals, closing ceremony and big party with traditional dance and music.  The morning started with a parade through the village where the children wore loris face masks and chanted "KUKANG!" for the whole village to hear.  During the parade, we managed to get most of the village to follow us up to the football field where we had traditional music and dance from local musicians and dance groups.  The most advanced dancers were able to perform beautiful traditional dances while swinging around a machete!  Not for the faint of heart.  :)  The final was decided by a nail-biting round of penalty kicks and the top 3 teams received trophies and loris uniforms.  After the trophy ceremony there was more dancing and traditional music (members of the LFP team even got on stage to participate!).  A wonderful time had by all and the best way to end our amazing week!

Group of local girls performing traditional dancing with traditional musicians on stage.

Party!

The Kukang Cup and Friends from Afar

This week we had two very exciting events happen in our small village.  The first was the kick-off of our Loris Football Tournament and the second was the arrival of some VIPs from England.  Never a dull moment!

On Sunday the tournament for the junior football teams from the village began.  Football is taken very seriously around here and though they are young players, they want to win!  I was amazed by how intensely some of these teams played against each other.  I’m sure many of them walked away with scratches, bumps and bruises!  Keep in mind that these are important rivalry games because all the teams come from Cipaganti.  So imagine playing your school’s biggest rival team in any sport.  Of course you want to win!  The adult tournament kicks off next week and I’m sure there will be even more blood, bruises, and scrapes.

Junior Team Ciburuy.

Junior Team Pamegatan.

Any guesses as to who the VIPs might be in our second exciting event for the week?  If you’re a fan of our Facebook page then you probably already know!  We’re lucky enough to be visited by Dr. Anna Nekaris, Dr. Vincent Nijman, Annie Fiorentino, and Peter Roberts.   Doctors Nekaris and Nijman visit the field station a few times each year to check on our study animals, discuss our goals, promote conservation locally and with law enforcement officials, and to have fun!  This year the big fun will be during our Loris Pride Days (June 13-16) where we will have a parade, football tournament, kite-flying tournament and official closing trophy ceremony.  We are all eager for it to begin!

Peter, Annie, and Dr. Nekaris arrive in Cipaganti.

Annie is a wonderful writer and journalist from the UK who is accompanying Dr. Nekaris to document her time in Cipaganti and help promote the loris love.  Some of our newsletter readers will already be familiar with Annie's work.  Peter is our new PhD candidate and will be doing population surveys of civets and taking a closer look at the trade for luxury coffee beans (e.g. coffee that’s been eaten and pooped out by a civet!).

Stay tuned next week for a look at our amazing Loris Pride Days! 

Kukang!

This week we had a fun visit at the local primary school.  The mission of this visit was to have the children make drawings of lorises to use as decorations for the vending booths we will use during our Loris Pride Days.  So for each classroom (4 total from 2 different schools) we had all the children draw a picture of a loris.  The other mission was to gather another baby name for our ever-expanding population of lorises.  For this we had each child write the name of their loris on their drawing paper. 

The arrival of foreigners always causes a stir in the village, but we were soon mobbed by curious (and very shy!) children at the entrance of the school.  I managed to get a few smiles and words of greeting from the shy mob before we headed toward our first classroom.  As soon as we walked into the classroom, the children were immediately silent but almost squirming in their seats from excitement.  After introductions and explanations from Iing (our part-time education correspondent) and Pak Dendi (our head tracker and manager-in-training) the children were starting their drawings.

Some of the children were very talented and confident in their drawing while others were more shy.  Of course, any time a foreigner got close enough to look at their progress they would stop drawing or cover their work from shyness.  Funnily enough, the girl who was the most shy about her drawing had the best picture!  It was amazing!  Done all in pencil but showing very advanced talent for her age (see below).

The next day we came back to the school to announce the winners of the drawing contest and hand out prizes.  We had first, second and third prize winners from each school.  The children were extremely enthusiastic and now have some very positive memories associated with the kukang (loris).  Finding a winner for the baby name contest will take a little more time and maybe some help from our fantastic LFP fans!  Stay tuned for that one.

I look forward to many more school visits in future and hopefully the children will learn to not be so shy around us!

P.S.  This week Jennifer managed to get up close and personal with actual lorises!  See the link to her blog for a personal account of her time in Cipaganti.

New Friends, Mud Slides, and a Closer Look at Poo

This week we welcomed a new volunteer to the LFP field station – Jennifer Margono.  Jennifer comes from Duke University in the USA and will be staying with us for 2 months to assist in loris observation and education programs.  Jennifer has a family connection to Indonesia and so speaks a bit of the local language.  We plan on putting her to good use!  J

Jennifer’s first attempted visit to the loris habitat was not very successful.  May is meant to be the beginning of the dry season in Java, but someone forgot to tell Mother Nature this!  For the past few weeks, we have had some of the worst rains of the year.  After an already long rainy season, the ground is very saturated with water.  This means, that all this extra water is causing mudslides and flooding.  So far, the habitat of our lorises has not been directly impacted by the large mudslides, but we will have to be very careful if this rain continues.

View of large mudslide from field station.

This is why when it began to rain on Jennifer’s first visit to our observation area we made the quick decision to head back down the mountain.  The path down the mountain is always difficult and slippery when raining, but with all the extra water our path turned into a rushing stream!  Somehow with a little luck (and being creative with our route) we made it back down the mountain without having to slide down on our bums!  So no official loris sitings for Jennifer yet.

Luckily (or unluckily?) for Jennifer, her first in-depth exposure to lorises came through poo samples!  We have fecal samples from each of our study animals and this week we are taking a very close look at the diet of our lorises.  The easiest way to assess diet is by looking at what comes out the other end of the animal...poo!  We made a very official laboratory in our common room and the analysis began! 

Volunteers Mark and Jennifer with PhD candidate Johanna taking a closer look at fecal samples.

At first it took a very long time to process each sample, but we developed a good system and started to move along at a decent pace.  With help from some interesting lighting arrangements, magnifying glasses, and a microscope, we were able to identify a few things.  The easiest to identify were insect legs and parasites (worms).  We also found evidence of gum, tree bark, and some other miscellaneous insect bits.  This confirms some things that we already know about the diet of our lorises.  We are not entomologists so insect identification from legs and bits of shell is not possible, but we are hoping to have an expert look at the bits we pulled from the poo.  Then perhaps we can get an even better idea of what our little firefaces are eating out there in the forest!

Our 'official' lighting set-up.

Up close and personal with loris poo!

Welcome! Selamat datang!

Welcome to the new Little Fireface Project blog!  Jo will be leaving Java soon for the write-up of her PhD research and so we will have new postings from various members of the Kukang team.  Look for our weekly highlights and news regarding the lives of our lorises.  For now, please visit www.nocturama.org to get an overview of the project and learn more about our team members.  Please stay tuned!