Dr.Mili´s Pixies

“Do you think it is usual for two adult people to voluntarily go around in a jungle in the middle of the rainy night?” I ask the darkness next to me. The darkness is quiet for a while and all I can hear is the rain. The darkness finally answers:”Of course it is not!” I feel the darkness is smiling and find out I am smiling, too. Two crazy people. Me and the darkness. The darkness` flash-light twinkles. “Let`s go!” orders the darkness getting a shape of a young woman in the light. She resembles a will-o'-the-wisp in her raincoat and with a small light on her forehead. I follow Dr. Mili to the jungle to become part of her world of night pixies for few days…..

I climb up to a muddy path in boots left by a researcher I have never seen and I do not know if I am wet more from my sweat or from the rain. Everytime when I have to wipe my nose or have to cough I curse myself for not taking pictures of some beautiful girls in a dry atelier. A strange figure in a raincoat lit only by a glowing light of her flash-light is walking few meters before me. Sometimes she stops and turns with a strange iron structure like she would like to push aside the black wall of the jungle. I am exhausted by a two-day trip and a fever and fall thus into my own world of shadows and sounds by every other step in the Philippine jungle. A grip on my hand pulls me out of the babel of strange ideas. “Did you hear that? Now...again...You had to hear that!“ the person takes off her hood and changes into a young zoologist. “Mili, I cannot hear you well. You know my ears are buzzing!” “Well yeah, but you had to hear that. It is your first tarsier call!” Mili smiles and I am not sure if she is kidding me or not.
“Are you tired or will we go to the edge?” the doctor kicks my male vanity. “Nooo, I am OK, we can go on,” I lie to her and to myself, too. I follow her through a night jungle and learn about the secrets of the telemetric monitoring of Philippine tarsiers. “The signal is stronger here ... now it is weaker ... here, here it is. It will be number four. I am sure!“ she talks rather to herself. As she puts data from the GPS device down to a wet notebook, the image of rather shy girl from Northern Bohemia I firstly met few months ago in a cafeteria in Decin changes into a field scientist fully dedicated to her research. She leaves me far behind her on the path and I say to myself:”You see. Maybe a new Jane Goodall is being born right in front of your object lens.”
The Chocolate Hills are the Philippine sightseeing on the Bohol island. They are unusual geological formations of hundreds of symmetrically shaped hills spread on 50 km2. They are covered in green grass that turns brown during the dry season, hence the name.

Tarsiers` Hell

I firstly met Mili in November of last year, she was RNDr.Miladu Petrů for me at that time, to talk about my visit of the Philippine island of Bohol. A project focused on the protection and research of Philippine tarsiers called Tarsius took place in the first half of the year 2009 there. The research took place in the Philippine Tarsier and Wildlife Sanctuary close to the city of Corelle. The In-Situ project ( a research of a species in its native environment) was focused on the telemetric monitoring of tarsiers with help of small radios, the vocalisation (recording of tarsiers` vocal communication) and the activity in the field of protection and education. It is often said that this small insects eating primate is endangered mainly due to the lack of its natural environment. Unfortunately, it is endangered also due to its cuteness. This small creature of a size of a hand with tiny clubbed fingers resembles a jungle pixie. It looks like a perfect pet. It is literally a perfect pet for many people, because it dies before they are tired of it. It is also great for animal smuggling because it is so small. It is so easy to cage this small creature for instance into a coconut….The majority of smuggled animals die during the transportation experiencing conditions one can wish only for smugglers. I am not sure if some Tarsier Heaven exists, but I had an opportunity to see the Tarsiers` Hell…
Tarsiers as an attraction for tourists. Tourists do not mind that they are stressing the small creatures with their cameras.

Tarsier from Loboc.

Czech scientists and volunteers change in a regular rhythm in monitoring tarsiers. They usually meet only in a wooden shelter to eat together, exchange few words and change shifts – one shift goes to bed and the second one goes to the field. A cup of hot tea sometimes flavoured by a drop of Philippine rum is a pleasant ritual of such moments. Scientists eat local food prepared on an open fire. We change in cooking based on who is currently free. “Where would you like to go?” Mili asks me while crying over an onion. “Chocolate Hills and Loboc.“ “You will not like Loboc much!” “I know, but I want to see it,” I end the debate over an effort to cook goulash.
The next day we sit on bags with cement on a lorry platform also with Luboš Peške, a globally known expert on the radio-location of animals. Mili calls us to the bus heading to Loboc before we can drink a cold beer in a nearby stand. The tourist resort on a river offers boat trips, different activities and mainly…TARSIERS! Everything is in the name of these tiny animals. A baseball cap with a tarsier. A T-shirt with a tarsier. Underpants with a tarsier. A tarsier as a pendant. A tarsier as…alive lifeless creature on a tree in a flowerpot. Big round eyes without a sparkle, only a miracle holds this tiny body on a branch and clubbed fingers flag from the branch. And crowds of tourists flow and flow… People put their mobile telephones to the close proximity of these half-dead animals to take pictures of a creature already left by the spirit of the jungle.
Philippine tarsier is one of the smallest primates. It weighs about 100 grams and easily fits to human palm.

