The next day at Beza, we sent out the young male lemur with an accelerometer (backpack) securely on him. We broke up into two groups and had a period of two hours where we recorded data on him. We recorded the locomotor and posture types, substrate size (where he was), substrate height, distance between leaps, and the time of each movement. We also noted the context of movement or posture such as resting, eating, or traveling. This data could then be aligned with the data that the backpack collected to look at the energy expenditure of the animal based on acceleration. After the data collection part of our morning, we got to rest for a bit before we set off to cross the Sakamena (a dry river close by) and a really amazing canyon. The hike there took a bit of time, but the canyon was beautiful. It is usually filled with water during the wet season and there were still a few pools left at the bottom. We got to explore it a bit for ourselves and it was so awesome to climb the rocks down into the canyon and then walk through all of the rocks and pools. On the way there and back, we walked through a lot of agricultural fields and learned about some of the different crops growing there. We saw the bageda, which is like a potato and tastes very good, mango trees, and sugar cane plants. We also got to see zebu (humpbacked cows) up close and personal as they crossed our path into the Sakamena river!
