Although people have been slowly receiving their pre-ordered books in the mail, July 17 is the official publication date of Edible Insects and Human Evolution!  It's been more than five years since its conception and now my book is finally out for the world to see.  

​Friends have been sending me pictures of my book as they receive it! <3

There has been some great online media to go along with the book release.  Each piece has something unique and I think they all work well together to fully paint the picture on what the book's about.

First, NPR covered it yesterday (in print, not audio.. you can read it here).  I had a wonderful conversation with Paul Chrisholm (who has a background in entomology!) and I think the piece turned out great.  I could have done without the photo of bugs hanging out of someone's mouth, but sensationalism is the name of the game with the media, so I can't pretend to be surprised.

Entomofago, which is based in the EU, is the first international media group to focus entirely on edible insects.  They published an interview with me on their blog (available here).  It's a nice little piece that asks a bit more about how I got interested in the topic and why I decided to write a book.

​Lastly, my publisher, University Press of Florida, asked me to write a blog post (here) to accompany the book's release.  They wanted a little bit of a "behind the scenes" feel to the post so I decided to try to show how I work with many different sources of information in order to reconstruct this part of the diet in the past.  

I have some radio interviews coming up and expect there to be some more online articles going around.  I am very pleased with the reception of the book's release.   I am working hard to push away the negative thoughts that this will all change once people have read it!  

I teach Introduction to Biological Anthropology which is a class on human evolution.  Most of my students take my class because it fulfills a science general education credit.  This means that most of my students are non-science majors and that my class seemed like the lesser of the science evils.  When they find out that the first section of the class in on genetics, they often begin to rethink their decision.  However, if I can make genetics make sense to them, then I might be able to get more of my students, students who represent the ethnic diversity of Detroit, into the sciences.  

I have students work in small groups.  They each get a copy of the instruction manual and the data notebook.  Students also get a coin, a six-sided die, and a 20-sided die.  Since I am a gamer, the d20 made sense to me.  I was also very happy to have an excuse to buy a bunch of dice at my local game store (I spent about $15 for 30 dice).  However, the activity can easily be modified to use a coin and d6 only.  

Below you can find pdfs of the handouts.  The instruction manual will walk you through the whole activity, and the data sheet is what students use to record their findings.  If you had seen an earlier version of this activity, the below files contain edits that greatly streamline the process.  

For more info, I published this activity in the American Biology Teacher: 
"Modeling Genetic Complexity in the Classroom"
Julie J. Lesnik
The American Biology Teacher, Vol. 80 No. 2, February 2018; (pp. 140-142) DOI: 10.1525/abt.2018.80.2.140
Feel free to contact me here if you would like a pdf of the paper.

I am often asked to blog while in the field, and I never do.  That is because my time in the field is rarely anything exciting enough to document day-by-day.  I usually wake up, go get in a good day’s work of whatever I am doing – excavating or collecting termites – come back, have dinner, and go to sleep.  However, my time at Gombe has been one of the biggest adventures of my life.  My first two days in the field were exceptional, so I’ve decided to write a day-by-day diary.  I'll  update this post as I go.
Last update: 11/30/2016

Also, please excuse any typos.  There have been lots.  I've caught a bunch of them, but I am sure there are more.  There's even one in the weblink to this blog because I had one in the title when I first posted!  But as you will see, on day 2, I hurt my pinky, so I've had to re-learn typing with my left hand!

​First off, I traveled to Tanzania essentially straight from the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association which were held in Minneapolis, MN. My week prior to leaving was about as hectic as any I have ever had since I was not only packing for both trips but also making sure my students were set with all they needed before I was gone for a couple of weeks.  My trip here went incredibly smoothly.  My checked bag made it, which was something that wasn’t true when I traveled to Croatia last year, South Africa this past spring, or to Eastern Tanzania this past summer.  My ride was waiting for me at the airport and after everyone ran their errands in town, we were on the boat to Gombe.  The boat ride was something I had romanticized in my head.. Traveling along the coast of Lake Tanganyika up to the most famous chimpanzee site in the world.  And indeed, it was a beautiful trip.  We were at max capacity in the boat with 12 people, the goods for camp, and my luggage, but we made it safely.  At camp, I have my own room, complete with bed, bedding, pillow, and mosquito net.  Gombe is definitely a plush field site compared to most.

