When the interns first arrive, a laundry list of items have to be taken care of. Police station to register, tour of the city, choosing a bedroom, groceries, ATM, going over apartment rules, base rules, safety, and working together as a team. This usually takes place in the first day. After settling in and having a sleepless night due to the jet-lag, we catch the bus up to the Bifengxia panda base to begin training in behavioral observations.

Everything happens fairly quickly during the first week. In short, we have to bombard everyone with a mountain of information in order to bring them up to speed before we leave. The magical number of days required to do this is ten. Ten days of ethogram memorization, introductions, data logging, uploading, equipment maintenance, and most importantly- why we are conducting this research.

We just finished our first observation and the group is off to a fantastic start. Everyone has settled into a particular project that they want to focus on and the division of observations is taking shape. By this time next week, like clockwork, everyone will probably hit the 90% inter-observer reliability that is required for collecting behavioral data. I’m really excited for this intern season given that they have already bonded and seem like a tight knit and knowledgeable team.

Back to the bears…