Amidst the dense vegetation and high elevation of Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in southwestern Uganda, Alexa Hanke '99 and Anthropology Professor Michele Goldsmith spent this past winter studying the behavioral patterns of mountain gorillas.
Last fall, Goldsmith approached students in her Primate Biology and Behavior class about traveling with her to Uganda to aid her research on the comparative ecology of chimpanzees and gorillas.
Hanke was selected from a group of six applicants.
A few months later, the pair was living in camping conditions, half the time without bathrooms or running water, and hiking several miles a day.
Accompanied by trackers over the mountainous terrain, the two followed a group of 13 gorillas that had never previously been researched.
Braving the elements
Hanke and Goldsmith were forced to contend with a variety of dangers, including charging gorillas, infestations of ants, a run-in with an elephant, and bacterial infections from unsafe drinking water.
On a typical day, Hanke and Goldsmith would wake up early, build a fire to boil water for drinking and prepare breakfast. They would then hike out to the location where they had seen the gorillas the previous day -- gorillas change nesting sites every night -- map out the site, and collect dung samples.
Then, after following the gorillas' trail to their new site, they would observe the gorillas for about four hours.
With such close contact with the gorillas, and as the first group to do extensive research on them, Hanke and Goldsmith eventually assigned some of them names.
"There were some individuals in the group that we saw constantly ... One of them was always very curious, poking his head out and I named him Curious George after my father," Goldsmith said.
The sideburns and unusually hairy face of a second gorilla gave Hanke the impression of what she termed a "greaser." She thus named him Greased Lightning.
Both Hanke and Goldsmith claimed that they did not feel threatened by the gorillas since native Ugandans had already had contact with them in order to get them acclimated to humans.
Nonetheless, one of the groups that they studied had been hunted by poachers only two years earlier and was somewhat rattled by human presence.
"The first time a gorilla charged was pretty nerve-wracking," Goldsmith said.
But "95 percent of charges are bluffs," she said.
There was, however, a real danger of elephant attacks, Goldsmith said.
"Elephants are ... very aggressive animals," she said. "The trackers that we worked with would keep fires going all night long. They are petrified of elephants because people [in the park] have been killed by them," said Goldsmith.
An incredible life
In addition to aiding Goldsmith with her research, Hanke did her own work on the gorillas' nesting behavior. Nesting behavior provides insight into gorilla group dynamics and relationships, Hanke said
"What I'm doing ... is drawing up all the nest sites so that I can see how the nests were positioned and then I'm looking at the possible relationships or patterns between where the Silver Back [adult male gorilla] is and where ... females with juveniles or infants are [in relation to the center of the nest site]," Hanke said.
Hanke said she will present her results with Goldsmith at the annual physical anthropology meetings next April in Salt Lake City.
Hanke said she hopes to have an outdoor slide presentation of her work by May.
Goldsmith said her study is still in its early stages.
During the trip, Goldsmith conducted general research since so little is known about this population of mountain gorillas.
"The big picture here is that this population of gorillas was considered to be the other half of the total world-wide mountain gorilla population of 600. This site contains half of them," Goldsmith said.
"There has been a recent research paper suggesting that they aren't mountain gorillas, which would mean that there are only 300 mountain gorillas left in the world and that these animals are something different," Goldsmith added. "The goal of this study is to determine ways in which their ecology is similar or different from the other gorilla sub-species,."
A previous foray into gorilla research nearly cost Goldsmith her life.
She had spent two years living in the Central African Republic doing research on gorillas and came down with cerebral malaria when she returned to the United States.
Goldsmith said the experience made her much more cautious during the Uganda trip. "I was nervous about being responsible for Alexa -- there were times that we were both sick and in the middle of nowhere, without a doctor," she said.
"We would have had to been carried out if anything serious had happened. But everything went well -- we came back alive," Goldsmith said.
Reflecting on the experience, Hanke said, "I know that I changed a lot when I was over there. I feel much more mature, much more secure with what I want to get out of Dartmouth ... I've never been so happy."
"I'm definitely much more appreciative of my life, of my ability to do simple things like turn on a faucet, and be able to drink the water," Hanke added.
"I wake up every morning realizing that my life is an incredible one," she said.