Check out this weeks field fiasco by Carter Loftus to find out the lengths to which researchers will go to save their data!

The animal I study (the kinkajou, Potos flavus) is arboreal and nocturnal. This means that to watch one, I have to run through the Panamanian rainforest at night. While looking up. To manage this, I rely a lot on technology. First, I put collars on my kinkajous that transmit a radio signal. I can use…

Doing field research in a foreign country comes with many issues that you might not encounter in the United States—having to pack all of your equipment to meet airline regulations, adapting to a new culture, and speaking multiple new languages are all challenges I have had to overcome in order to study social relationships in…

Some of the greatest discoveries of how honey bee colonies work have been made using observation hives: glass-walled hives that allow scientists to monitor the activities of the colony. Setting up my observation hives in early April marked the true start of my field season. Coming into lab to greet, stare at, and admire my…

  A few summers ago I spent a field season studying monkeys on a tiny island in southern Japan. I would stay on the island for up to a week at a time, because it was typhoon season and large waves often prevented transportation to and from the island. With unpredictable weather during a short…

Hiking up the Virunga Mountains to see mountain gorillas, Gorilla beringei beringei, is truly a once-in-a-lifetime kind of experience. Spending nearly a month in-country keeps your excitement in a pressure cooker, so that by the time you are trekking to see these amazing apes, your heart is already racing in anticipation. Yet, the moment I saw one…

It was pitch black, in the early hours of the morning. We all walked with our handlamps down to the ground in a straight line on the trail. None of us spoke, it was too early for chit-chat. Three silent bright lights walked one by one through the dense understory of the Congolese rainforest. We…

Everything comes with trade offs. It’s a fundamental truth that governs how we think as biologists, but it also applies to pretty much everything else in life. In terms of field work, I get the luxury of having Davis serve as my field site. So no, I don’t get to spend my summers in the…

These aren’t the bees you’re looking for. The forest. My love for the forest spans since before I remember. My grandfather, Martin Farrell, was an avid woodsman and the time I spent with him left me with a great respect and ever-present playful curiosity for knowledge and insight within the wild and forgotten places of…

When working in Sabah, Malaysia, I encountered some of the most frustrating primates I’ve ever worked with. That’s really saying something, considering that I now work with the very mischievous Rhesus macaques. To this day I still remember this frustrating group of gibbons, which I called the “office group.” During my 2015 field season, I…