Gombe is pretty high up in elevation.  Base camp at the lake is 770 meters, and the chimps will trek up over 1200 meters.  I was warned that there is a little bit of an acclimation period for this (which I was glad to hear since it gave me an excuse for any poor performance besides just being incredibly out of shape!).  So our first day we took it easy.  I am here with my friend and colleague Rob O’Malley (and grant Co-PI) who has done an extensive survey of chimpanzee termite fishing at the site.  For the most part we are just visiting termite mounds for which he has record of chimpanzee fishing.  We scheduled the trip for November because this is usually the rainy season, which is when the termites are most active, but alas, the rains have not come.  By sticking to lower elevations, the mounds are wetter in these locales, and the termites still active enough to collect at least a small sample.  We hit six mounds and got samples from five of them.  A very successful first day.  On our way back to camp, on an easy trail with only some small rolling hills, I caught my toe on a rock.  I actually rarely stumble when hiking, and when I do, it’s easy for me to catch my balance.  However, this particular stumble (which was at the end of the day, on the way out, which is when most injuries happen since you are tired and your guard is let down) I tripped at the beginning of a downhill.  When I went to catch myself with my other foot, the ground was much further down than I needed it to be.  So I bit it hard.  Completely face planted.  I thought at first that I hit my head, but in actuality my right elbow took the greatest impact, traveling up into that shoulder. It’s sore but fine.  However, what I did not know at first was that I fell on top of my left hand.  When I stood up I realized that my pinky was bending in a very unnatural direction.  The thoughts that went through my head were 1) I really do not want to have to take the boat back to town after only one day to go to the hospital, and 2) I really should take a picture of this!  I didn’t do either, fortunately for the former, regretfully for the latter.  Our field assistant Halfan popped my finger back into place without any problem and no extra pain on my part.  I now just have a swollen, purple finger that is taped to the one next to it.   No big deal, really, but it is so unlike me.  But alas, everyone falls at some time.­­

We had rain last night!  A good 45-minutes’ worth!  So we used this as an opportunity to go to the mounds at higher elevations hoping it was enough to soak them a bit and wake up the termites.  The goal was to make it to 1020 meters since that is the highest mound that Rob has recorded.  There was a good path that we could take up that wasn’t too steep and we stopped at other termite mounds along the way.  When we finally got up to where the mound was, it was only 50 meters off the path, so should’ve been easy to find.  Wrong.  This area was covered dense thicket.  Vines on vines on vines.  I had encountered some of this the day before and felt like the forest was trying to eat me alive because some appendage was always trapped.  Today was better, though.  I was much more confident throwing my weight around and could see paths more clearly.  However, my legs were tired, so lifting them to step over vines that were a couple feet in the air often took a few tries, so I was far from quick through the vegetation.  We finally got to the mound, and after pretty unsuccessful collections at mounds on our way, we managed to pull a decent sample.  Success!  Thank god.  We now had to make it back through the thicket back to the path.  We had no visibility due to the dense undergrowth, but thought we knew the best way to go.  Holy cow were we wrong.  At one point I was climbing over dense vines that were suspended easily two feet over the ground.  This is where I made the contribution of “there has to be a better way,” so I too am at fault in this whole debacle.  We turned left, continuing to climb over and under the thicket, only to be greeted by a cliff face.  Our guide Nuhu (Helfan has been Rob’s guide till this point but had to go into town to see a dentist) thought we could make the climb, and going back didn’t really seem like an option either.  If we wanted out, we had to climb.  We climbed a 100m cliff face using vines and other vegetation (There were two spots where it was a literal wall about 4-5 meters tall.  Words cannot explain how absolutely crazy it was.  For the second day in a row I felt like I was in a bad movie.  Fortunately the adrenaline kept my left hand feeling fine, and I was able to grab vines without any issue, but there was definitely a spot where I went to reach for the next vine, and there wasn’t one.  At that moment, the exhaustion set in, and then the panic.  I started to slide back down the loose dirt on the cliff face.  Anything that might have been just out of reach was now far beyond anything I could manage and I did not have the energy to pull myself up with my now completely suspended arm.  Fortunately Nuhu had gone ahead of me and came back and fed a vine my way for me to grab.  Literally threw me a life line!  I also had Rob behind me creating a foothold with his hand.  After clearing that ridge, I needed to catch my breath, but the rest of the climb out went fine.  I immediately proclaimed that we were not collecting any more termites for the day, and we began our long trek back down to camp.  Once there I took the most glorious soak in Lake Tanganyika(1) and reveled in how amazing of a life I lead.

(1) This is another charm of Gombe – other places on the coast have liver fluke parasites, but here the waves are rough enough that they don’t survive.  Also, there are not bot or mango flies! Which is the hell I’ve heard the most about from my primatologist friends.  So wet clothes are not breeding grounds for eggs of parasites that will burrow into your skin once they hatch.  Again, this place is pretty magical.

