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Zoologists
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Do kangaroos have friends?
Winning first prize for research among postgraduates at a major university is a great way to start your scientific career. Doing it when still an undergraduate is extraordinary, but for Alecia Carter that was only the beginning. Within a few years of finishing her undergraduate degree she’s already broken ground in our understanding of the personalities and social networks of kangaroos and baboons, along with gaining insights into several other animal species.
Conferences give researchers a chance to inform colleagues of their latest work, usually using large posters reporting their results. Postgraduate students at the University of Queensland are given a similar opportunity, with prizes awarded for impressive and innovative research.
Carter’s winning poster was based on her research on the mating habits of eastern mosquito fish, an introduced pest that is displacing native fish from swampy waters. In this species, the males mate by racing up behind females, and Carter says reproductive success ‘is all [about] the males’ prowess at swimming’. However, the low levels of oxygen in swampy waters mean that the fish are forced to spend ‘a lot of time breathing at the surface. Presumably this takes time away from chasing females and exposes them to predators, which is bad.’ Carter set out to establish if the fish could compensate.
The paper resulting from Carter’s work was published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, the most prestigious journal in the field, another exceptional achievement for an undergrad.
Carter found that after six weeks acclimatising to a hypoxic (low oxygen) environment the males had adapted and were able to mate frequently, whereas newly introduced males could not. Nevertheless, the acclimatised males had unusually low sperm counts, proving there’s still a price to pay for living without much oxygen.
The project began as a 20–30 hour experiment, part of a program to give undergrads a taste for research, but with encouragement from supervisor Dr Robbie Wilson it ended up taking four months of Carter’s free time.
Having outshone students years ahead of her, Carter moved on to female grey kangaroos for her Honours thesis.
Like many other mammals, grey kangaroos have social networks that come and go, with animals inhabiting overlapping ranges, a social organisation called fission–fusion. Little research has been done on such social structures, and Carter believes marsupials are particularly under-studied. ‘People regard marsupials as less than true mammals. It’s one of the things I’m hoping to change,’ she says. ‘We have the coolest wildlife in the world, but we under-appreciate it.’
Carter set out to discover whether female greys have friendship networks, measured by whether they spent more time with some individuals than others. She found the answer was yes.
Delving further, Carter investigated whether an individual seemed to get any benefits from time spent with her friends. She found that when among friends a kangaroo would spend more time feeding, and less watching for predators, than she would when among strangers.
Carter also compared a kangaroo’s sociability with other aspects of her personality. She measured each animal’s boldness both by seeing how closely she could approach them before they would take off, and by introducing something they might fear. ‘My original idea was to use a stuffed dog, but that would have been difficult to suddenly uncover in the field,’ says Carter. ‘Then I came up with the idea of a stuffed python.’ One of Carter’s supervisors suggested a live python might be more effective. ‘Well, I’ll see if I can get ethics committee approval,’ Carter replied.1
For most people, actually acquiring a 2-metre long python might be as much of a challenge as getting the idea past an ethics committee. Fortunately, Carter happened to have one lying around, as it were, since she and her boyfriend keep snakes as pets. ‘For us a typical date is going up to the nearest national park and looking for snakes,’ she says.
The python proved a great success, scaring some kangaroos while others were brave enough to come up and sniff it. However, Carter found no correlation between courage in the face of snakes and sociability with other kangaroos.
Carter hopes her work will encourage people to recognise that kangaroos have personalities, and become more inclined to protect them. She says it will also be helpful for programs keeping animals in captivity. ‘You can’t assume that if you put two animals together they will get along as they would if they had the choice of who to associate with.’
The research fulfils Carter’s childhood dreams. She says, ‘All I ever wanted to do was look at cool animals. When I was six I said I wanted to be a vet because that was the only job I knew working with animals, but when I did work experience there I discovered it was boring – you did the same thing each day.’
‘I thought, “this isn’t like David Attenborough documentaries”, and then I discovered you could actually do animal research and get paid for it.’ She has spent every opportunity volunteering on research, with target species including black sea turtles, satin bowerbirds, spot-tailed quolls and various endangered snakes.
Carter’s work won her the 2007 Undergraduate Studies (Science) Queensland Smart Women – Smart State Award. She used the $2500 to help fund a six-month trip to Africa to study mongooses (she prefers ‘mongeese’) and the diverse personalities of Namibian rock agamas, a lizard that looks like it’s taken a bath in a paint pot. She’s hoping her paper on agamas will be published soon. To raise the remaining costs she did lots of exam marking. ‘I’m dreading going back to waitressing; there aren’t a lot of jobs in science when you only have Honours,’ she said at the time.
Once back from Africa, Carter began to rectify the situation by starting a doctorate at the Australian National University, studying baboons. Carter describes this as ‘similar stuff as with the kangaroos but on a grander scale and also looking at how different personality types deal with acute stress.’
Carter’s enthusiasm for her subjects is irrepressible. She considers baboons ‘by far the most entertaining animals on the planet and I love them and want everyone else to love them.’ She describes a seven-month field stint as ‘really, really difficult, but incredibly rewarding. We have to be at the baboon’s sleeping cliffs before dawn, which means getting up at 4:30 every day, following the baboons for the entire day doing focal observations wherever they go (which is usually up and down cliffs!) until they go to another sleeping cliff when it gets dark again and we know where to find them in the morning (they don’t move at night). So days are over 13 hours long, up to 15 hours in the summer.’
Some waitressing was required to save the money to get started on the PhD, but Carter says the baboons ‘are so great, though, it’s totally all worth it!’
Along with her Bachelor of Science at the University of Queensland, Carter completed a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish and Indonesian. ‘I like languages and would really love to work in those countries and it’s important to at least try to know the language,’ she says.
