“Hands-on experience is the way to learn. It really is.”
What would you do if you were required to catch something—an animal—that you knew nothing about. In the entire world, there was literally no one you could ask for help, not one person who knew any more than you did. All that was known for certain was that the animal was real, that it existed. You didn’t know what it ate. You didn’t know if there were a lot or a few. You didn’t know if it lived on the ground, under the ground, or up in trees.
The first time biologist Larry Heaney went to the Philippines, this was the situation. Larry was hoping to locate a species of mammal that the world knew about from only one, lonely museum specimen. “It was initially really, really hard to figure out how to trap them,” Larry says. “There are skill sets involved in research that you never hear about.”
Over the following decades, Larry would master those skills—and many more, resulting in the rediscovery of that mystery animal and the discovery of forty totally new species of mammals never before named or described. Most were found on Luzon, the most populated island in the Philippines. “Any biologist would be stunned to see the habitat. It’s so wonderful.”
CURIOUS TO HEAR AN UNUSUAL ORIGIN STORY?
Most of us stumble along a bit in figuring out what to do with our lives, but a lucky few really do seem chosen for a specific profession. Larry Heaney, the curator of mammals at the Field Museum of Natural History was impossibly young, only fourteen, when he started working as a volunteer in the mammal division of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC.
During that time, the war in Vietnam was underway and the U.S. Navy had dispatched a team of scientists to study that country’s mammals. The biologists’ assignment was to study disease transmission, but while they were there, they discovered more than just pathogens. Under the tutelage of one of the Smithsonian scientists at the Smithsonian, Larry ended up spending his high school years unpacking animal specimens flown in from Vietnam. These included flying squirrels the size of cats, enormous tree squirrels, and tiny deer the size of miniature poodles. Larry was hooked. As an adult, Larry’s work has been a continuation of that early experience. His research today continues to focus on studying mammals from the island nation of the Philippines—an oceanic archipelago that counts Vietnam as one of its nearest mainland neighbors.
WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT LARRY’S WORK & HOW YOU MIGHT HELP?
Visit Larry’s page on the Field Museum website. Visit the Field Museum in person and walk through the Restoring Earth exhibit in the Abbott Hall of Conservation, a portion of which is about the museum’s work in the Philippines. Watch this video from that exhibit—it features Larry’s close collaborator and co-author Danny Balete.
To volunteer at the Field Museum, go to the website. To make a gigantic financial contribution—or, okay, if you insist, a reasonable-sized one—to Larry’s research in the Philippines, do it through the museum website or call (312) 665-7777.
Mt. Amuyao in the Cordillera Mountains of northern Luzon was one of the field sites for Larry Heaney and Danny Balete’s research.
This book is the first to be published on the diverse and splendid mammal populations of Luzon. Co-authored by Larry, Danny, and Eric Rickart and available through Amazon (and other places like the Field Museum’s gift shop, or through special order at your local bookstore..)