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Michigan State University students in the College of Natural Science blog about their experiences while in Kenya conducting field research on spotted hyenas. Follow along on their adventures in the Masai Mara as they examine dominance, social complexity, animal intelligence and disease transmission!

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Notes From Kenya: MSU Hyena Research

English - Science, Research, Hyenas

http://msuhyenas.blogspot.com/

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Notes From Kenya · 3W ago

When life gives us rain...

...We look for animal tracks in the mud and make plaster casts! As a reference, the lion front paw is as big as a female hand with the fingers stretched out!So Serena Camp is faring much better than Talek Camp. Our complaint of not being able to make it to 2 of 3 hyena dens seems very trivial compar

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Notes From Kenya · 4W ago

The Flood That Wasn’t (…THANKFULLY!)

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Notes From Kenya · 1M ago

Rainy Season Blues

For all of you faithful bloggers out there, this is David, returning to Kenya for my long field season to conduct my graduate research (I’ll be here for ~2 years). My dissertation focuses on ways that we can use the spotted hyena to assist in the conservation of wildlife out here in east Africa.Me

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Notes From Kenya · 1M ago

April Showers Bring...Mud.

Impending doom over camp as I left Happy Zebra denApril was a different pace compared to my first few months here. We had much more rain, which meant a lot less time spent in the field collecting data. Rain also meant that the few times we tried to visit the hyena dens, the Mara made sure it was a c

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Notes From Kenya · 2M ago

Return of the Blog

Sorry for the lack of updates to the blog after our faithful contributor, Zach, left! I’m Deanna, the new research assistant here, receiving training from my very patient and helpful fellow RA, Noémie. In my few months here, we have already had many memorable experiences, both good and some less so,

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Notes From Kenya · 4M ago

Listening for the Quiet of Nature

People who talk too much make me nervous. I have met that person many times in many different locations throughout my life. Given any topic on which to form an opinion, or merely a willing audience, and the talking starts. I am that guy on more than too many occasions. If someone is listening the co

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Notes From Kenya · 5M ago

A tourist's perspective

I enjoy listening to the guys at camp talk about life and animals. I think there is value in traditional knowledge that stems from experiences and cultures that are tied to nature. As a visitor I have not been here long enough to either believe or disbelieve their wisdom, but I have been writing it

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Notes From Kenya · 6M ago

Happy Zebra clan and clues to social organization

Most of the end of October I was in Nairobi and that was long enough. By the time I returned to the Mara the migration activity had begun to subside and Happy Zebra clan was relocated in my absence. Uncovering the whereabouts of the Happy Zebra communal den seems blog worthy just given the amount of

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Notes From Kenya · 8M ago

High Season

At the end of low season the Mara was still a relatively quiet place when I went to bed…and then one morning I wake up and the wildebeest are here… and tourists are here, and the vultures are here, and more crocodiles are here, and all those hyenas I thought may have disappeared are in actuality, st

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Notes From Kenya · 9M ago

Migration!

The migration finally came (on the 23rd of July) to my side of the Mara, and given how high the Mara River was at the time, there were some pretty dramatic crossings and subsequent die offs. Chris Dutton and Amanda Subalusky who study the river (maraadventure.blogspot.com) said that in the first cro

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