As is typical and apparently my wont, I have gone on a brief hiatus... but always with good reason: I've started a new postdoctoral research position in the Bay Area!
Huzzah to the Bay Area!
As is also my wont, somewhere between all the packing and moving and wrapping up of summer courses, I somehow managed to join three scientifically curious comedians to do an episode of the podcast Probably Science (linked above). As is often the case, the field stories came out and dominated the conversation. If you'd like to hear some of the stories shared in earlier posts on this blog first hand from yours truly - with the added bonus of commentary from comedians Jesse Case, Matt Kirshen, and Andy Wood - this is your chance!
Also prominently featured in the podcast is the route I took to becoming a field primatologist. I've mentioned this in a number of earlier posts on this blog, but if it strikes your fancy to hear such advice, it's another reason to tune in, along with those the podcast description highlights:
[...] primate infanticide, collecting howler monkey urine, capuchin monkeys sticking their fingers in each others' eyes to chill out, the risks of taking selfies with dead hippos when there are lions nearby, floating vegetation islands that transport animals, old world/new world [monkey and] ape divergence, why certain primates are getting obese, Koko the gorilla's nipple obsession, competing brands of chimp-taggin RFID chips and how to get involved in field work right where you live.
NOTE: it has now officially been recorded that when speaking casually over a beer I am capable of giving the absolutely wrong date for the last common ancestor of hominoids and cercopithecoids DESPITE HAVING TAUGHT IT TO MY STUDENTS THE DAY IMMEDIATELY PRIOR TO SPEAKING CASUALLY OVER SAID BEER. It is NOT, gentle reader, ~16 Ma (million years ago), but rather between 25 and 30 Ma. I shall self-flagellate with an articulated cast of Proconsul heseloni's tailless vertebral column in my most abject contrition until these dates are burned into my brain... BAD biological anthropologist... forgive me, Terry Harrison...