Vol. 2, No. 1: Spring/Summer 2006
The Privilege and Frustration of Fieldwork
by Deborah Galyan
Professors must not only teach students the science, but also prepare them for the life-changing discoveries and harsh realities they will encounter in the field.
When IU Professor of Anthropology Kevin Hunt sits in his office on Indiana University’s Bloomington campus, his mind is often half a world away.
The subject of Hunt’s research on human evolution is a shy community of chimpanzees who live in the Toro-Semliki Valley Wildlife Reserve in Uganda, near the banks of the Mugiri River. His studies of chimpanzee locomotion, posture, and ecology have given us clearer images of how our early ancestors moved and fed, and why our particular lineage evolved as bipeds.
Such research has an increasing sense of urgency, as primate populations and their habitats disappear. A great deal of compelling research has yet to be done on the evolution of humans, says Hunt, an ecological morphologist. “We still don’t have enough fossils. And we don’t have enough studies of primates—more than half of the species that exist have not been thoroughly studied.”
Early on, Hunt wasn’t convinced that field study was crucial to his research. “I wasn’t in love with the idea of studying chimps. I was an anatomist, hoping to convince primatologists to go out and gather my data for me,” he explains. But in the mid-eighties, Hunt traveled to the renowned Mahale Mountains and Gombe Stream National Parks of Tanzania.
There, he had several epiphanies. “By the time I had been observing the chimpanzees for three months, I realized that you don’t lose much in describing chimps as speechless humans. People make a strong division in the way they view animals: it’s humans and everything else. But joint by joint, muscle by muscle, molecule by molecule, chimps are much more like us than they are like monkeys.”
Sharing fieldwork anecdotes with students is one of the ways Hunt brings its immediacy into the classroom, but he also encourages graduate students and undergraduates alike to find a way to observe primates in the wild. “There are things we can discover by studying primates in the wild that can’t be discovered any other way.”
“It is often a life-changing experience for students to see primates in the wild, searching for all of the food they need to survive, and undergoing their daily social dramas of threats, defeats, and victories,” he explains. “When they see the parallels in human and chimp behavior, then they can better recognize humans as animals.”
Even as he stresses the value of fieldwork, Hunt must offer his students a sobering disclaimer, described in an essay he wrote for students several years ago:
When you see films of primates in their natural homes, you may catch a glimpse of a romantic, sun-dappled figure hiding among the foliage: the primatologist. There s/he is, scribbling notes, surrounded by primates in a cool forest, seemingly far from the crush of humanity . . . . It isn’t like that. Contrary to this pleasing image, most of the time researchers spend in the field is eaten up by everything BUT primate watching. Buying food or other supplies, traveling to town to deal with bureaucracy, supervising field assistants, repairing equipment, fussing with data sheets, writing and submitting progress reports, coping with tropical diseases, and finding ways to coexist with the crowd of researchers and local assistants who are typically squeezed into a tiny, primitive research station are the stuff of everyday life.
Hunt doesn’t mind when students tell him that fieldwork is indeed a life-changing experience, but not one they want to repeat. “It isn’t for everyone,” he admits.
Rachel Jacobs, a recent IU anthropology graduate from South Bend, decided at Hunt’s suggestion to get some fieldwork experience before making a decision about graduate school.
In the summer of 2003, Jacobs attended a field school at the La Suerte Biological Field Station in Costa Rica. “I absolutely loved it,” she says. “I learned basic field methods in primatology, and I designed my own research project.”
But La Suerte had some unusual luxuries, including beds and showers, not to mention “a store nearby that sold Coca-Cola and ice cream.” Her next field experience was more challenging. In 2005, Jacobs traveled to Kalimantan, Indonesia, to serve as a research assistant for a project on orangutan biology and conservation.
“The kitchen and sleeping quarters were built out of tree saplings. A tarp kept the areas dry. There was no electricity and no running water. My shower was the river. The days were spent hiking through difficult terrain. Some days we didn’t see a single primate,” she recalls.
Nevertheless, Jacobs discovered that she did indeed want to pursue graduate school in primate behavior and conservation. “I felt much more comfortable after gaining this experience,” she says.
Hunt laments the idea that future generations of researchers might find it impossible to study primates, because many populations are dwindling, and some are facing extinction. Primate habitats are disappearing in Africa and Southeast Asia with astonishing speed. “There’s not much doubt that orangutans will be extinct in the wild, within our lifetimes,” Hunt says.
In light of such distressing news, Hunt approaches his fieldwork with both a sense of privilege and frustration. And while his students may face sobering realities, he encourages them to be persistent in their goals and to take every opportunity to see primates in their natural habitats. “It’s a profound experience to see these incredible human-like animals living in the wild.”
Deborah Galyan is a novelist and freelance writer in Bloomington.
