My name is Claire Coulson, I am the Director of CERCOPAN and have worked for the organisation since January 2007. I spend my time between Calabar HQ and Rhoko our bush site.
One of the best things about having new Rhoko Managers is new blogs from new perspectives. At the moment, everything at Rhoko is exciting and exhilarating for us, as we’ve had many new experiences we couldn’t even dream of! Although we are incredibly busy running Rhoko, we always try to visit our primate enclosures everyday to observe our group of mangabeys. They are surprisingly big and powerful animals and the soap-operas of their families are fantastically entertaining.
-
- Grace with Red Capped Managabeys
A few days ago, Alex had his first encounter inside the mangabey enclosure, which can be a really intimidating experience. Conducting a fence check due to a bad storm the previous night, Sylvain, our research coordinator and Alex went into the enclosure. I stayed watch outside to spot any males sneaking up on them while they were working. Within 5 minutes of being inside the enclosure, the dominant and quite aggressive male, Clyde, decided to investigate this new, unfamiliar face who had entered his group, literally! He climbed onto Alex’s leg and pulled his beard, looked at his face and yanked his hair before satisfying himself that this person was not a threat and walking off to patrol his domain. Following Sylvain’s expertise, Alex stayed still and avoided eye contact and the encounter was intimidating but safe and enlightening. We look forward to many more encounters with these very special creatures!
Grace
