Hi everyone, Thank you so much to all of you who responded to my request for information on dye and a dye delivery system. I appreciate all of your suggestions. Some of you said that you would be interested to hear what advice I receive about dye for marking small primates, so the informatin that I have received so far is below.
I neglected to say that we are trying to be as noninvasive as possible (no capturing, no baiting), and want to try this as an alternative to capturing and collaring the animals. Someone brought up the point that the animals might notice the color markings, but I feel that this might be an improvement on wearning colored dog collars and tags, which they have been doing for many years. I should also point out that these are lemurs, about 5kg, and they groom with their mouths. Any additional advice is greatly appreciated! Right now I think I might try a water gun, and investigate the paints suggested below. Stacey *Dyes* 1. I used wella hair color (I used bright red and black) for rodents. This product is used on humans so it should be safe to other primates as well. 2. I have no experience in this whatsoever, but what about human hair dye? Like the kind that people use to give themselves funky colored, permanent highlights? 3. Check out sheep and goat breeder's markers. Valley Vet or some other ag supply place would have them. 4. I marked goose feathers with picric acid (yellow) and rotamine-b (pink/red) solutions during my PhD work many years ago - they worked well, but I was able to have the birds in-hand and applied the dyes with a sponge-type paint brush. I wonder if you could rig something to a paintball gun - or find dye solutions that could be delivered via paintball guns. Also - wouldn't standard hair dyes that you could purchase from a local beauty shop work for primates? Just a thought. 5. I used different colored permanent markers in a mark-recapture trapping of nocturnal rodents. Each color was a number and each individual was given a unique 4 digit id. It worked on the white/pale belly hair of the rodents and so it might be a possible solution for you. *Delivery systems* 1. If you can get the monkeys to come in to bait, suspend a container of fur dye above, which you can squirt or pour on them. 2. I'm about to get a paintball gun to mark deer next summer. There is a manufacturer of paint balls with permanent paint with multiple colors. Kind of paintball gun used by kids and adults. Originally designed for marking trees by foresters, now mostly used for war games. I haven't tried one before, but think they can be somewhat noisy, and therefore might deter lemurs. I think effective range is about 100-150 feet. Some of them I think you can adjust power (compressed air, so you'd probably need access to a compressor, or tank of N or CO2). *Paintball gun and paint details* 1. The paintball guns we used were adjustable for velocity. I think many others are as well. However the paintballs will not break if velocity is too low. Given the small size of your subjects, that might be a problem. At the velocities we fired, 20 meters is very do-able. However, 20 meters might not work at very low velocities. Accuracy and trajectory would be a problem at that range at low velocity. We used paintballs containing oil-based paint manufactured by Nelson Paint Company. The marks are very permanent and not subject to loss from weathering. Yes, I am also concerned about toxicity issues. I doubt it’s a problem if marks are not ingested but if your primates groom with their mouths, they might ingest the paint which would not be good. Another option is paintballs with permanent dye. Woody Meyers, a Washington Researcher, purchased some paintballs filled with permanent purple dye (the dye in Sharpie pens). We did try them on goats, but had trouble discerning dye marks from dirty spots. The "dye-balls" were produced by RP Scherer(sp?). I did call them to see if they would manufacture some with a bright orange dye and they would not because the dye stained their equipment. You might see if they supply anything like than now. I suspect the toxicity issue is less with the dye. They certainly would ingest less. You could use recreational paintballs. They contain a water-based dye? paint? that is non-toxic and washes easily. The drawback is that marks would be lost with weather, and the marks would be much easier to remove via grooming. -- Stacey Tecot Postdoctoral Research Associate Jernvall Lab Dept. of Ecology & Evolution Stony Brook University Mailing Address: Institute for the Conservation of Tropical Environments Department of Anthropology SBS Building, 5th floor, N-543 Stony Brook, NY 11794-4364 [email protected] Phone: 631-632-1568 FAX: 631-632-7692 Websites: http://icte.bio.sunysb.edu/pages/people/profile_stacey.html http://life.bio.sunysb.edu/ee/postdocs.htm