Today’s goal was to collect termites from the grassy areas that are directly behind camp.  Previously we have walked a good ways down the beach before ducking into the forest.  Rob mentioned that I would get to experience “mango trail”, to which I must have made some sound implying “Oh, that sounds lovely” only to be corrected that it is one of the toughest trails here at Gombe.  No warmup down the beach, just straight up the hill behind our house.  Much of the way was a steep staircase of roots where I used my hands often to scramble.  I did not have an easy time of it.  I think I tapped into everything I had getting up that cliff yesterday and left very little in reserve for today (the kinesiologist in me kept thinking that I should have eaten sooner when I got home yesterday in order to replenish my glycogen stores!).  We had Halfan back with us today and he would ask if I was OK or needed help, and I kept saying “I am capable, just tired.”  At one point the path went along a ridge and was sloped slightly downhill. It was covered in leaf litter (which makes the ground terribly slick) and there was a steep drop-off; my very tired self was weary here and my cautious steps took forever. I felt pretty terrible about my performance.  We finally made it up to the area of the target mound and had to scramble up the hillslope off the path.  I found that when using my hands I would often rest my weight on my knuckles.  Truthfully, knuckle-walking never really made sense to me, but today I got it.  Not sure if hilly terrain has anything to do with the adaptation, but it very well could, and that’s probably how I will think of it from now on.  Anyway, after collecting our data I asked Rob, the bearer of the GPS, how far we had gone in elevation.  I was expecting we were somewhere midway to how high we were yesterday, expecting 850m or so, but was pleasantly surprised to learn that we were at 1000m.  I felt a little less bad about having a tough time of that uphill knowing that we covered 250m of elevation in a very short time.  Going downhill was much, much easier.  I am quick on my feet, and am fortunate enough that I have never had trouble with my knees.  I easily kept up with Rob and Halfan, earning some of Halfan’s respect back.
​
Today was the first day we encountered the chimps!  The valley behind camp is their core area, so the trail system is the most complete and there is always a good chance of seeing the chimps.  We came across the mother-infant team (Jane Goodall Institute field assistants) along the trail on our way across the valley to visit some additional mounds.  There were probably about six chimps in the group, with two very young juveniles. Watching the juveniles is seriously endless fun!  They explore and play and pretty much keep moving nonstop.  After a short while, the group took off uphill, so we continued on with the rest of the termite mounds on the day’s list.  Rob has been collecting data since the beginning of the month, so we are reaching the end of what we set out to do.  We pretty much hit all our targets now, so for the next couple of days, we may just go out and find the chimps in hopes that one of them will lead us to a good termite mound where they want to do some fishing. 

Today is also Thanksgiving.  I am very thankful to have opportunities like this and to have been able to have made a career out of it.  The fact that I have a job where I use the degrees I earned is something I never take for granted. 

Today was a good day in the forest.  I am getting much more comfortable navigating (most of) the terrain.  The leaf litter on the hillsides is still a tough one for me, but I am able to make up lost ground by trail running when the path changes back to rocks and/or roots.  We followed the chimps for most of the day, and they kindly stayed to the trails for the most part, which makes the lives of the observers much, much easier.  Additionally, we are not collecting behavioral data for the chimps, so if they run off, we can just leisurely work our way along a set of paths and catch them at some other point.  Standard protocol for collecting behavioral data is a "focal follow" where you pick a chimp and stay with them, no matter what.  In that case, if your chimp runs down a ridge, so do you, unless you are willing to lose your target, and thus lose the data.  For this reason, primatologists are the most hard core field researchers I know.  They will do almost anything to keep an eye on their chimp, including getting themselves in some pretty precarious situations.  I am grateful that my work here does not have that sort of intensity, however, we are clearly abiding by the same general code, getting ourselves stuck at the bottom of that cliff on Day 3 for a termite mound.
​
My most frustrating thing today is being reminded that I am a terrible photographer.  I really don't know how to use an SLR, and the "auto" settings clearly don't cut it.  I am going with the method of "take a ton of photos and hope one by chance turns out well."  

Tomorrow is Rob's last day in the forest.  We are praying for rain!  We want ALL the termites to come out!  There was a storm cloud and some thunder this afternoon, but it passed us by.  Maybe it hit somewhere else in the park, and maybe that bodes well for the conditions to bring rain tonight.

What did I learn today?  I learned that Rob can be really fast through the forest!  It is his last day out, and I am unsure whether that’s related, but he took the lead on many of the trails, when previously we have both been following Halfan. He’s definitely in better shape than I, and more used to the terrain as well, but sometimes it would just be his long legs covering the ground better than mine.  I could not keep up.  I also think fatigue from the past 4 days is setting in, so I am taking tomorrow off from trekking and going to stay in camp and get some work done.  It is the middle of the semester after all, and I have a few things I need to turn in to my department for Monday.

We followed the chimps today and stuck with Tanga who is a committed termite fisher.  She definitely tried to fish at one mound, but had no luck and moved on quickly.  However, watching her break a branch from a tree to use as a tool as she was on her way to the mound was a cool enough sight in itself.  She grabbed it at least 20 meters before the mound, so there was no doubt where she was headed or what she intended to do.  I will have three more days in the forest before I have to leave and I will stick to this method – follow Tanga.  Not only do I know that she is eager for termites, but she is also the mom of that adorable four-month-old baby that is in some of my photos.  When the baby is awake, she is incredibly cute, swinging from the trees, chewing on mom’s foot, or other curious baby things.  She is also very entertaining when she is sound asleep.  She gets a tight grip on her mom’s fur with her hands, but not with her feet, so if mom gets up to move, she dangles like a ragdoll, and it is immensely entertaining to watch Tanga try to reposition her to the center of her back.  This also keeps Tanga from moving too quickly through the forest, so I believe she is a focal target that I can actually manage to follow.