Wherever her future research takes her, Carter seems to be on target when she says, ‘I aim to have an interesting life.’
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Refugee solves Australian problems
In the hottest months of 2003, a ship carrying thousands of sheep for the live export trade was rejected by Saudi Arabia. Unable to return to Australia for quarantine reasons, the Como Express sailed aimlessly around the Indian Ocean while its cargo suffered and embarrassment grew.
The tale of the dying sheep was big news for weeks, but even among those who remember the events few realise it was a scientist who solved this crisis. Fewer still would realise that Dr Berhan Ahmed was a refugee who has produced work of even more long-term value to Australia.
Initially at CSIRO and now at the University of Melbourne’s School of Land and Environment, Ahmed has been seeking sustainable solutions to the problem of termites, estimated to cost Australia AUD$910 million per year in damage, control and repair.
One of Ahmed’s research interests was on the use of crushed rock beneath a house’s concrete slab to create an impassable barrier to termites. He and his colleagues confirmed that Australian granites need to be crushed to a size that has previously been shown appropriate for American basalt. ‘The grains must be between 1.7 and 2.4 mm in diameter,’ Ahmed explains. ‘If they are smaller than that the termites can carry them. If they are larger there will be holes a termite can squeeze through.’
Termites’ main entry points into concrete slab buildings are through cracks, around perimeter edges, and via entry holes around drainpipes. ‘To us the gap around the pipe is very small, but to a termite it’s a freeway,’ Ahmed says. Suitably crushed rocks are now on the market as a result of this work by Ahmed and his colleagues at CSIRO.
In an effort to find other solutions to the termite problem in the Northern Territory, Ahmed has established 80 structures that he refers to as ‘dog houses’ (others have called them an ‘all you can eat buffet’ for termites). A variety of treatments have been used on the houses to see which are the most successful at keeping the termites out. The land is leased from the local Aboriginal people, and Ahmed has been working with the Yolngu community to see how Indigenous knowledge can be used to help us ‘learn to live with termites’. He says, ‘It is exciting to learn from the locals of Arnhem Land who have coexisted with termites for so long.’
Ahmed believes that it is essential that we adapt to termites, because the old methods of spraying are not sustainable. ‘The organochloride sprays are carcinogenic, undiscriminating, and not biodegradable.’ He even thinks termites can be of use to us. ‘They break down cellulose and they are a good source of protein for chickens, lizards, snakes and fish,’ he says. ‘The by-products are organic materials, which are nutrients.’ Of more than 300 species of termite in Australia, only about 20 cause economic damage.
Ahmed’s current research is developing an alarm system for buildings and power poles using a remote sensing system to detect termites before they damage properties and other timber. One of his PhD students is studying DNA ‘fingerprinting’ of termites for identification and mapping.
Ahmed was born in what is now Eritrea, but fled when he was 15. He ‘was lucky enough’ to have been able to complete his schooling at a United Nations school in Sudan, where he won a scholarship to study plant protection at university in Egypt. With recognition as a refugee, he was offered the chance to come to Australia or North America, and arrived in Melbourne when he was 25.
‘I started out as a tram conductor to learn the culture, practise English language skills and establish friendship with mainstream Australians, and in the hope of getting reference and support letters for employment and rental accommodation.’ After 10 months he went to La Trobe to study animal science. He recalls, ‘I was offered a job at CSIRO, which was an opportunity I could not pass up.’ While at CSIRO he completed a PhD at the University of Melbourne, and after working at both institutions eventually settled at the university.
Ahmed says he was always interested in agriculture and forestry. The more he learnt, ‘the more interested I was’. When the Como Express became news, Ahmed realised there was not likely to be a quick solution. ‘I knew that you could not solve the problem without knowing the culture of the area. People were trying to intervene without knowing the culture.’
Ahmed called authorities who were trying to find a destination for the cargo, and suggested they should donate the sheep to Eritrea rather than searching in vain for a buyer. At first there was little interest, but as hopes for selling the sheep waned the idea became more attractive.
However, another problem arose. The Eritrean government was dubious about accepting sheep no one else wanted, despite the extensive hunger there at the time. Ahmed was able to use his credentials as an animal scientist to assure contacts among Eritrean emigrants that the sheep were safe.
‘I said, “From the science I can tell you there is no problem, but from the politics and image I can’t resolve”.’ However, as dialogue grew between the Australian and Eritrean governments, the outstanding issues were eventually resolved. Some Eritreans remained critical, seeing the acceptance of sheep others had rejected as humiliating, but most people saw this as a win–win solution.
This was not Ahmed’s first venture outside scientific research. He was active in Eritrean organisations that opposed Ethiopian control of his country before it gained independence, and more recently he has worked against the current Eritrean dictatorship. He brought a professor specialising in Horn of Africa studies to Australia to explain some of the region’s issues to relevant agencies.
Locally Ahmed has drawn together groups representing refugees from various African communities to promote education, cultural exchange and better understanding between new immigrants and the police at Housing Commission estates where tensions have sometimes run high. Ahmed initiated and established an African Think Tank organisation with colleagues from the various African communities to promote and advocate on issues affecting refugee communities in Australia.
Ahmed has run as a candidate for the Australian Greens at the 2002 and 2004 state and federal elections.
On Australia Day in 2009, Dr Berhan Ahmed, the Chairman of the African Think Tank, went to Canberra to attend the ceremony of presentation of Australian of the Year. As the Victorian Australian of the Year 2009, Ahmed was one of the nominees for Australian of the Year. He describes it as ‘A long, long way from when I arrived here twenty-one years ago, a scared refugee coming from terrible conditio...
