1000 posts, thanks for listening

[Peter Apps]

Hi all

Thank you all for reading the other 999, and for everything I've learned from reading yours.

All the best

Peter

[Bruce Hamilton]

Just keep them coming....

Please keep having fun,

Bruce Hamilton

[tom jupille]

"Amen" to Bruce's comment. That's the way we *all* learn!

[WK]

Peter,
I always thought Apps might be a pseudonym.... applications lab?
Nice to put face to name. Explains the "dog" post earlier!
WK

[jclark]

Peter,
Your comments have always been interesting & helpful, but I keep wondering.....Botswana? There must be a long, fascinating story behind that. Care to share?
Jim

[Peter Apps]

Hi Jim

The story is kind of long, fascinating I'm not so sure. I started out as a zoologist; undergraduate at Oxford, M.Sc. in domestic cat behaviour at Pretoria - having gone to Africa to study large carnovores . Then I got a job in a chromatography lab after my grant ran out, and over an extended period that turned into a doctorate in zoology developing brand new methods for analysing mammal chemical signals. Being a chemist paid a lot better than being a zoologist so I did 7 years in a government lab looking at residues in food and some other odd things like horse meat in hamburgers (not by GC I hasten to add). I got headhunted as a GC specialist to a semi-government lab, initially doing residues and broadening into HPLC, then moving onto flavour troubleshooting, and then prospecting for new flavour compounds. I then jumped ship to the organic lab of the national metrology laboratory, more GC, very precise work. I warned you that the story was long !. A bit more than two years ago I met Tico McNutt who has been working on wild dogs in Botswana for two decades and over a couple of sundowners he mentioned that he was looking for a GC-MS specialist to identify territorial semiochemicals in wild dogs, would I be interested ? Silly question !! So 30 years after coming to southern Africa to work on large carnivores, here I am at last . The lab is in Maun, north western Botswana which makes logistics a tad complex, but the field study area is less than two hours away by road, and 20 min by light plane so the analytical work and the field biology run hand in hand, which is hugely valuable.

There is more about the wild dog project on www.bpctrust.org, www.wildentrust.org, and Restek has an editorial piece (they help support the lab) http://www.restek.com/aoi_editorial_A013.asp.

Peter