After we were done with the chimps for the day we decided to visit the Kakombe waterfall.  This is one of the touristy things I was going to do after Rob left, but it was relatively on our way home, so we decided to go.  The path to it was a very mild incline, but I was spent.  I was almost regretting the decision to squeeze it in at the end of the day.  But wow, was it worth it once we got there.  It’s a pretty tall waterfall, about 25 meters or so, and you can get right to the base of it.  The cool mist was revitalizing for body and soul.  Locally it is thought of as a magical place, and I could definitely feel why.

Speaking of magical.. on a completely different note, last night I had a chocolate brownie cliff bar and I put Nutella on it.  Holy wow.  To me at that moment, it was the most delicious thing I ever ate.

And now today's batch of my favorite photos:
​

I spent today in camp.  I was able to get quickly through the few back-home, school-related tasks that needed tending to, so spent most of the day enjoying a book in my house (The Sellout by Paul Beatty, “a satirical opus on race in twenty-first century America,” according to the back-cover quote from O magazine.  I highly recommend.)

However, even in camp, there is no shortage of wildlife encounters.  I had a stand-off with a “small” centipede (about 5 inches long).  It was on my floor, and although I did not want it in my house, I did not feel the need to kill it.  The trap-it-under-a-glass trick that I learned from my mother wasn’t exactly going to cut it, but I did manage to modify the technique using a Tupperware (transparent so I could keep an eye on the thing) and use a broom to sweep it out of the house.

Additionally, there is a troop of baboons that lives in camp.  Normally I only see them when I take a walk across camp to the office to access the internet once a day.  More times than not, they are directly on the path and I have to navigate right-of-way with them.  The seasoned researchers here pass them with very little notice; however, they make me a bit nervous.  I tend to hang back and hope they cross out of the way before I need to pass.  Today they have been very fascinated with my house.  They have been hanging around all afternoon, and this morning they used the house as a jungle gym, chasing each other all around and over the metal roof, causing quite the ruckus.  Maybe this is their normal routine and I am just not normally here to witness it, however, I do make sure to keep the door locked at all times because I know they want nothing more than to raid the kitchen.

A little bit of rain today, but not much.  For the past few days there have been some rumbles of thunder and a drizzle here or there.  I am hoping this bodes well for a big rain in the next day or two.  Not only would this increase the chances of me seeing some chimpanzees fishing for termites (I really just want to have my own photo that I could put in my book) but I might also then catch the swarm of reproductive termites that come with the rains.  These alates are the termites most widely eaten by people and generally cause excitement as well for the nonhuman primates.  I have never gotten to witness a swarm.  This is the third time I have purposefully planned my trip to Africa to correspond with the rainy season, and I have a couple more days where I can still make the third time the charm.  Fingers crossed.

Rob is now making his way by boat back to Kigoma where he will begin finalizing our permits for shipping out our samples before flying back home on Thursday.  I am very grateful to him for joining this project.  Before he left, he gave me a few more photo gems that he had taken.

Well, those photos just about sum up my day!  I am one happy camper!

I was a little nervous about how the day would go because we did not know exactly where the chimps were since no one was with them last night when they nested. But fortunately, they were pretty low, which is where the termites are most active.  We found Tanga around 9:30 and she pretty quickly broke off the path and headed to a termite mound.  I was pretty pleased with my strategy and how well it already seemed to be working.  However, she had no luck and quickly moved on.  As we were on our way up the path, we were met by a JGI field research who told us he saw Glitter fishing at a termite mound.  The mound was only a short ways away, but I expected that she would be finishing up when we got there.  However, she stayed there and fished, along with her daughter Gosama, for about a half hour!  It was truly ideal.  Glitter is a well-habituated and friendly-to-people chimp and her daughter was the same.  I was able to get into a position where I could get a clear view of them at the mound (vines and branches almost always ruin the shot) and I took a bunch of pictures.  Like 1,000 pictures (switching between two cameras, both on continuous shooting).  I managed to get a couple shots with which I am truly in love.

This first shot is from early after my arrival.  When I got there, Glitter was committed to looking for a tool, but Gosama decided it was time to nurse.  I got to witness a full-on chimp toddler temper tantrum.  After getting her tool, Glitter settled into a good spot for fishing and let Gosama nurse. Getting to see this and capture it is especially exciting for me because a lot of what I discuss about edible insects is how important they are being a nutritious animal-based food that females can access even with baby in tow.

​After Gosama was done nursing, she wanted to fish where mom was fishing, ultimately chasing Glitter to another hole on the opposite side of the mound.  She was just as adept of a tool user.  The one thing I noticed is that she had to search for new tools more often than her mother, so she still has some to learn regarding which materials make the best tools.  

