If you give a turtle a toy...

      This blog is about reading I did from my wildlife behavior textbook. I read the chapter about playing; it opens with a story of a turtle named Pigface who would "play" with balls and hoops placed in his enclosure. This livened up his bland habitat and stopped Pigface from clawing his own face and limbs - something he did before toys were introduced. Animals playing is an understudied subject...it kind of goes along with the idea of animal intelligence - are animals really thinking and figuring things out? Are they really playing just because it is fun? It is also understudied because it seems to have no evolutionary function and it is unclear what its function really is. I am interested in animal play, especially when it comes to playing with humans. Do zoo keepers play with the animals in the zoo? Does this strengthen relationships? What purpose does it serve for the animals?
    The reading defines play as this - "all motor activity performed postnatally that appears to be purposeless, in which motor patterns from other contexts may be used in modified forms and altered temporal sequencing. If the activity is directed toward another living being it is called social play." I love how they can turn play into this dense, scientific sounding thing! But I guess it does make sense...an example I think of immediately is my cats wrestling with and chasing each other. They are playing, but the motor activities used in play could be used to take down a mouse. What makes play purposeless? (Can't it just be for fun?) The book lists three ways activity can be construed as purposeless - the observers just don't know what is going on and can't see what the immediate benefit of play is; the purpose and benefit of play might not be immediately forthcoming; the benefits may be multiple and confouding. So all of these deal with a benefit existing, just not being readily apparent. I guess play can't be just for fun...
    There are several types of play. Object play is playing with inanimate objects like sticks, rocks, balls, leaves etc. The book provided several examples of animals playing with objects...cheetahs, for example, seemed to benefit from playing in that they were more successful going after live prey released by their mother than cheetahs who did not play as much. So object play can teach animals to hunt and survive in the wild. In a zoo environment, where the animal does not have to hunt, why do they encourage playing? Do they encourage playing?
    Another type of play is locomotor play - this includes leaping, twists, jumps, shakes, whirls, somersaults. Yes, my textbook said whirls. Some benefits of this kind of play include better brain development in the part of the brain that controls limb coordination. This makes sense and would also benefit the animal when it came to hunting or fleeing predators. Another type of play is social play, or playing with others. This in particular applies to my project, because I want to know if zoo keepers play with zoo animals and how that affects/benefits both parties. There are three functions of social play - it can lead to forging of long-lasting social bonds; it provides necessary physical skills; and it may aid in the development of cognitive skills.
     Okay, so what really is the function of play? A general theory is that play "functions to increase the veratility of movements used to recover from sudden shocks such as loss of balance, etc...and enhances the ability of animals to cope emotionally with unexpected or stressful situations." So in a zoo, where the habitat is controlled, the food is provided, and unexpected situations are very rare, what is the purpose of play? I guess animals do have to deal with humans, which can bring some unexpected situations - visits to the vet, other health care procedures, interactions with zoo visitors. So there may be some unexpected situations an animal needs to be prepared for. Personally, I think animals need to play and develop those motor skills and brain skills even if they don't really need them. It is an interesting ethical question....People want to go to the zoo to see animals acting like they would in the wild - that is when it is exciting - so maybe just as a money making tool animals need to be allowed to play or given the opportunity to play in zoos. I want to add a question about play onto my interviews - does the zoo keeper play with or notice the animals in their care playing? Do they think playing is benefical to these animals, even though they live in an artifial and controlled environment? Is it important for animal welfare that they play and develop?

Participant Observation

      In Monday's class we talked more about Participant Observation and all the things that go into participant observation. I want to really apply all of those things to my specific study, so here goes. First I will name some part of preparing for or doing participant observation and then I will discuss how it pertains to my field study.

Learning language - I am not planning on learning any Xhosa or Afrikaans before going, but I would definitely like to learn some while I am there.

Build memory - I liked the exercise suggested in the reading where you walk past a store window and try to observe all the things in the window and then go back to and see what things you missed. Basically I need to become Shawn, from Psych, and become good at noticing and remembering things. This will be helpful in every field study situation.

Explicit awareness - I would like to practice becoming more aware of my own actions and really think before I act or speak,  especially because I can be a little impulsive when I get excited about something. If I am able to go and observe at the zoo, what kinds of things will I need to be aware of? Animal behavior - is the animal active/inactive, shy/confident, excited/bored?  How am I going to tell how it is feeling....I think mostly from its body language. Zoo keeper behavior is another thing I'll be watching for....how they act around the animals, smiling, pet names, touching, playing, etc.

