My internship started in September in Penang. It would allow me to discover the world of research on animals and wildlife. There, I discovered the diversity of the nocturnal animals in the forest with the transects thanks to Priscillia.
In October, we left Penang for Langkawi. I began here the project for my internship : the study of the colugos behavior. After doing an ethogram to list the different possible behavior, we had the opportunity to follow them in the forest of the Datai, a resort of Langkawi. Thanks to this we could follow the same individuals at different schedules of night and all of this in security.
Furthermore, the employees of the hotel can help us find colugos especially during the daytime. Staying at the same area allows us to track and identify individuals. Each night, we work during five hours : we look for a colugo and follow it as long as possible, that is to say before it glides too far or moves up too high.
During this time, I record the behavior every minute thanks to an app. We have now more than 10 000 minutes of study.
Those data can help to better understand colugos by answering several questions : what are the main behavior of colugos during the night ? the day ? Do they live alone or in a group? How and when they interact with each other? Do the weather (rain, wind or cloud), the temperature, the pressure or the phase and luminosity of the moon influence their behavior? In what trees do they eat or sleep? A lot of questions that this project can maybe answer or help to understand.
All this work is not possible without the help of Priscillia who guides me on this new job for me and the volunteers Dasi, Ash, Shaun and James who help me with the data, take pictures, identify colugos…
Thanks to this internship, I can discover Malaysia too : I learn and continue to learn about the history of the country, the people, the culture, the food, the landscape, the biodiversity and how all these things are evolving...