Then after fishing for about 10 minutes, she went over by her mother and decided that that location was a better place to fish.  Glitter let her and headed back to her original spot.  THIS is the shot I traveled to Tanzania for.  You can even zoom in and see the termites on the tool.

I find it fascinating the different ways chimps eat the termites from the tool.  At Gombe (at least with these two.. I guess I don't know if other individuals do it differntly), the termite end of the tool is rested on the opposite hand and the termites are picked off the tool and the hand with the lips.  At the Goualougo Triangle in the Republic of Congo, the other site I am most familiar with because I watched/coded videos of tool use for part of my dissertation, the chimps take their opposite hand and run it down the length of the tool, ending up with a handful of termites that they then throw in their mouths.

​After hearing some vocalizations up the hill, Glitter and Gosama left the mound to rejoin the group.  Up there, the chimps were getting excited about possibly hunting colobus monkeys.  I stayed with them for about two hours to see if they would have a successful hunt, but today wasn’t the day.  It was still interesting to watch them climb up the trees and wait in almost total silence.  For the most part, if the chimps are not eating fruit (or nested for the night), they are on the ground lounging, grooming, etc.  They also are very vocal and loud (that's how we can find them in the forest).  So it is clear that they were all working together up in the trees hoping to catch a monkey.

Shortly after getting back to camp, it began to rain!   It rained really hard for a couple of minutes, but then has been consistently raining almost two hours now with no signs of stopping.  This is good news.  Maybe I will get my last wish and see those flying termites.

After such a successful day with the chimps yesterday, I decided to spend the first part of the morning taking a touristy hike up to "Jane's Peak."  I am told that before the chimps were habituated, and before their regular movement patterns were understood, Jane Goodall would go to this place and listen and watch for chimps across the valley.  Now it is a beautiful vista with a bench for tourists to enjoy.  It was a little cloudy/foggy today, so it is tough to make out the lake in the bottom photo.

After Jane's Peak we hiked to go find the chimps.  I was hopeful that the rain yesterday would mean lots of fishing today.  When we got to where they were, a JGI researcher showed me multiple videos of chimps fishing.  I was worried that I threw away my window by going to Jane's Peak, but we caught plenty of activity still.

First was Faustino, an adult male.  I saw him fish for a bit yesterday as well, and today was the same thing.. he likes fishing where there is no way for me to get a good shot past the vines!

After watching him till he moved on, we walked up the path and found Dia (edit from previously mistaking her for Dili), a young female, at a termite mound right on the trail. Unfortunately, her back was to me, and she is a much more shy chimpanzee than any of the others I had previously photographed, so moving into a better position was not necessarily going to be easy.  I felt like the paparazzi in the brush trying to position my camera just so in order to get a shot between branches.  This actually worked quite well, and after I was pretty sure she was fine with my being there, I was able to move into more comfortable positions and get another great set of termiting photos.  I now have a bunch of good ones and it is going to be tough to decide what goes in the book!  After my first pass through the photos, these were my favorite "classic" fishing photos."

But the other thing I managed to capture from Dia was a lot more of the whole process.  Like using her hand to break some of the mound to create a good opening for fishing...

And waiting for the termites to come and bite the tool.  It vibrates when it's ready!

And carrying the tool in her mouth to find a new location.

And finally, that satisfied look when she knows she found a good place.

I am grateful to Dia, and all the chimps, for letting me experience this with them.  I only have one more day in the forest before I begin my long trek home.  I will go out with the chimps tomorrow just to soak in some more of this magic before I have to leave.  I will probably try to get more termiting photos because that's why I am here, but I also hope to just hang out with them, my camera put away, and take it all in one last time.

Today was my last day in the forest, and this should be my last entry here, barring nothing crazy happens during the long journey home.  I kept my promise and left my camera in the bag, but I got to see fun things like dominance displays (one heart-poundingly close to me), someone building a day nest, and an amazing courting of a male by an estrus female.  She was doing all the best flirting, including some bipedal standing.  

I want to take a moment to post these photos from the other day of Tanga and her sleepy baby.  After I had already blogged about it, I saw them at it again.  I managed to capture a shot of how Tanga kicks up her leg to try to reposition the infant.  It made me giggle every time I saw it.

