Jaguar Detectives

Category: Day by day | Date: Apr 18 2008 | By: jaguardetectives

After a while trying to solve Deep Thought (my computer) problems, I sent it to maintenance and now we are back to carry on sharing our experiences on jaguars and ocelots conservation.

Marina and I went to Seis R to check out the camera traps and fix the hair traps. We left Little Miss Sunshine about two kilometers from the forest fragment, where the road ends and walked on the open pasture under a typical hot tropical day. We just arrived on the fence at the edge of the fragment and found relatively recent puma and ocelots’ tracks in the sand.

A good signal! Hope to record each one of them with nice photos! To recognize tracks and footprints is a very important issue in fieldwork. It is relatively easy in some terrains as wet sand or mud, but in most cases only a trained eye is able to find what is under the surface in other terrains. Here I have to talk about our Jedi field assistants - Cicinho and Wilson - they are experts in finding and following what we call “carreiros” (literally “animal path”) inside the forest. Most mammal species - as armadillos, tapirs, peccaries, etc. - use always the same paths in the forest. And… where these preys are we do expect to find predators! These paths are the best places to fix cameras. For those who did not have the opportunity to meet or to be in the forest with someone who uses to track animals but have interest I do recommend the Tom Brown`s book “The Science and the Art of Tracking“, which with the aid of a footprint handbook guide of the local fauna can be really useful.

One can ask:

- Why do not put cameras in the fence?

Yeah! We find indeed lots and lots of tracks on roads and in open pastures around the edge of forest fragments. However these pastures have also… cattle, many times hundreds, and they seem to really enjoy being photographed, because once they find one camera they finish almost the entire roll. Despite nice pumas’ photos we got in an old road across Santa Mônica, the rest are photos from cattle.

A puma relaxing in front of our camera.

Back on Seis R, we started our journey inside and around the fragment to check out the cameras. One of them was turned as if was moved by something or somebody.

Looking closer we found out what had happened. Grasshoppers and/or ants gnawed the elastic band that fixed it. They come because of the salt from our sweat that impregnate on the band. Cicinho swears that he once just left his backpack on the ground to lunch and the “horse-grasshoppers” gnawed it opening a great hole. Now I almost believe…

Who eated the band?

We did walk all day long and each 500 meters Marina fixed a hair trap with catnip. Let’s see if it works!

Marina fixing a hair trap

The moon was rising at the early night when we did start to walk back on Little Miss Sunshine direction, and it looks just as a white point far away from our tired feet. Our reward: two film rolls, let`s see what surprise it contain.

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Category: Day by day | Date: Apr 17 2008 | By: admin

This week Marina Macharia- a geneticist student from São Carlos Federal University – who is evaluating ocelot genetic diversity of Pontal do Paranapanema and Foz do Iguaçu came to visit us. This issue is the theme of her master degree dissertation and she came to see how the project works in practice. In other words:

- To have hands-on experience in the field.

After a, let’s say, a longer than wishful period of storms – here we are in the end of the rainy season – we could prepare the stuff to check the cameras on Seis R. It does not help our field activities but creates spectacular lightning shows on night.

Lightining in front of our house in Teodoro Sampaio.

We are trying to apply a new methodology to collect cat’s hair samples using “hair traps” with catnip (Nepeta cataria). Who never saw a domestic cat rubbing someone’s leg and objects? Or even had one rubbing in your own leg? Indeed, many times some friends of mine that do not appreciate this animals as pets (how could then???) use to say that this is the reason: they do not like of this behavior. Writing this I am remembering all cats I had – well, we do not own cats, they choose to be with us – and all I can say is that I miss each one of then…

So, the point is that wild cats and other mammal species also use to rub in unanimated objects. And: wildcats also “get high” with catnip!!! We decide to test if by fixing Velcro wetted with catnip we can stimulate the ocelots to rub on it and theoretically there is a great chance that the Velcro holds some hair on it. If it works we will use these hairs to get DNA samples.

I bring some catnip from Belo Horizonte and test it at home to see the reaction of the neighborhood cats. They do not look very impressed. In fact, no one of the four cats that use to walk around our house rubbed in the trap. Let’s see if we get better results in the forest.

On the day by day life, my beloved friend and partner Deep Thought (my computer) starts to overheating more and more frequently and stops to work without any reasonable cause. It make me lose many stuff and close to the complete despair – after all I can not stay without this tool - I decide to open it by my self to change the refrigerator cream on the central processor unit. Do it yourself! Well, if I say that it did resolve the problem it is a lie, but was an interesting experience…

Fixing???

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Category: Jaguar and ocelot names | Date: Apr 10 2008 | By: admin

Dear friends,

Our jaguars still without proper names and there are three ocelots to be named!

For the female jaguar Mr. Pechir suggests Diane, Paula suggests Shakira and Elizabeth suggests Quilla.

New right side photo of our nameless jaguar!

To the cub Ody by Mr. Pechir and De Niro by Paula.

And you Theresa? We are missing you in this issue!

More suggestions? Votes? And how about the ocelots?

A great hug from Brazil.

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Category: Day by day | Date: Apr 08 2008 | By: admin

Dear friends,
Truly your forgiveness I implore by this embaracing absence, but the fact is I was so lost by the last week events. I was prepared to spend one complete month in Belo Horizonte attending the last discipline at University to complete my credits on my master degree, after that only field work, data analyses and dissertation… Unfortunately in there I was warned that would be no possible to attend classes until 24 April… Why nobody tell it by phone when I call before goes??? The experience shows that is better to not ask… Well, as my mother use to say:
- It’s done, it’s done, let’s go on…
Fortunately those who work or have experience with wildlife are blessed with a high adaptation capacity, you know or better: you never really know what will be the animal behavior! So… you need to improvise responding to the situation. In the Black-lion-tamarin Conservation Program we used to call it “Adaptive Management”… Work with threes is so much easy, they are always in the same place (well, if nobody cut off the forest…). You win some, you lose some. Here in Brazil this proverb is literally: one day is for the hunted, the other for the hunter. After all was really nice to see my advisor again and other good friends. Sixteen hours in a bus from Belo Horizonte to Presidente Prudente… reading, listen music, napping, reading, napping and so on… four hours sited in Presidente Prudente bus station and the final 100 Km until Teodoro Sampaio made in tree hours… Then, after 23 hours later I am at home again !!! It is a huge contry…
Let’s talk about happy issues, let’s talk about cats!
My friends you are great observers! You are almost ready to become “ocelotologists”!!! Indeed, there were two different ocelot’s individuals in the latest post. Now I do invite you to the next level! Bad photos are quite common and a good observer needs to use all his skills! Each single photo is precious and an important record to the final analyses that will give us the information needed to promote these species and landscape conservation.
There is:

The original photo: the ocelot across in front of the camera and it just get the picture when the ocelot was almost out of reach.

A close on the ocelot. You already have two different ocelot pictures. Can you tell if this ocelot is one of then or a third one?

A great hug from Brazil!

Cheers

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