This is My CSU!

November 2006 - Sarah Smith
Senior, Environmental Health

African Internship - Experience of a Lifetime

When Sarah Smith was in South Africa this summer working as an intern for the Cape Leopard Trust, she frequently sent back e-mails to family and friends detailing her daily experiences.

Of course, a few experiences she wisely decided not to tell her family about until she was safely home. Like the close encounter with a black spitting cobra or the attack by a troop of baboons. Some things are better left unsaid, especially where worried parents are involved.

Even with what some would consider a few near-death experiences, Smith’s educational experience was beyond what she imagined it could be when she first e-mailed the Cape Leopard Trust inquiring about possible projects they may have for an intern.

"I needed an internship in epidemiology and was interested in going to another country, especially somewhere in Africa," said Smith. "I did some research and sent out a bunch of e-mails to organizations that I thought might have something for me. I gave a synopsis of environmental health and my interests. Cape Leopard Trust in South Africa got back to me right away and said they’d come up with a project for me to work on and get back in touch. I was very excited because, looking at their Web site, they did a lot with research and education."

Smith’s project was a study to determine why one of the leopard’s main prey species, the rock hyrax (known locally as a dassie), was dying off. Smith made arrangements for her 10-week internship. Erin Reichert, Undergraduate Education Coordinator and Advisor for Environmental Health, worked closely with the director of the Cape Leopard Trust to ensure all went well and soon Smith was settled in at the Cape Leopard Trust’s research station in the Cederberg Mountains, four hours northeast of Cape Town.

Her days were spent hiking on rough terrain setting and checking traps for the dassies, as well as working with a leopard capture team. During her time there, the team captured three leopards which where then sampled and radio-collared. The dassie project, however, was not going as well. The leopards, elusive and rare, she got to experience firsthand. Dassies, hanging out on rocks and common, proved to be the more difficult quarry.

An unexpected challenge

"The traps didn’t really work and I had not caught a single dassie," said Smith. "The people there began to feel bad for me, so they collected two dassies using what’s nicely called destructive sampling. I was really conflicted, but when I performed a necropsy on the first specimen, a pregnant female, it was amazing. She had abscesses throughout her body and appeared to be suffering from a very virulent strain of tuberculosis. It’s likely she would have died before giving birth."

Tuberculosis in rock hyrax had only been written about in medical journals once before, and that was in a captive zoo population. The disease had never been documented in a wild population before. Smith feels she may have the answer to the question of what is killing the dassies, but results from pathology tests are still in process. Her hypothesis is that because females are immunecompromised when pregnant, the tuberculosis can run unchecked and become systemic, where it would normally not be such a big problem. If pregnant females are dying, that would at least in part explain the population die-off.

Rock dassies, despite looking like oversized prairie dogs, are actually the closest relative to elephants, and have gestation periods of seven months meaning the loss of a pregnant female is a major blow to the population. Smith eventually plans to publish a paper and hopes to one day continue her work in South Africa.

Planning for the future

"My internship really cemented for me my desire to go into epidemiology, the only problem now is that because of the internship, I have to make some very tough choices," Smith said. The Cape Leopard Trust would like to have Smith continue her work with the dassies, and use it for a master’s thesis. She also has a job offer from a gorilla research organization in Gabon. But Smith has applied to veterinary school, and would like to complete her veterinary degree before returning to Africa to work again.

"My experience there was so amazing; I get homesick for Africa and can’t wait to go back again," Smith said. "But I would like to return as a veterinarian, when I would be able to do so much more. There is only one veterinary school in all of South Africa, and very few veterinarians. They are paid so poorly that many move to Canada to practice there."

So, for now, the Dassie Girl, as Smith was known to the locals, will hope to be admitted to veterinary school, complete her degree, and return to Africa with new skills and abilities. The spitting cobras and baboons will just have to wait.

This article originally appeared in the Fall 2006 edition of Emitter, the Department of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences newsletter.