I knew this trip would be great, but I have been sort of surprised as just how much I have been in awe of the whole thing.  This is not my first time seeing wild chimps, or even to see them fish for termites.  However, the last time I was at a chimpanzee site, I was at the savannah site of Fongoli in Senegal.  There are a couple of big differences.  
1) The obvious.. the different environment.  The savannah habitat is important for my work since a lot of reconstructions of hominid environments have suggested savannah/open woodland, but in terms of visiting it, it is most like the environments I work in when working at a fossil hominin site, whether in East or South Africa.  I really enjoy being in the forest.  The forest has always been a place I have gone for fun; I just enjoy the sounds, smells, and everything about this environment.
2) The weather.  Although I was hoping for more rain because it makes the termites more active and I wanted to get to see them fly, it has made for a much more enjoyable day-to-day.  The weather has been mostly humid 75-degree (F) days.  Although I get drenched in sweat everyday, 75 degrees is about as good as it gets.   And the sweatiness just makes jumping in the lake feel that much better!  At Fongoli, it was dry, which was nice, but it was almost always over 100 degrees.  I feel like 103 was the norm.  Not only was this pretty miserable for the people, but the chimpanzees were also not very active.  
​And 3) Habituation.  The Gombe chimpanzees are the best habituated chimpanzees anywhere.  Jane Goodall first came here in 1960, and now there are teams of people who are out with the chimps every day.  Although some distance is kept between the people and the chimpanees, it is not uncommon for a chimp to touch a person, either just through passing, to play, or by a dominance displacy.  At Fongoli, Jill Pruetz began habituating the chimpanzees in the early 2000s (I believe) and only one or two researchers are out with the chimps on a regular basis.  Additionally, the habitat of these chimpanzees neighbors local villages, and there are known instances of people shooting a chimpanzee that has come close to their home.  Therefore, it is important to the researchers at the site that the chimpanzees maintain a healthy fear of people.  Almost all observations were done through binoculars in order to see well-enough what the chimps were doing.  

​Here are two photos from my time at Fongoli, you can see the habitat and also how the closest I ever got to a termiting chimp.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, it's magical here.  I am saying my goodbyes to the things I love about it..

​The forest..

The lake..

And of course, the chimpanzees..

Thank you all for reading along.  I am glad that I kept this record of my trip, and knowing I had people reading kept me posting.  And just so you know, if you want to add it to your bucket list, there are indeed chimpanzee safaris here at Gombe.

Last week I had the pleasure of presenting research as part of a "Humans in Marginal Environments" symposium at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.  It is a general concept that edible insects are only consumed in areas where the local environment is not suitable for the production of domesticated livestock.  From my experience, this has not seemed true.  I have primarily worked in South Africa, where edible insects such as mopane worms and termites are harvested from agricultural fields and pasture lands and sold in the marketplace alongside a wide range of foods that are produced locally.  I decided to test whether this pattern held worldwide by comparing prevalence of edible insects in a country to the percentage of arable land (defined as land under temporary crops, temporary meadows for mowing or for pasture, land under market or kitchen gardens, and land temporarily fallow) recorded for that country.  Not surprising to me, there was no relationship between the two variables. 

Coming up quick on February 18th, anthropologists everywhere will be celebrating World Anthropology Day. This day serves as an opportunity for anthropologists to celebrate and participate in their discipline with the public around them. ​

I will be celebrating the day by handing out cupcakes made with cricket powder on Wayne State Campus, and 
​​ENTOMO FARMS WANTS TO GIVE YOU FREE SAMPLES TO USE IN YOUR OWN EVENT!
Just contact me here and I will put you in touch with them to get your own whole or powdered crickets and mealworms!  Act fast so that we can get them shipped to you in plenty of time.

About one half of the world’s countries have cultures that utilize insects in their diets, resulting in over 2,000 known edible insect species.  Of the countries that do not eat insects, the vast majority is in the northern hemisphere, and thus is mostly European or strongly European-influenced.  Therefore, it is Western culture that is the outlier when it comes to insect consumption.  The reasons behind our bias against insects are vast and complex, as they are part of a cultural phenomenon that has been being shaped since Columbus first "discovered" America.  Edible insects were stigmatized by explorers; couple that with a northern environment where insects are not an abundant and readily available resource like they are in tropical areas of the world, and it is not difficult to see why they would fall out of favor.

With that knowledge, though, we can look at insects as the valuable food resource that they are.  Crickets are gaining some popularity in the US and Europe, being incorporated into protein bars, protein shakes, as well as all sorts of snack foods.  The momentum for crickets seems to come from people already having a positive opinion of crickets compared to other insects, maybe because of Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio, or because they are considered lucky in some East Asian cultures.  However, crickets are not the most popular edible insect in the world.  That achievement belongs to beetle larvae.  If you wanted to partake in the beetle larvae trend, then I suggest trying some mealworms!  Not only are food-grade mealworms available here, but they are also a lot less intimidating than something like a palm weevil larva.

Many people are worried about how our current food system is going to sustain the global population as it approaches 10 billion people by the year 2050.  The worry is not necessarily one of having enough food, we throw millions of pounds of food away every day here in the United States.  The worry is that that system is going to have an upper limit for how long we can use it, because over-producing is going to continue to strip our environmental resources.  Sustainable food sources are going to be important when that happens, so wevmight as well start now.

