Amanda Melin
	Cybermentor Since: October 16, 2003
	Occupation: working on her PhD in Biological Anthropology
	Education: University of Calgary for undergraduate studies (Bio Sciences, Zoology major); completed Masters degree in the Primatology and is currently working on her PhD in Biological Anthropology.

Questions & Answers

Growing up I thought I'd be:

Working with animals. My parents tell me that I was interested in wild animals at a very young age and we always had pets. My whole life, my plan was to be a veterinarian as I worked in a vet clinic for seven years. I actually got accepted to veterinary school but decided that I want to see the world and do this crazy monkey thing! Once I had a taste of field research, I couldn’t go back.

The thing I love most about what I do

I really like the opportunity to travel and the fact that in the graduate program I’m doing something different all the time, whether it’s spending months in the field watching animals or coming home to do data analysis, write articles and be a teaching assistant.

There’s life after work too! My hobbies include:

I love all kinds of sports: especially field hockey, floor hockey, baseball and volleyball. Music is very important to me, too; I like listening to all kinds and I also play the bass guitar.

Some advice I would give to girls considering an education and career in my field:

Take some time to figure out what you might be interested in; quite often students have no idea about the career opportunities that are available to them. Once you have found something you might enjoy, go out and do some volunteering in the field. I volunteered at vet clinics for a long time and learned a lot. And it’s okay to discover you actually don’t like something you thought you would… that’s the whole point of trying it out.

What is an average day like out in the field?

I wake up before dawn and get into all my field gear, including snake leggings and a hip pack with plenty of water. Then I use a GPS to get out to the tree to find the spot where the monkeys went to bed the night before. It’s important to be there just as the sun comes up as that’s when the monkeys start moving around and usually, I will observe them for about 10 hours. Around noon, one of my field assistants will come out to meet me and they’ll stay with the monkeys when I head back to camp and download all the data I’ve collected. My field assistant will stay with the monkeys until they go to sleep, then take a GPS reading of that location so I can find them again the next morning.

What are the working conditions like in that region of Central America?

That’s a bit of an unknown for me as I’ve only been there during the dry season. This time, it will be the rainy season and during September, October and November, they are known to get some heavy, heavy rain. Normally, it takes about two weeks to acclimatize to the heat and humidity butafter that, it feels quite pleasant. Because it will be raining this time, it will be more of a challenge to see what the monkeys are eating and more difficult to collect fecal samples because visibility is poor and everything washes away. It may be more difficult to find them as well because their ranging changes once the rains come. We’ll be collecting the same sort of data but under vastly different conditions.

Are you ever in any danger?

I don’t think it’s very dangerous. There are rattlesnakes there as well as several different kinds of vipers, but if we see them, they always try to get away from us. They’re not aggressive. We wear snake leggings just to be safe. If we’re out there looking up at the trees we can’t always look where we’re stepping. So if we happen to step on a snake, we’re protected by our leggings.

What about the monkeys – aren’t you afraid they might attack?

These monkeys have never approached any of the researchers in a threatening way. The only time I was bit by a monkey, it was in a touristy part of Bali. People were selling bananas outside the stand and the monkeys were just waiting to be fed. People always want to feed the babies, but in the monkeys’ social system, the alpha male gets fed first. So they will get very aggressive and will bully you if you don’t feed them. I urge people to never feed wild animals to avoid these situations where animals see people as a source of food!!! Luckily, where we are working in Costa Rica this is never a concern. It’s a protected area where the no feeding and no interaction rules are strictly practiced by all the researchers.

When you’re working in a remote research area, what do you do in your downtime?

We take one day off a week to go into town to get groceries or see a movie if there’s anything playing in English. My passion is scuba diving and I recently tried to take up surfing too. There’s a place I like to go on the coast that is about an hour’s bus ride from the camp. It’s really cool because you get to see different wildlife on the beach than you do in the forest. In Costa Rica, you can travel a couple of hours in any direction and be in a totally different eco-zone – mountains, volcanoes, rainforest, Caribbean Sea or Pacific Ocean. It’s pretty amazing.

What can we expect to read about in your field journal?

It seems like every week, if not every day, something new happens. One of the most exciting things for me is to see a new animal or to discover different behaviour in an animal I’m already familiar with. I’ve had some very interesting insect/invertebrate experiences too: I’ve been stung by bullet ants. We hit these big balls of ticks and then we’re covered in thousands and thousands of ticks – that’s not fun. Between the tarantulas under the fridge and grasshoppers the size of your head in the sink; there’s plenty of things I find interesting.

Ugh! We take it that you’re not too squeamish…

No, I’m not a squeamish person by nature, but like with the temperature, there’s an acclimatization period. When I first get down there, I’m pretty jumpy. The cockroaches on the plates get to me for awhile but then you just get used to it. You adapt and soon it’s fine.

What touches of home do you bring with you?

We all go through withdrawals from home, but being able to stay in touch really helps. They have high-speed Internet down there which doesn’t work all the time, but when it does, it’s great. I have pictures on my laptop of my family, friends and pets. And I also find that it’s important for me to bring a lot of the music I listen to at home. The music down there is very, very different – I like it, but my music is one of the main things that keep me connected to home.

So you really don’t mind living out of a suitcase for a few months?

I would strongly advise anyone who has the opportunity to travel for school, career or just for fun to do it. Nothing else can give you that kind of life experience. I’ve not only been able to see some amazing creatures, but also new people and cultures. There are so many global issues going on, being able to travel and to see things for yourself gives you a greater depth of outlook and a new appreciation for home.