Scientists often find themselves outside their comfort zone as they search for answers to nature’s seemingly unsolvable puzzles.
Sunny Sanderson certainly did. She has spent nine months of the past three years in the wilds of Indonesian Borneo, listening to the calls of gibbons for a postgraduate project at the University of Queensland.
Now studying for a Master of Philosophy with the School of Integrative Biology, Sunny first studied languages as part of an arts degree. In 1999 she won a scholarship to Indonesia where she worked as a volunteer at an orang-utan research station.
“I became really interested in primates so when I came home I switched to a dual arts/science degree.”
Her work on gibbons, medium-sized primates living in the rainforests of South East Asia, aims to use their calls to uncover a raft of information about the species.
“The area I worked is a naturally occurring hybrid zone and my research looks at variations in calls to determine where they are hybridising and how that will impact on the population.”
Sunny, fluent in Indonesian and one of the few foreign researchers to work in the area, is now back in Brisbane, analysing the recordings of her gibbon calls. The results will provide crucial data for government and forestry decision-makers in Indonesia.
Last reviewed 24 June 2006