Friday, 9th July. Semliki Time: 3:22pm

Alex got up today at the far more reasonable time of six thirty and, having had a good seven hours sleep, I joined her five minutes later. With the help of a menthol strepsil, I managed to use the dugout without throwing up for the first time. The waft of faeces is banished by the smell of eucalyptus, but the warmth that radiated from the steaming pile of dung at the bottom of the pit still turned my stomach a bit. Not to complain though – the dugout here is western style (you can sit on it) and even has toilet paper – compared to how things could be, it's a practical throne. After a delicious breakfast of chapattis and coffee, we headed into the forest. The ranks of similar looking trees, branches and vines seemed only slightly less confusing and overwhelmingly leafy today but I am making progress in my ability to spot wild animals. I still lag behind Alex, who spots them almost without thinking, but I managed to distinguish several monkeys and even a few birds from the mess of greenery. Black and white colobus monkeys are particularly charming and have cute little white faces, black ears and long, bushy, black and white tails. They also seemed to appear everywhere we went on today’s walk and we ended up seeing about six. If my project were on the time it takes for a colobus to run away from you once its spotted you, I’d be up to my ears in data already.

As the Semliki park lies at the very bottom of the Rwanzori mountains, three of the forest’s trails are on very steep slopes. By trails here I mean barely trodden dusty paths that slip away when you tread on them and by very steep slope I mean sharp 75 degree inclines with pointy rocks at the bottom. These seem to faze Alex and the rangers not at all. I, on the other hand, could not banish the possibly quite rational fear that I was just a step away from my untimely demise. During todays dice with dusty death, I almost slipped twice and by the end was so completely loaded with adrenaline that my legs were wobbling. “You are very tired” our guide periodically noted, but in truth I was sweating with fear at the thought of the all-too imminently approaching here-after. After one particularly disturbing slip, he began to realise that my co-ordination might not quite be my best feature and slowed his pace down a little. Chimpanzees apparently visit the slopes regularly so we will be going there quite often. With luck I shan’t be brought home in a body-bag, but one must suffer for one’s art.

Back in camp now and, after boasting to Alex about my imperiousness to insects, I’ve finally been bitten by a tsetse fly. Twice. Truth be told, it was rather an anti-climax. My dad has, on many occasions, explained their powerful bite. Gerald Durrell, Evans-Pritchard and Nigel Barley all waxed lyrical about the sting on the tsetse and, from the moment we arrived, the rangers and the camp staff have told us to be very careful of the vicious insects. All things put together, I was somehow expecting the pain of 1000 bees, followed by a swollen leg and possible amputation. While the tsetse fly’s bite is certainly not pleasant, its no worse than pricking yourself with a needle and the pain soon wears off once you’ve squashed the blood-sucker. What the tsetse lacks in power it certainly makes up for in ferocity, tenacity and number. The camp and the jungle are swarming with them and once they’ve scented you, they won’t leave until hit or squashed.

Sadly, no chimpanzees, though we did see two of the wells on which Alex is basing her project. Chimpanzees drink water from wells they dig themselves in the silt. Confusingly they do this both when the water table is low and there’s no river running AND when the river is bubbling away a mere few centimetres from the well. Even more confusingly, apart from a slight difference PH, no difference has been found between the quality and composition of the river water and that which filters through the sand in the well. Alex has brought all kinds of exciting kit to test for other variables such as bacterial content, but my own hypothesis is that well-digging has become a habitual behaviour. Chimpanzees dug wells during the dry season to get water, the behaviour spread and, when the water came back, well digging was already a customary behaviour, its ultimate purpose forgotten. A kinda behavioural spandrel! That is to say, well digging during the rainy season is a byproduct of the need to dig wells during the dry season. This theory is countered somewhat by the fact that Chimps have been shown to generally copy the purpose of a task rather than mechanism, but a couple of papers published by Whiten show that mechanism transmission can be important also. At least in labs.

Anyway, enough about that. Suffice to say that all is well with the wells, we are all well and that’s all well and good! With any luck, there will be chimps tomorrow. Now, back to chapter five of ‘Measuring Behaviour” where I will bask in the joy of knowing which situation in which to scan sample and when using a focal sample is the best way to roll. In the mean time, keep well.


Steps walked:
28,000

Times I nearly fell to a bloody death:
2

Critter Count:
Emerald Tree Snake (1)
Red-tail Monkeys (2)
Black and White Colobus Monkeys (6)
Monitor Lizard (1)
Ibis (1)
Blood-sucking Insects (Plenty)