Profile

Now that my science project (my phd) is finished, I work at Aberdeen University where I teach. This means I spent a lot of time preparing my classes, thinking of exciting ways to teach (sometimes boring) theory and come up with new and interesting methods of teaching. I also have to make exams and mark all the work that I give to my students! I teach students about animal behaviour, about animal ecology and wildlife management. This means I also have to read a lot myself, to keep up to date with what is going on, especially in the area that I live in. So I spent time reading journals with articles especially on these topics and I also spent a lot of time on internet finding information about these things.

I have always enjoyed teaching. When I was still in high school I taught wind surfing to young children. During university I was already helping out with some courses and after I finished my phd I’ve taken time off to go to Cambodia where I taught English to young school children. It is very challenging and rewarding to teach and trying to engage students, because, as you’ll all know, this is not always easy!

When I was in the field to study monkeys, I spent the whole day following a troop (a group) of baboons in South Africa. I lived in a little house up a mountain, so I was close to the baboons. The house had a gas stove in it and the shower was outside. If I wanted hot water, I first had to light a fire in what was called “a donkey” .. not the animal, but a fire hole under a water tank!

I would use a little handheld computer to collect information on their behaviour. I looked for example, at who was grooming who. Grooming means they are cleaning eachothers (or their own) fur and taking out all little bugs and insects that live there! To do so, I had to be able to recognize all the different individual troop members and so I gave every baboon a name. They can look just like a little family unit!

Before I started doing my own research, I worked as a volunteer research assistant in Namibia. In this project, baboons were trapped in cages and a vet would sedate the animals and we would take measurements. We also cut little pieces out of either of their ears at different heights (low, middle and high) to be able to recognise them all and to obtain DNA samples. With DNA samples (the tissue from their ears) we could figure out who was related to who. I put some photos from the trapping up and will try also to upload a video about this as it is very special occasion (not very typical at all)!

Working outside the whole day is very exciting, but it can also be very hard. I had to go out every day, also if it rained and I had to get to where ever the troop was sleeping that night before the sun came up (and sometimes this could mean a 2 hour walk in the dark!). When I would loose the baboon troop, it ment I would just be walking around the whole day trying to find them. Luckily there were volunteers (field assistants) helping me. On some days things would go all wrong and I didn’t feel so lucky. One day I fell off a rock and hurt my ankle and my head pretty bad and I couldn’t work for a few weeks after that. Also, in the area where I was working there are many snakes, so I always had to be careful and watch out not to get bitten. For exampe, below you see a young spitting cobra and these snakes don’t bite, but “spit” their poison at you (aiming at your eyes). Thankfully this happened to me only once and because it was just a young snake it wasn’t so harmful.

Once I collected all the information in the field that I needed, I travelled back to the UK. I did my research at Durham University in England. Here I had an office that I shared with other students. My days were made up mostly of sitting behind the computer (thinking back to those nice days with the baboons!). When you do research, you have to do a lot of reading. You read about what other scientist have done and how they have done it, to make sure that you are not just copying their research (it’s no point if somebody else has already done it). Sometimes reading about how other people did their research, this gives you ideas of how to do yours and you can use the same methods. You also need to read a lot because once you have put all your information into a computer and analysed this, then you need to interpret your results. To do this, it is good to know what other people have already found out about the topic your studying.