Insider/outsider and hanging out - a lot of my time is going to be spent "hanging out" at the zoo. I want to be comfortable with the people and the animals there, and I want them to be comfortable with me, willing to answer questions, willing to let me help them do stuff.

A huge part of participant observation is what sort of social situtation you are participating in/observing. Ashley talked about several different things that go into your ability to participate...

Simplicity - some parts of observing at the zoo will be hard, others easy. If I just went as a normal zoo goer, but spent a lot more time looking at the animals than normal zoo goers did...that would not be hard, I wouldn't be bothering anyone. But I would also like to observe some of the more behind-the-scenes stuff - cleaning cages, feeding animals, checking animal health etc., and that might be harder to observe.

Frequently recurring - The activities at the zoo will be frequently recurring, so that should not be a problem.

Permissible - Will it be permissible for me to help out with things? I am hoping I will get permission to do some hands on stuff with the animals and zoo keepers, or at least get permission to observe more.

Accessible - Kind of the same as permissible, once I have permission, it won't be hard to get access to behind-the-scene locations. The zoo itself is pretty accessible, if I attend as a normal zoo goer.

Unobtrusive - Depends on the situation too. If I am just standing outside of cages watching things, I am not obtruding. If I am trying to help clean a bear's teeth or get a knot out of a giraffe's neck...that might be a little more obtrusive, both for the animals and the people who normally do those kinds of things : )

Zookeepers and Their Animals

Thanks to class on Friday, I think I really know what I would like to do my project about - the relationship of zookeepers/zooworkers with the animals that they care for. I've had so many different ideas for this project and had to choose something much more narrow or specific to study. As I was discussing my ideas with Holly and Heather I realized that what I really wanted to spend my time doing was being around animals and being around the people who worked with those animals. Voila, study their interactions and relationships! I'm going to do a mini version of what we did on Friday. Heather asked us three questions - what is our field project; how are we going to study it; and who are we going to work with in order to study it.

What - Study the relationship between zookeepers and zoo animals. What kinds of things do zookeepers do? Do they become attached to the animals they are working with? Do they give them personalities or try to keep things impersonal? Do they have much interaction with the animals? How do the animals respond to them, do they  treat different zoo keepers differently, or show preference? How can I tell if the animals are doing that?

How - Shadow/interview the zoo keepers at the East London Zoo and/or Lion Park. Go with them throughout the day to see their routines.

Who - Zoo keepers and administrators and zoo animals.

I am really quite excited about this!!! I just hope that the zoo will let me do this stuff and that the zoo keepers won't mind me tagging along. I would really like to help them do their jobs. So that is the new direction of my project, I will now start looking in the literature for anything about zoo animal/worker relationships.

"Going Native"

In Friday’s class we discussed how you design a field study project. There is so much that goes into this process! We discussed different problems with field studies; different ways being in the field can limit a study. One of the things mentioned in the reading was the idea of “going native.” With a field study, one must decide whether to become a full participant in whatever is being studied, or to just sit back and observe. These have pros and cons. Joining in with the project can change how people act or how events would actually unfold. And you run the risk of “going native”, of completely adopting the lifestyle or opinions of whatever you are studying, which makes it hard to analyze that behavior. I just liked this phrase, because I am going to South Africa where I am hoping to study wildlife, so going native for me would be like running off with a lion pride to roam the savannahs.

So, field study project! As I’ve been reading more articles, I think I can almost see a project idea emerging. I just read an article about observing captive animals and designing zoo enclosures around their needs. That would combine animal behavior with zoos…in class we also talked about taking advantage of a field study. What is the point of going half way across the world to study something? In my case, what is the benefit of going to South Africa to study zoos? It would just be amazing to say I had studied wildlife in Africa (wildlife biologist’s dream, remember), but how can I tie in the culture of East London with a zoo study? I think one way to do this would be to look at South Africa’s conservation history. Zoos are supposed to be closely related to conservation work, so I could look at the conservation work that has been done in South Africa (which apparently has a good history of that kind of stuff) and see if zoos play into that conservation work at all. Things to think about…

Questions, Questions, Questions

This entry is going to include a couple things. First of all, the questions I wrote as part of the “25 Question” assignment.  Then I discuss my Project Question, or in my case questions. And I will close with some thoughts on what we talked about in Friday’s small group class.

25 Questions – roughly. If I have learned the answer since I first thought of these questions, I included it in parentheses.

1.       What are the exact dates for the trip? (To be determined by the group)

2.       What is the food like? (Comparable to American food, at least you can find all the same foods there)

3.       What are the grocery stores like? (I saw a picture of the lovely Pic n’ Pay – looks like a grocery store!)

4.       Do people mostly speak English or Afrikaans or something else? Is it hard to understand people’s accents? (Mostly English?)

