My Life So Far ...

Hi readers! I'm sure most of you have been waiting for me to update my blog. Apologies for the long leave of absence. I have been busy with grad school, but as the Spring 2014 semester came to an end, I'm glad to report that I have finished taking all the course work I needed for my Animal Behavior and Conservation (ABC) MA. Right now the MA is in the horizon; I just need to finish my data collection, write up my thesis, and defend it before I graduate.

I am currently working with Dr. Andrea Baden at Hunter College for my MA thesis. It will be on ruffed lemur (Varecia variegata sp.) sensory and foraging ecology. I plan on going to Duke Lemur Center later this Summer or early Fall for data collection, so if there are any readers that goes to Duke University or live near Durham/Chapel Hill, feel free to contact me so we can meet up. You can also find out more about me on the About Me tab.

What I would be like if I am a ruffed lemur.

Since my previous post, MPIG 2013: Thank You Iowa State University!, I have been working on the poster I presented there. Thanks to all the feedback I've received, I re-analyzed my data and was able to present a more cohesive story and result. If I have to reiterate again, MPIG is a great conference to go to if you want to showcase your work and wanted feedback. I have also heard through the grapevines (or liana vines) that there is now a Northeast Primate Interest Group. Will update you on that when I find out more about it.

I recently gave a talk at the 2nd annual CUNY Animal Behavior Initiative (CABI) conference at The Bronx Zoo. It was my first time giving this talk, and although my talk was cut short to only 5 minutes, I felt like I was able to convey my story and research. I spoke about hamadryas baboon handedness and why it is important to me as an anthropologist and primatologist. It was a compelling story and everyone cried (no they didn't, it was a complete fabrication). They seem to have enjoyed the talk though based on their feedback.

Doing what I do best, convincing people that hamadryas baboons are interesting. Photo taken at the 2nd annual CABI conference.

It's conference season! As far as conferences go, I will be at the ISBE conference at Hunter College (New York, NY), ABS conference at Princeton University (Princeton, NJ) and ASP conference at Decatur, GA. My poster presentations have been accepted in the latter two conferences. I'm hoping that my poster for ISBE will be accepted as well! Again, if you are attending any of these conferences, please let me know so we can meet up and mingle!

I hope to have enough time to be able to update this blog again. I will try to post more about my current research. With the advent of Twitter, I have just been tweeting and retweeting exciting primate news. Until the next post ....