Profile

I’ve always loved animals. My favourite animal growing up was an orangutan. I dreamt of being able to see them in the wild, and so when I turned 16 I got a job and saved up to make that dream come true. I will never forget waking up on my first morning in the Borneo rainforest and seeing a wild orangutan 10 meters from my cabin. It was amazing!

Orangutans will always hold a special place in my heart, as will dwarf mongooses 🐻. Never heard of a dwarf mongoose? Neither had I until I started working with the Dwarf Mongoose Research Project. Imagine a meerkat, but cuter (I may be slightly biased!). One of my favourite things about working with dwarf mongooses is watching how they care for their young, where lots of them get involved with babysitting the pups. Having recently become a mum myself to my own cheeky pup, Marella, I have even more respect for their shared childcare!

I conduct research into lots of different things. One thing I looked at was how dwarf mongooses are affected by noise pollution, as the mongooses we work with live next to a busy road. The results were not surprising, in that it makes life harder for them. I am also fascinated by family life in dwarf mongooses. Have you ever had a fight with your sibling or maybe your parents have had a disagreement with your neighbours? Well, the mongooses experience conflict in a similar way to us. They have disagreements with their family members over who gets to eat a juicy scorpion, and they also get into fights with rival groups who trespass on their territory. My research looks at the effects of this conflict on family life. On paper it sounds interesting, but in reality it involves a lot of dwarf mongoose poo. You will have to ask me to find out why!

When in the field, in South Africa, I wake up to the sound of vervet monkeys and baboons jumping on our roof. I then get everything ready for a day with the mongooses, including mashing up some hard-boiled egg, which is one of their favourite foods. Seeing giraffes, zebras and wilderbeest on my walk to work is pretty cool! I arrive at the mongoose sleeping burrow before they wake up and then spend the whole day with that group until they go to bed in the early evening. During the day, I try to run experiments, but it depends largely on the weather conditions and whether or not the mongooses are behaving themselves! Running experiments on wild animals can be very tricky and lots of things do go wrong.