So what do I do out here?

So what is it exactly that do I do out here? Let me start off by giving you a quick rundown of a typical day. I get up at 5:30am, grab a quick cup of tea, and usually leave camp by 5:45. The sun doesn't start to rise until around 6am, so it's still completely dark at that time. I stay out watching hyenas until around 9:30 am, sometimes later if something really exciting is happening, and then head back to camp for breakfast. During the middle of the day I go through the more tedious aspects of the job, namely transcribing my field notes and attending to any camp maintenance and management work.

Brief segue here: I don't think I realized when I first took this job exactly how much would be on my shoulders out here. I actually run a field camp -- I handle buying supplies, paying salaries, refilling the water supply, camp-community relations, field vehicle maintenance, solar power maintenance, accounting, you name it. It's more responsibility than I anticipated and it can be kind of scary. If I screw up out here, well, then the whole camp is screwed, and it's not easy to dig yourself out of a hole when the nearest town of respectable size is 4 hours away. Still, it's great experience, and it will be so valuable if I get to the point of setting up my own field site.

Ok, back to the job. In the middle of the day there's usually time for a nap, a workout, whatever personal time you want to squeeze in between errands, etc. Then at around 5pm it's back out into the field for the evening session. I'm out until around 7:30 or 8, well after dark, and then it's time to head back to camp for dinner. I'm usually in bed no later than 10pm, so strangely enough I'm getting more sleep out here with a 5:30am wake up call than I have back home for the past 4 years or so.

Now, a crash course on hyena basics. Hyenas are social carnivores. They live in big groups called clans. The camp on the other side of the Mara actually has a clan with over 90 hyenas, but each of my clans has roughly 40-50 hyenas. Hyenas have their cubs in dens, which are usually just old, abandoned aardvark or warthog holes that the hyenas re-use. Each female gives birth on her own in a natal den, then after a few days brings the cubs to a communal den, where the cubs can learn the clan social structure and ranks. This doesn't mean that all the hyenas in a clan congregate around the den. The only time you're sure to see a hyena at the communal den is if it's a female with young, den-dependent cubs. Otherwise, it's anyone's guess where in the clan territory a hyena will be. We can go for over 6 months without seeing a hyena, list it as missing/dead, and then oops, randomly just find it again while driving around.

I study 3 clans (Serena North, Serena South, and Happy Zebra, which gives me about 120-150 hyenas total), go out on observations ("obs" for short), watch hyenas, and study behavior (particularly dominance/submission interactions). So far this doesn't seem so tough, right? But picture this: you have 6 hyenas hanging out around the den. All of a sudden, 2 of the hyenas decide to gang up on a 3rd, who turns and beats up on a 4th because she's not happy at being aggressed on, at the same time as 2 more hyenas arrive from nowhere and join in the party. Wait, which hyena is which? Who were the ones that just arrived? Oh crap, what were the other 2 doing while the 6 were all in a tangle? Sessions can get really crazy, really fast.

There are a ton of behaviors to learn, plus different levels of aggression, contexts for aggression, reactions to aggression, contexts for sound, contexts for pasting (another type of behavior), and you have to train yourself to see it as soon as it happens, because it's happening and over and done in just a few seconds.

This isn't even the hard part though. The toughest part is, none of these interactions mean diddly-squat unless I know who my hyenas are. Each hyena has a name and is identifiable by a unique spot pattern. They're as distinct as human fingerprints. Ok, fine, great. This still does not make them easy to identify. At. All. Here, have a look:

Bartlet


Judas


Bing


Grimace


That is a crap-ton of spots, and that's just 4 hyenas! These are all also really good, clear pictures. These are the kind of pictures we put in our ID books. You can see most or all of the spots clearly, including leg spots, and you might even be able to see ear damage. Hyenas will not always pose for you this conveniently. What you're more likely to get is this:



BTW, this last hyena is the same as one of the hyenas in the first 4 pictures :) Name this hyena guys!

This is also only one side of a hyena. They each have a whole other side and no, unfortunately they are not symmetrically patterned.

So, I have to memorize good spot features on both sides of each of my hyenas, and then I have to prepare for the likelihood that I won't even be able to see that particular feature because my hyena will be lying down, or obscured by grass, or standing in a ditch, or coated in mud, or a million other things that make it not look how it should. On top of that, I need to know which hyenas belong to what clan (particularly important now because some of my hyenas have been showing up in the territory of clans they don't belong to), which hyenas are related, who holds what rank, what genders and age classes the hyenas are... yikes, the mind boggles. And before any of these even comes in to play, I first have to FIND the hyenas, and like I said they can be anywhere in the clan territory at any given time.

Despite all this, I freely admit that this is the best job I've ever had (yes, because I've had just sooo much experience in my 24 years of life, obviously :P ). The hyenas are just so interesting, and once you get to know them them and get a feel for their personalities, it's so easy to get attached. I was onyla few weeks into the job when I already had my favorites, and I know I'll be heartbroken when I have to leave them and go home. And the babies! The cubs are just the cutest thing in the world! Not to mention I'm outdoors all the time and not boxed up in an office all day! So yeah, the work can be tough and the pay is shit, but man is it worth it!

Anyway, I hope you have fun with the little hyena game. If anyone enjoys it, let me know because I'd love to put more up!