Besides how bad meat-eating is for our environment, there is also the animal welfare bit that turns many eaters into vegetarians or vegans.  However, humans are omnivores and it takes considerable conscious effort to make sure that we get all the nutrients we need from an entirely plant-based diet.  Being able to make those choices is a privilege of both education and money.  Insects like crickets, who live in dark-cramped spaces naturally and are killed at commercial farms via torpor-inducing freezing, offer an interesting caveat to the ethical dilemma.  Their pain and suffering is minimal.  Additionally, it is known and controlled, unlike industrial harvesting of crops, where pesticides kill all sorts of insects and small animals get killed in farm equipment.  If you are not producing all of your food yourself, there is no perfect answer to the perfect ethical diet.  Insects, however, provide an appealing option for making high-volume food production better all around.

There are many other resources available on my blog that may be of interest, from lecture slides, recommended documentary, interviews with me, and a short youtube video produced by Wayne State.  I hope that you will find these resources helpful!  

As an anthropologist planning a conference, most the grants for which I can apply are in anthropology.  However, these conference and workshop grants or designed to help anthropologists come together, even from organizations that emphasize interdisciplinary collaboration.  So I am trying to put together a group of international anthropologists to come together for a workshop on insects as food.  The plan is that it will be the day after the Eating Innovation conference so that we have lots of fodder for discussion.  However, I am having a hard time finding anthropologists!

Many scholars write about the eating of insects by humans and even use the term "anthropo-entomophagy," most notably J. Ramos-Elorduy in the journal Entomological Research, and most recently E.M. Costa-Neto in the Journal of Insects as Food and Feed.  However, there is a great difference between 'anthropo-entomophagy' and 'entomophagy anthropology' and I am searching for people out there who understand that difference.  

So please, if you are an anthropologist (or a social scientist in general) outside of the US who studies insects as food (or studies food more broadly and is interested in investigating entomophagy), get into contact with me!  I want to work with you to come up with money to bring you here to Detroit for the 2016 conference next May!

At the Eating Innovation conference last month in Montreal, I presented my reconstructions of insects in the hominid diet across all of the hallmark stages of our evolution.  For instance, it is likely that Homo erectus was foraging for resources in their environment similar to how we see foragers do so today. Therefore, insects were probably utilized in their diets the same as well.  I have uploaded a pdf of my entire presentation below. 

Click below to download the pdf of the entire presentation.

It has been awhile since I posted, but not for a lack of things to say!

I have a new position in the Department of Anthropology at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan!  I could not be more excited about the prospects that this city, university, and department have to offer!  I have spent my summer quietly moving and settling in, but I am now primed and ready for big things.

In the department, I have amazing colleagues.  I am especially excited to be a part of a program with strength in business anthropology.  I have so many thoughts on how an insects-as-food movement requires cultural knowledge in order to make it work as a commodity, and I have the exact people around me to help me articulate those ideas. 

The city of Detroit is in the midst of an amazing revival.  The revitalization happening particularly in the Midtown neighborhood makes me think they might be primed to embrace insects as food....  I am looking forward to talking more with Little Herds, an Austin-based nonprofit dedicated to making a marketplace for bug-eaters, about ideas on how to bring entomophagy to the people of Detroit.

Wayne State University is the right place to support me in these research and public outreach efforts.  As a large, public, urban, research institution, WSU is committed to excellence in both academia and the community. I know I am in the right place.

Exciting things, a couple years in the making, are finally afoot! 

One, I have an article now available online at the Journal of Human Evolution*.  It will be formally published as a part of a special issue dedicated to "The Other Faunivory," an endeavor of many biological anthropologists coming together to look at human evolution's lesser credited insect food sources.  I will be posting more on this when that issue is launched.  This special issue is based on a session held at the 2012 annual meetings of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Portland, OR.  At that session I had the honor of meeting a special guest, Daniella Martin, which brings me to number two..

Two, Daniella Martin's book Edible: An Adventure into the World of Eating Insects and the Last Great Hope to Save the Planet is now available on Amazon! 

An excerpt of the book related to human evolution is available here.  Daniella does a great job summarizing some of the big points of the evolution of the human diet (and its inclusion of insects) for a broad, popular audience.  The book I am currently writing takes the ideas presented here and details them out in academic form.

For instance, Daniella quotes the exact line in Backwell and d'Errico's 2001 PNAS article that inspired my work:
"Termites are a valuable source of protein, fat, and essential amino acids, in the diets of both primates and modern humans. While rump steak yields 322 calories per 100 grams, and cod fish 74, termites provide 560 calories per 100 grams."

Those numbers came from sources published in 1971.  We have covered a lot of ground since then and I made it my job to do two things: 1) update the numbers with more recently published data, and 2) make it clear that we should take caution when broadly generalizing the nutritional contributions of "termites," a clade that contains over 280 genera and 2700 species.

My now-available article, "Termites in the hominin diet: A meta-analysis of termite genera, species and castes as a dietary supplement for South African robust australopithecines," begins to address these issues.

Here is the abstract*:

I create a model of how termites fit into the diet of our ancestors.  As of now, this is the best account of insects in the real "paleo diet."  They were valuable back then, they are still valuable for many people today, and it would be smart of the Western World to start utilizing insects more in our own diets.

*If you are interested in the full version of this article but it is behind a pay wall, please contact me here and I will gladly send you a pdf.

