Caplab 101

Since I've had to explain my research in Caplab multiple times to friends and family, I figured I should write a post about it (plus it's super-cool anyway).

To start, Professor Santos is an incredible mentor as well as an excellent teacher - Animal Cognition class last semester was really interesting and "Sex, Evolution, and Human Nature" this spring is awesome. It's such a popular class we that we've had to move twice (Davies -> SSS 114 -> Law School auditorium) to accomodate all the people who want to take it! She insists that all of us call her Laurie, which took a little getting used to at first, but now it's cool. As a PI (principal investigator) she doesn't get to spend much time with the capuchins running trials but she stays up to date on all the projects going on at the same time through weekly meetings.

Second cool thing: the monkeys! On campus we work with a group of capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) who all live together in a social colony. They get all sorts of toys to play with and lots of food - standard monkey chow plus fresh fruits and vegetables every day, even exotic stuff like pomegranate and coconut. They also get treats for finishing experiments, and each one seems to have a personal favorite: May Day really likes sunflower seeds, Felix really likes peanuts, etc. A few photos - I would post some of my own (like ones with the two babies!) except they're not officially approved...

Felix, the alpha male of the colony

May Day begging for food from Jill, her mother

Besides the capuchins, Caplabbers also get to work at a couple field sites: Myakka City, Florida has a lemur preserve, and Cayo Santiago is an island with about 1000 free-ranging rhesus macaques. People will go down for spring break, summer research, even a few for Thanksgiving break. A few more photos:

A family of macaques on Cayo Santiago

A red-ruffed lemur at Myakka

Third cool thing: the overall atmosphere of the lab is really chill. Lab meetings usually have one project presenting their work so far and getting comments from the rest of the groups. It's always helpful to hear other people's suggestions, especially when you've been thinking about one problem for too long and need a fresh perspective. We also have a system where doing chores to help keep the lab space clean earns "brownie points" with prizes at the end of every semester. That's how I ended up getting this little guy (the stuffed monkey, not the Santa hat) - he was promptly dubbed Nick-Nack because that monkey always seems to have his tongue sticking out...

Personally, I have found getting involved in research to be really easy. Since I was part of Perspectives in Science, I had guaranteed funding for last summer. I had already heard good things about Caplab from my freshman counselor Amy (Laurie was her senior thesis advisor), so it was just a matter of asking Laurie to sign the Perspectives form and off I went! In general it's pretty easy to get involved - some people take research for credit during the school year or just email professors whose work they find interesting and ask if they can volunteer.

Doing research in the summer was cool because a lot of my other PoS friends were around and we could concentrate on our work instead of having to juggle research with classes (which is a bit trickier but totally doable, based on my experience this past semester). We also got to plan a lot of fun events, like a picnic at the top of East Rock park, fireworks at Long Wharf for Independence Day, World Cup-watching parties, movie nights (Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man's Chest!), and of course a huge crepe/dessert night at my apartment.

Picnic at the top of East Rock!

For my independent project, Laurie helped me devise a procedure based on something she had published with grad student Jon Flombaum and additional lemur work (Note: link goes to a PDF file so you need Adobe Reader) to study what the capuchins understand about what someone else can visually perceive based on gaze cues. Working out the kinks and getting the monkeys to come in for trials took longer than expected, but we've recently finished acquiring all the data and this semester I'll be learning how to analyze that data as well as how to prepare a paper for submission to journals. I feel that I learned a lot from being involved in all aspects of the experiment from conception to completion, so in some ways I already have an idea of what graduate school would be like =D