I grew up in Chennai (that is Madras), a bustling coastal city in southeast India. The more time I spent surrounded by concrete, the more I was drawn to the beach and the few precious forest remnants within the city. I was in 9th grade when I went on my first turtle walk, and there has been no looking back. Nature walks and travel with MNS, work with Nizhal, more volunteering for snatches of time at nearby research stations (NCF-Valparai, ARRS, CWS, MCBT) through a B.Sc. in Zoology took me towards my goal at the time – a Masters in Wildlife Science. With that complete, I was left wondering, well, what next?
I took some time, spent a year as a research assistant and staff writer, and realised I wanted to do a longer, more extensive research project. I had a gnawing curiosity about something I had seen the Indian desert jirds do during my Masters thesis field work in Kachchh, Gujarat. Picture this – I’m standing behind a tall bush hide, watching desert jirds scurry above ground, feeding and scratching and running down one burrow hole and coming up another. Suddenly, one jird stands on its hind legs (the 'alert' posture) and rapidly drums the arid ground. Instantly the others make for the burrows, like humans would if there was a tornado alert. This one jird still standing, foot-drumming every few seconds, slowly moves towards a small bush at the edge of their colony. What on earth was it doing?! That’s when I saw the snake! The jird continued this display moving closer to the snake, something that seemed foolhardy from a prey towards its predator. After a few minutes of this tense face-off, the snake slid away and left the colony undisturbed, as if it had received a message encoded in the drumbeat. The jird was signalling to the snake. I couldn't believe my eyes. I saw this interaction a few more times in other colonies during my study, read more about it in the literature, and discovered that these ‘pursuit-deterrent’ signals may be found in many other species. I wanted to know more. This led to my Ph.D. research (more here) during which I gained a veritable fount of knowledge, experience, and a few gray hairs. And well, here I am, on what will hopefully continue to be a lifelong quest to explore the natural world, learn and contribute meaningfully to science and conservation. |