Entering into primatology as young student with minimal experience and education can be confusing. You need field experience to get into graduate school. The lists of volunteer work and internships can be overwhelming. I am providing some information that I felt would have been helpful to me when looking for experience. Where exactly do you start? Through my personal experience
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Art or Science? Animal training is a little bit of both. Timing and communication flow together with basic laws of behavior and form actions. Before we get into the specific behaviors we ask our pets, we should first learn how to train them. Positive reinforcement is associated with : negative reinforcement, positive punishment and negative punishment. It is not important
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What is Environmental Education? This is a question I am often asked when I identify myself as an “Environmental Educator.” More often than not, less informed people equate it with “tree hugger,” or “hippie.” Those stereotypes are only a couple labels that could potentially fall under the large umbrella that is environmental education, also known as EE. The Definition The
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A tree frog hanging out-literally- on the underside of a leaf at Hacienda Baru Wildlife Refuge, Costa Rica. These frogs are an iconic symbol of rainforest biodiversity, and their friendly, charismatic faces make them much more relatable than your average amphibian. Although IUCN does not currently consider them “endangered,” like all other neotropical species they are losing their habitat at
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My name is Lisa Barrett, and I am a contributing author of this new and exciting blog! For my first entry, I will introduce myself and give some background about how I have come to be where I am today. Even as an undergrad who chose to study Evolutionary Anthropology 10 hours away from home, I wasn’t positive about what
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I participated in the DANTA primate field course during the summer of 2011 following my sophomore year at the University of Michigan. Growing up with Dr. Jane Goodall as my role model and the popularized image of her work, I always dreamt of observing wild primates. After two years of college, I became engrossed in theoretical topics in behavioral ecology
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Hey everyone! So now is the time I go a little more in depth on how exactly I became interested in non-human primates. It is very difficult for me to pinpoint exactly where my interest began. I first became fascinated by anthropology through the studies and findings of Margaret Mead and the Leakey family. I began my studies as an
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Stepping off the plane onto Costa Rica’s soil, in the winter of 2008, I made a fool of myself. I followed the stream of people hurrying out of the airport and found a young heavily bearded Caucasian man holding a DANTA sign. Around him was a harem of young girls around my age. I was one of the last people
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Hi everyone, my name is Ginny Mulé, and I am a current second-year student at Cornell Veterinary School in Ithaca, NY. I participated in the DANTA Primate Behavior Field School on the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica during the summer between my sophomore and junior years of college at Stony Brook University. Before DANTA, I had always had an interest
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I’ve done a lot of writing throughout my college career, but I think the hardest ‘assignment’ I’ve ever had is this one – to introduce myself in one short blog post. That’s life, I guess. There are challenges and you just have to put your head down an push through. So here goes…. Growing up along the country roads of
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DANTAisms 