We finished up the field portion of the shaving project at Ezemvelo yesterday and it was a complete success. We managed to recapture 14 of the 19 individuals carrying dataloggers, which is about twice as many as I expected. We are having a few more individuals implanted with dataloggers to round out sample sizes then we'll keep them in captivity for a couple of weeks. The second part of the experiment, measuring metabolic rates in the field, was also a success. We got blood samples for 12 rock rats and 8 elephant shrews; now we have to figure out how to get them analyzed. We'll probably have to ship them to the States, which could be interesting.
Otherwise, my life will be a bit more mundane the next few weeks. This will be my longest stint in Pretoria so far. I'm way behind on manuscripts, so I will probably have many long days in the office trying to catch up. On the bright side, I get to look forward to seeing pangolins in a few weeks.
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