Action | Student News

Living a Double Life

For Six Months of the Year, Grad Student Luke Dollar Trades Number Crunching in Durham for a Chance to Track the Elusive Fossa in Madagascar p.2

Now, thanks in large part to the work of Dollar and his team, the veil of mystery around the fossa is lifting. Early observers had assumed it must be nocturnal because they rarely saw it, but now scientists know that the fossa is cathemeral, or equally active day and night. When it comes to food, fossas regard "anything with a heartbeat" as potential prey, but lemurs make up a large part of their diet. This might seem like an ecological Catch-22 - what should conservation-minded scientists do to help an endangered predator whose chief prey is itself endangered? But the actual relationship is considerably healthier, Dollar said. By keeping more common varieties of lemur in check, fossa predation prevents these better-adapted lemurs from outcompeting their endangered cousins. Take away the fossa, Dollar said, and rare lemurs like the sifaka would likely die off, too.

The threat to fossa survival is two-fold. As with thousands of other species in Texas-sized Madagascar, slash and burn agriculture is rapidly consuming the fossa's natural habitat. Worse, many Malagasy people fear and loathe the fossa and will shoot it on sight.

"Killing a sifaka [lemur] is taboo, but the fossa is like their big bad wolf," he explained. "They're told from childhood that if they're bad, the fossa will come and get them. And if their chickens disappear, it's always the fossa's fault."

Fossas do eat chickens - in fact, Luke's team uses them to bait live-traps - but Dollar believes local fear has a much deeper cause. When humans arrived in Madagascar about 1,500 years ago, the fourth largest island in the world had twice as many species as it does now. Among the ranks of the now-extinct is an animal Dollar describes as "the fossa's big brother," a predator large and fierce enough to hunt and kill humans. Although there are no reliable reports of modern fossas attacking humans, Malagasy animosity may stem from a time when a "fossa" attack was a very real threat.

Dollar figures the best way to change misperceptions is through education, so community programs form an important part of his group's work. Usually, after team members sedate a trapped fossa with a dart from a blowpipe, they transport the slumbering animal back to the station for tests - measurements, blood work, and tissue samples. Sometimes, during these sessions, the once-feared creature becomes a goodwill ambassador for the entire team, as many villagers have a chance to see, touch, and even hold a fossa for the first time in their lives. Afterwards, Dollar said, villagers will often greet members of his group with shouts of "Arovny ny fossa!" - "Save the fossa!"- in Malagasy.

Fossa visits aren't the team's only community outreach program. Others include attending village ceremonies, helping the Peace Corps build a conservation-themed basketball court (complete with a slam-dunking lemur on the backboard), and vaccinating domestic animals against rabies. The team itself includes many native Malagasy, both local helpers and full-time graduate students from Antananarivo University in the capital. The long-term goal of their efforts, Dollar said, is to empower the Malagasy people to understand and manage their own resources.

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