Jarda and new arrival

It is awfully hot in the rainforest. We nearly use all four limbs for climbing up a steep hill through the dense jungle. The bag with cameras is caught in the underwood all the time and makes the climbing harder. We sit for a while and Mili tests the strength of the signal from a radio located on a neck of a tarsier I named Jarda during the observation yesterday. Luboš said this was not a good idea, because I was spoiling the system of marking the animals with numbers they were using. However, I think Jarda did not mind. “It must be somewhere close,” Mili whispers and shows me the strength of the signal. We find Jarda about one and half meter above the surface hidden among branches after walking about ten meters. We sit about three meters from him to spend some time together. The animal thus adjusts to the presence of a human and this process is called the habituation. Jarda knows very well about us, but falls asleep after few tens of minutes even despite that. It is a sign that he feels rather safe in our presence. We talk silently when a voice sounds through the rainforest:”Milaaadaaa! Milaaadaaa!“. It is Carlito calling from the opposite hill. He is the local tarsier expert and helped Mili catch tarsiers in the first stage of the project. “What does he want?“ It does not matter anyway at this moment, because we cannot answer without distracting Jarda.
Tarsiers were tracked with help of small radios during the project. The tarsier radios did not weigh more than 3.5 gram for females and 5 grams for males (animals weigh 120 – 160 grams).

We learn the reason after returning to the station. Carlito managed to catch another tarsier. The small animal is hidden in a rag bag. It does not resemble a cute pixie at all when Mili takes it carefully out of the bag. It shows many small sharp teeth. I think the animal has inspired many filmakers shooting horror movies, such as Critters or Gremlins. The tarsier calms down a bit and Luboš gives it a small radio-collar manufactured specially for this project. The radio-collar must not limit the monitored animal at all and the size of the radio must be in accordance with the small size of the creature. The team now works as a group of well trained surgeons. The animal is back in the bag in few minutes and it is ready to return to the rainforest. The entire process of the tarsier`s return to the jungle is being recorded. The small animal shows its head and it seems it does not believe it is back for a while. It slowly climbs a tree and turns its head twice. Then it disappears in the jungle with help of two unbelievably fast jumps.

Baby tarsier

A baby tarsier was born in a big open aviary few days before my arrival to Bohol. Mili managed to get a permit for me to take pictures of the behaviour of the mother with her baby. Tarsiers are nocturnal creatures and they start to be active slightly before the dusk. Me and Carlito were looking for the female tarsier at these moments. It was hidden in dense bushes and there was a small chance to get a picture. As every process of taking pictures of animals, this session was mainly about waiting. I was twisted in an unnatural position near my tripod hoping to see for a moment the baby tarsier hidden between its mother and a tree branch or trunk. She usually turned her back on me and disappeared among leaves. As well as yesterday and the day before yesterday I was removing my camera from the tripod to put it to my bag when Carlito sizzled at me. He was pointing with his finger somewhere to the underwood about one meter above the surface. The female tarsier was climbing down the tree trunk together with its baby. Against all rules of taking pictures I was able to shoot from my hand a series of pictures documenting the way the mother holds its baby. Next day morning the mother allowed me to shoot several pictures at daylight before she and her baby disappeared in the treetop.
It is exceptional to see a tarsier with a baby in the nature and that's why there are almost no pictures showing the behaviour of mother while taking care of their babies.

We were tracking a pregnant female tarsier during one of my last trips to the jungle. We were losing it all the time. The signal was changing and we almost fell through a field of scree one moment. The signal grew stronger after we penetrated a dense underwood. We were walking in circles for a while. “Where the hell is it!” I was catching my breath while bending. And then I saw it. It was sitting on a surface just few steps far from me and resembled a mushroom with its small fat belly. It was the first tarsier I saw as the first person after one week. “Good eye!, said Mili and we sat on the wet ground. Nanynka (yes, I named the female tarsier against all scientific rules again) gave birth to a healthy baby few days after my departure.
I was allowed to see many of lives of these astonishing creatures during my short stay. I hope they can expect better times also thanks to work of Czech scientists.