Primate Watching
ABOUT
Founder
Andie Ang
I obtained my PhD (Anthropology; 2017) from the University of Colorado Boulder working on the population genetics and dietary profiles of Vietnamese leaf-eating monkeys. Currently I manage the Raffles' Banded Langur Working Group. I am also a Deputy Chair of the IUCN SSC Primate Specialist Group and the president of Jane Goodall Institute (Singapore).
Inspired by Russell Mittermeier's primate watching project and Jon Hall's mammal watching website, I hope to add to the resources supporting primate watching.
Any and all help are welcomed. This is an enormous task and I'd love to hear any thoughts, advice, or experiences you'd like to share! If you are interested to become a Page Contributor, please kindly contact me.
Page Contributors
Samantha Green
Samantha Green is a PhD candidate in primatology at the University of Western Australia. She has recently returned from 15 months following wild chimpanzees in Nyungwe Forest, Rwanda and is currently working on her thesis which focuses on their ranging patterns. Sam is not only obsessed with chimpanzees, but she also has a soft spot for New World monkeys, which developed during a 12-month trip around Latin America.
Sam can think of no better way to spend her time than travelling to far flung destinations to watch primates and she hopes to encourage others to do the same.
Luke Martin
Luke Martin is a Master's student in Biological Anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra.
Luke's special interest is the lemurs of Madagascar. He and his brother Tom have now travelled to Madagascar on three occasions, visiting some 20 protected areas. Their current lemur life-list stands at 56 species, highlighted by a prolonged aye-aye sighting in Farankaraina after years scouring the island in vain for it. Somewhat less glamorously, Luke has been urinated on by the aptly named and critically endangered golden bamboo lemur. Luke's primate list includes another 37 species across Southeast Asia and East Africa. Luke's upcoming Master's thesis will provide population abundance and density estimates for five sympatric nocturnal lemur species at the little-studied Zombitse-Vohibasia National Park, Madagascar.
Rahayu Oktaviani
Rahayu Oktaviani received her M.Sc. in the EcoScience program at Ewha Womans University in South Korea where she conducted research on the behaviour of the Javan gibbon (Hylobates moloch). After completing her Master’s degree in 2013, she began working for the university to continue the long-term project on Javan gibbons in the Gunung Halimun Salak National Park, Indonesia.
In addition to conducting regular monitoring of three groups of Javan gibbons, Rahayu initiated a conservation education program in 2014 for the local children around the national park. She hopes that the next generation can learn about and have a sense of belonging with the incredible, unique biodiversity that exists in their backyard.
Brad Smith
Brad Smith is an avid primate watcher from Perth, Western Australia. Brad's main passion lies in photographing primates big and small, which started when he and his wife Samantha packed their bags and spent two years trekking the forest of Africa and Latin America. This was followed by 15 months living in Rwanda, studying the Mayebe chimpanzees in Nyungwe Forest, as part of Samantha's PhD research.
A personal highlight of Brad's was photographing and identifying the 67 members of the Mayebe chimpanzee community. This was a massive task cataloguing 30,000 chimpanzee photos taken over 15 months. Brad is keen to share his wild primate watching experiences so that others may find joy in this remarkable pastime.