5.       Are white people the minority in East London?

6.       Will the zoo or lion park let me work with them and the animals?

7.       How do we contact people – like at the zoo or lion park?

8.       Can I be around animals enough to study some behavioral ecology?

9.       Can I handle the animals in any way?

10.   If so, can I do my own animal restraint course, like the one here at BYU?

11.   What do the conservation groups do in the community?

12.   If I worked with a conservation group, would I be doing desk work or presentations or researching things or out teaching people?

13.   Can I get out to the reserves that are around East London?

14.   Can I spend a significant amount of time on those reserves?

15.   How do I develop course contracts with upper level, more specific classes?

16.   Can I bring my lap top? (Yes – they have internet cafes and power converters)

17.   How would I get credit for an academic internship in South Africa?

18.   Can I split my time between a conservation group and the zoo/lion park?

19.   How could I be in a position to really observe animals?

20.   What scholarships are available for this kind of thing?

21.   Can I bring books and study from them and get credits for classes even if my project/research doesn’t deal directly with that subject?

22.   How will all of this (course contracts, main project) be graded?

23.   Will people be willing to take someone as inexperienced as me and train me to work with animals?

24.   Can I go do something on the animal rehabilitation farm that Heather mentioned?

25.   What other jobs are done at zoos – vet, cage cleaner, administration…who feeds the animals?

26.   Do they get more exercise/interaction than their cages might allow? Do they get the amount that they need? How much do they need?

27.   How do animals in the zoo compare to animals in the wild in health, behavior, happiness – can contentment be measured?

So, those are some of the questions I came up with when I first sat down to really think about this field study.

We are also supposed to post a Project Question. I do not have this question beautifully phrased in a way that encapsulates all that I would like to do, but I do have several questions that hopefully will merge into the greater Project Question. I know that I want to do something with animals and animal behavior. I am interested in learning how zoos work, clearly. I could research all the parts that go into making a zoo – the people that come to visit the animals, the animals, their interactions, the duties of the people working there, how a zoo is run and maintained and paid for, where the animals come from, their health etc. in relation to wild animals. 

For the last week or two I have been reading all about ethology, the study of animal behavior. This is something that has always fascinated me – goes back to the Jane Goodall method, where these amazing people live with and observe animals and figure out what makes them tick. We know that animals do not have emotions, or at least they do not have the capacity to realize they have emotions and then be driven by those emotions to do some action. I mean, a dog does not feel bad when the dog across the street does not want to play, causing our dog to go and mope in her dog house. But animals are motivated by something. They react certain ways to environmental or relationship cues – and that is what ethologists, if I can make that word up, are studying. Animals have hierarchies and orders, which is incredible to me. Think about wolves; there is an alpha male who is in charge of the pack. He has certain ways that he acts that show he is the dominant wolf. And the wolves in his pack act certain ways to show that they accept his leadership. Some human studied wolves and watched them long enough to figure out what some of these things are and what they mean to the wolves. I would love to be able to study some species and figure out why they do all the things they do.  Unfortunately, this might take more time and more resources than I have. Behavioral studies of wild animals require spending a lot of time out in the field. They can require some technology that I will not have available to me, like wildlife cameras, or radio telemetry collars. But I might be able to do some behavioral observation or captive animals, which means spending time in a zoo, or lion park. And I am quite fascinated by how zoos function. What kind of training do the employees have? Where do they get their animals? Do those animals reproduce much and do their offspring continue living in the zoo. I can think of a lot of questions about zoos, so it seems like that would be a good place to direct my project.

Friday’s class! Heather showed us some pictures of East London. We discussed some of the cultural differences between South Africa and the U.S. What I learned from this class: every day is going to require a lot more conscious thought towards how I act and treat those around me. I think it is important that we do not go to East London with naive assumptions. I mean, we saw the picture of all the school girls hugging Heather’s facilitator and of the cute kids from the day care sitting on her lap. So, people are friendly, not too worried about getting in your space. But then we talked about how if we want to go running, for exercise, that we should go in the middle of the day, don’t go alone, don’t go the same way every time, etc. What a contrast between the cute kids just loving you, and being worried that someone is going to track you down and do some unspeakable thing to you. And while it is not like it is drastically different, we can still go out and run, it will all just take a little more planning, a little more thought, care, common sense – whatever you want to call it.  

And that concludes tonight’s blog post – some general and project specific questions I had about the field study, what kind of project I could do, and some cultural things to remember when living in East London.