Rachel Kilian loves animals, traveling and working with the enviornment.
This summer, Kilian, a senior and wildlife biology major, spent six weeks of her summer near Playa Chiquita studying howler monkeys.
“It was wonderful,” she said. “I would spend anywhere from eight to 13 hours in the rainforest a day. I just had my backpack, my water bottle and my jar of peanut butter. I had my binocculors, a GPS and a cell phone just in case anything happened.”
Kilian’s day consisted of heading out into the rainforest at about 4:15 a.m. and then going to find a group of monkeys. After she found them, she would find a spot near them and observe them for the day.
“It’s not hard to find them,” she said. “They yell back and forth to each other so you can find them.”
This was not Kilian’s first time working with monkeys, though. She spent part of her summer last year in Costa Rica working in the rainforest collecting research and working through a group called the Monkey Bridge Project. With members of her team, Kilian was able to help build bridges over roads in different villages so animals would be able to get across safely.
“It’s just really important for us to help (the animals) so that they can extend their territories and stuff,” she said.
This summer, Kilian decided to turn her travels into a research project and to go through the honors program for help with the cost of the trip.
“I kind of spent all my money last summer, so I thought this would help,” she said.
Kilian decided she wanted to learn more about howler monkeys and how road traffic affects their environment, and decided to do her senior seminar paper over her research and the information she found while she was there.
“I still have a lot of data to analyze and deal with,” she said. “I want to turn in a paper and possibly get it published. I don’t know if I’ll do something general with the paper, or if I’ll do something specific just about howler monkeys.”
Professor of Biology Darcey Russell is teaching the biology senior seminar class.
“All of the students will be writing a paper,” Russell said. “And now Rachel has some really interesting experiences to bring to her paper.”
Although Kilian did run into some roadblocks, such as tropical storms and keeping track of the different groups of monkeys, she enjoyed the trip and hopes to go back in April or May.
"I would love to go back for another six to eight weeks just to get more data," she said. "I have more questions than answers now, which usually happens with research."<br/>&#160;