Karen B. Strier

Where do you work?

I am a professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

What do you do?

I study primate behavioral ecology in the wild. For the past 16 years my research has been concentrated on the endangered muriqui (Brachyteles arachnoides) monkeys, which live only in the Atlantic forest of southeastern Brazil. The project now involves extensive collaboration and includes training opportunities for Brazilian scientists.

What inspired you to do what you do?

Primate behavioral ecology was a way to merge the things I love: nature, animals, and doing something beyond one’s own advancement. I have been lucky to gain exposure to different kinds of research, both laboratory and field, while still in college; to have had a chance to work as an assistant on the Amboseli baboon project run by Stuart and Jeanne Altmann in 1979; and then to have been allowed to study muriquis.

Besides your work, what other interests do you have?

Nature, discoveries, exercise, reading, friends.

What keeps you interested in your work?

Primates are incredibly complex, and just when you think you understand something, they show you a different possibility. The sense of discovery, the fact that there are really answers out there, and knowing that what we learn about primates can help to preserve them are what keep me interested in my work.

What was your most exciting moment in the field?

During the first decade of research—because everything was new—there were many “most exciting moments”: the time I saw a muriqui for the first time in the wild, the day they stopped to threaten me instead of fleeing, and especially, the time females from my study group defended me against an unfamiliar male.

There has also been the immense satisfaction of watching the growth of different aspects of the project, from muriqui numbers to student participants to long-term data. Just the fact that we can now, to a large extent, predict which individual will give birth each year is exciting—though we can’t be sure until the birth actually happens that we’ll be right.

What goals have you set for yourself?

To maintain and extend the ways in which the theoretical and the practical, conservational sides of my work interact and inform one another.

How would you suggest getting started in your field?

Field primatologists need strong science backgrounds, the ability to be alone for extended periods, and a passion about what they do. Getting started also requires opportunities. Now there are a number of Web sites, directories, professional societies, and field schools where students can get some research experience and find out if they really like doing fieldwork as much as they like hearing about it.

What resources can you suggest to the layperson interested in your field?

The Primate Anthology: Essays on Primate Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation from Natural History, edited by Russell L. Ciochon and Richard A. Nisbett (Prentice Hall, 1997) is a collection of articles about primates published in Natural History that capture the dual components of research and conservation.

My own book Faces in the Forest: The Endangered Muriqui Monkeys of Brazil is out in paperback from Harvard University Press. In it I describe setting up the field site and learning about the monkeys.

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