Greetings from Finca la Anita! Today was a fairly eventful day - we spent the entirety of the day in the classroom and lab surrounded by ants (yay!). We stated the day off nicely with fresh warm waffle bowls and the usual rice and scrambled eggs. The first thing we did was go to the classroom and continued our observations with more movies about leaf-cutter ants and Stephen Fry (an apparently famous British actor) getting freaked out by the soldier ants which Adrian happily grabbed.Then we went back to the ant homes we created yesterday and sampled places we thought had the most fungus. Then we went to enjoy the, deliciously scrumptious as usual, fried rice, beans, and plantain chips - hats off to the wonderful ladies of the kitchen!
During lunch, a family of young toucans fell out of their nest. The chicks were not yet able to fly on their own, and couldn't avoid predators, so the workers put them in a container to hide them. The mother cried out loudly for hours on end, it was heartbreaking to hear her sadness of being unable to reach her babies. The chicks were later let out and were able to fly a short distance at this point, and are now safe and in their mother's care.
After our lunch break, we got back to our groups and began to design our experiments with the ants, the wonderful all day working. We worked until dinner. We worked hard, and some of us just wanted to run, or maybe nap a little... Others of us (maybe a certain Namrata writing this blog) may have swallowed a moth - it did not taste good. That certainly held her off until dinner.
At dinner, we had beef, pea soup, vegetables, and the best dessert ever, caramelized plantains, and ice cream on top.
After dinner, we went back and presented our projects to the group. In essence, we allowed ourselves to be grilled and interrogated to the bone by our peers. It was very much a grin-and-bear-it situation, albeit helpful to our scientific methods.
As we write this, we're surrounded by giant bugs and a bat, terrified out of our minds, so that'll be all for tonight from the middle of the jungle.
¡Adios! -Namrata and Lexie
3 comments:
Wow! It was a productive day! And the toucan story is amazing! Keep having great, unexpected adventures!
- Mike and Elena (Lexie's parents)
Good team effort. Loved that you made a difference in saving the toucan babies! So proud of you kids!
Heidi and Brad )Chloe's parents
What a great Toucan story, glad that you all as a group could be a part of it. Big scientific discoveries do require tough peer reviews, so embracing that is good idea :--) amazing pictures like always. Thanks. Priya & Aravind (Namrata's parents)
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