What the hell am I doing here?

The ACK team of students! Erica and I on the car and Mandela and Nelson standing below.

 

WARNING: Sciencey, too long and probably boring. Only read if you are THAT bored. Or if you want to learn more about cheetah poops.

Recently I’ve realized that here I am going on and on about running amok in the Kenyan bush without ever really explaining what the hell I’m doing here. Most of you have come to the conclusion that I am chasing cheetahs around with a plastic bag just waiting for them to take a dump (if only it were that easy…). This conclusion is partially accurate. I am chasing any hint of cheetah signs or sightings that are reported and I do have plastic bags in tow. That being said here is WHY I’m doing this and what exactly is making this a little more difficult than expected (le poos).

As most of you know I am about to start graduate school at North Carolina State University in pursuit of a Master’s degree in Animal Science with a focus in Physiology (that’s a mouthful, apologies). My plan is to work with Action for Cheetahs in Kenya (here in Kenya, obvi) looking for poops and then to take said poops back to the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute to do all my lab work. Sounds pretty good right? Right. But I still haven’t said WHY. Why the hell am I picking up all the poops with a stick and dissecting and sniffing them to help determine whether they belong to the elusive “duma” (cheetah in Kiswahili)? As I said before the area I am studying is comprised of large ranches with moving livestock (domestic… goats, sheep, cattle) herds. The land is also host to a variety of wildlife species taking advantage of the undeveloped land. However, a few of these large ranches have decided to become subdivided. What does this mean? They are being divided up into plots for individual families (subsistence farming instead of commercial ranching) to create households and gardens/crop fields. My study is looking at whether the cheetahs inhabiting these newly developed landscapes are becoming more stressed. Why is stress a concern? Chronic stress has been shown in many species to cause infertility and immuno-suppression making them more susceptible to diseases. The cheetahs in this area face local extinction with the rate the land is being developed. There are plans to establish a new city in these gorgeous plains by 2030. The idea behind this project is that while we are probably too late to help these cheetahs from being extirpated from their current habitat, we can use the information to help educate and influence other urban development plans so they may be more suitable for continued cheetah existence.

Why the poop? Stress hormones, also called glucocorticoids (if you want to get sciencey) are steroids that can be measured in blood, urine, and feces. Because fecal material is the least invasive method (besides urine, but in the wild that’s virtually impossible to find) I am collecting cheetah scats from across these study sites to extract and measure the stress hormones. Then I will compare the various stress levels with the location and proximity of the sample to high human settlement density.

The PROBLEM: Because steroids breakdown in UV light (aka THE SUN) I need FRESH poops. They don’t have to be steaming but they need to be moist and plentiful (about a golf ball size) and not too hairy (makes the extraction of the hormones difficult). Kind of demanding right? So far we’ve found about 30 cheetah poops but they have all been dry and hairy. This is perfect for the other half of Team Duma Poops, Nelson Owange. He’s a Master’s student at the University of Nairobi and is looking at prey base. He wants to know what the cheetahs are eating so he is analyzing the hairs found in cheetah scats. Yeah we’re weird. We know.

Nelson and I collecting some dry cheetah poops we found on a rock!

Hopefully with all the GPS points we have from the dry scats, if we keep checking those places we’ll start finding fresh ones (cheetahs, especially males, often poop and mark in the same places to mark territories).

Wow… that was boring and probably totally inaccurate. : ) Just for your patience here is a picture of two male ostriches we came across yesterday who were having what seemed to be a dance off in front of the lady ostriches.

Another giraffe photo for my mother...

A nice sunset from the tree house at camp to finish off a long day of searching for poops.