Although I may be the first person to make a career out of discussing the role of insects in the diets of our hominid ancestors, I am by far not the first person to think of it.  One of the pioneers is Alan Mann, Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. 

While I was in graduate school, I would see Alan at the annual meetings of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists and he was always happy to talk with me about how insects likely made an important dietary contribution to early hominids.  His big thing was always that I should dig for termite eggs.. I never dug for eggs, but the thought has never left my mind!  I can definitely say that newly hatched insects, or the larvae, offer higher amounts of fat than adult forms, so I am guessing eggs would be similar, although I have never seen any data on it.  Trust me, it is in my long-term goals to figure this out!

This April, I get to present some of my findings in a session honoring Alan's work.  Here's my abstract:

The full list of papers for the session can be found here.  I think what strikes me most about the session is the broad range of topics to which he has, in some way, contributed to our understanding.  The main thing all of this research has in common though is "the continuation of a perspective that places variation at the center of how our discipline conceptualizes human evolution."  Understanding variation is truly the primary goal of all biological studies.  For me it is in the dietary contributions of different insect species and castes, but for other biological anthropologists in this group it is in areas such as skeletal development, human/landscape interactions or survivorship across life stages, to highlight just a few.

I am looking forward to being in Calgary April 9th-12th.  I hope to see you there!  And I hope to see you at this amazing poster session!

The AAA meetings are starting tomorrow here in Chicago!

I launched my insects-as-food survey at the end of last week just in time for these meetings.  I am hoping that people will be interested in talking with me more about the project and will help by participating and by spreading the word. 

To facilitate participation, I am planning on:

• Wearing the button pictured below.  The button is of course a conversation-starter for those who have not heard of the survey, but for those of you who might be looking for me, I should be relatively easy to find.  Even if you are not necessarily looking for me, the button serves as a reminder to go and take the survey!

• I will have a tablet with me ready to access to the survey.  You can take it then and there with me available to answer any questions. The whole thing takes about 5 minutes, 10 tops.

In addition to talking research, I hope to talk more about the prospect of insects featuring more prominently in our Western diets.  I will be bringing with me a limited supply of Chapul bars.  Here is a description of the company and their product from their site:

Just from their description you can tell why I am very interested in their efforts.  I will have all three of their flavors: 1) Peanut butter, chocolate, 2) Dark chocolate, coffee, cayenne and 3) Coconut, ginger, lime.

If you are interested in trying a bar, contact me here and we will arrange to find each other at the meetings! 

I am looking forward to a great conference!  Hope to see you there!

As someone who studies the role of insects as food over the course of human evolution, I am faced with a dilemma not faced by many:  When to use 'entomophagy' and when to use 'insectivory.'

Entomophagy is defined as the practice of eating insects, usually reserved for people.  Insectivory is "feeding" on insects, usually reserved for animals.

In my dissertation and subsequent work on our hominin ancestors, specifically South African robust australopithecines, I chose to use insectivory regarding their behavior, following the vernacular of primatologists whose work was essential in creating my models.  Although the suffix -ivore is meant to imply specialization such that over half of the diet comes from that resource, primatologists discuss the degree of folivory, frugivory, insectivory, etc. across species that do not specialize on those resources, blurring the lines of the definitions.

One of my next projects, which I will be presenting at the AAA meetings in Chicago next month, investigates patterns of insects-as-food across different human populations of foragers and horticulturalists.  When referring to their insect consumption, I obviously use the word entomophagy.

I am now working on a book project that includes a theoretical reconstruction of the role of insects across all of human evolution.  In order to fill in the gap between australopithecines and people today, I am going to pay particular attention to Homo erectus and Neandertals.  I actually do not think Neandertals ate many insects due to the lack of biodiversity in northern latitudes (which is also an interesting extra piece to the puzzle as to why entomophagy is not favored in the United States and Europe..).  However, I would readily credit any insects consumed by Neandertals as entomophagy, likely due to my stance that Neandertals are are not a distinct species different from modern humans.  Neandertals are people, too!

That leaves Homo erectus, a species with hallmark increases in both brain and body size which make them seem much more human-like.  Is it the degree of insectivory or the degree of entomophagy that I am trying to reconstruct for these hominins? 

In all honesty, I dislike the term entomophagy.  It reminds me of other –phagies, such as geophagy and coprophagy, which are terms that describe the inclusion of things in the diet that would not generally be there under normal circumstances.  In this light, I believe entomophagy retains stigma.  Although insectivory reduces the practice to animal-like feeding, it is at least a normal behavior and one that is often critical for receiving adequate nutrition at that.

I have not settled on an answer for Homo erectus.   On one hand, using insectivory allows me to prolong the use of my preferred term and I do not think there is any offense to be taken through implication that Homo erectus are not people.  On the other hand, removing stigma from entomophagy, the word and the practice, is necessary in promoting insects as food, so the more it is used, the more “normal” it may seem.