(This post was written two days ago and just now published. Yay internet problems! We will post a more up to date one soon.)
Today has been busy! We did small mammal trapping in the morning. We used Sherman traps to live trap Nile grass rats. These little guys create small pathways leading from their burrows to their favorite foraging areas, which allows for quick escape from their predators. We put traps baited with tasty oats in the pathways and caught over 20 rats. This was not without drama, however. Baboons and vervet monkeys enjoy both oats and rats, so we had to spend a lot of time chasing them away from the area. Also, the rats were quite fierce (and agile) and some made daring escapes from some of the students as they we're handling them.
(Instructor vs vervet monkey...round 18)
(Monkey successfully escaped with an entire bag of oats)
(Looking at a Nile grass rat)
We also did presentations today. The presentations were on their first independent research projects on buffalo and zebra behavior.
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