Dian Fossey, Pioneering Primatologist

Figure 1: Digit (left) and Dian Fossey (right) [Source: National Geographic]

 

Dian Fossey was born in 1932, and while she loved animals, she never grew up dreaming about saving and preserving mountain gorilla populations throughout Africa.  It was actually a series of random events that led her to eventually become a pioneering primatologist and the principal individual credited with changing public perception of gorillas.  This blog post will discuss Dian Fossey’s story and journey.

 

Dian Fossey grew up with her mother and step-father in San Francisco, California.  She always showed an interest in animals, taking up and mastering riding at an early age, but she ultimately opted to pursue a business degree, taking after her step-father.  Between her first and second year of college, however, she took a job at a ranch, which changed her course of study as it reignited her passion in studying and working with animals.  She returned to school with every intention of focusing on pre-veterinary studies, but when she found some of the curriculum challenging, she settled on a degree in occupational therapy.  This helped her land a job at a children’s hospital in Kentucky.  While she enjoyed her work she was once again drawn back to her first passion, animals, as she lived in the countryside and interacted regularly with farm animals.  Her passions reached a head in the early 1960s when a friend returned from a trip to Africa and regaled her with tales of their adventures.  This lit a fire within Dian Fossey that caused her to take a bank loan in 1963 so she could travel to and throughout Africa. 

 

This is where her journey to studying and interacting with gorillas started to take seed.  While traveling throughout the continent she met with Dr. Louis Leakey, while he was working in the Olduvai Gorge.  He spoke about his work with Jane Goodall, who was beginning her pioneering work with chimpanzees, and he encouraged her to pursue work with another group of primates he was interested in learning more about: gorillas.  On Leakey’s advice she traveled to Uganda, where she met with several early gorilla conservationists, and she got her first peak and interactions with gorillas at that time.  She took many photographs and notes before returning to the United States, vowing to return to continue her work.

 

The gap between her initial trip to Africa and her return allowed her to complete a lot of preliminary work that eventually set her up for that return.  She worked to pay off her bank loan debt, but she also composed a series of short articles and published her photographs.  She eventually met up with Leakey again when he visited a local university in Kentucky, and she used the opportunity to show him her work.  He was so impressed that he invited her to join his latest research project, which focused on gorillas. 

 

This allowed her to return to Africa, where she began her first sets of studies.  She based her methods on those previously created by primatologist, George Schaller, which successfully allowed her to habituate with the gorillas.  She also expanded these methods in that she mimicked the gorillas’ behavioral patterns, such as knuckle walking and chewing on local vegetation, in order to gain their trust.  She also drew upon Goodall’s work in that she named the gorillas and recorded their behaviors and personalities.

 

Eventually, she was forced to leave her original research site due to political strife and she continued her work in Rwanda.  She teamed up with several individuals, including Rosamond Carr and Alyette DeMunck, who aided her in initial research and eventually with her conservation efforts.  It was also during this time she earned her PhD in Zoology, thereby earning the credentials required to really publicize and legitimize her work.  As a result she gained the attention of the National Geographic, which publicly published stories about her and the gorillas.  This drew positive attention toward gorillas, as well as turned the public perception away from gorillas being violent creatures to gentle giants who had many human characteristics.  This aided Fossey and other conservationists to raise money to help conserve and preserve gorilla populations and their habitats. 

 

Fossey felt that these efforts were misaligned as she believed a more militaristic and direct approach was necessary.  Fossey was known for direct confrontations with poachers, which often included violence and other questionable behaviors.  She felt strongly that this was the best approach in abolishing poaching and saving gorillas, and her behaviors were further galvanized when a gorilla she named Digit (Figure 1) was killed by poachers while he was attempting to protect his troop.  Fossey’s story about what happened to Digit and other gorillas further raised awareness for the cause, and she used the money to begin the Digit Fund, which is currently known as the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International. 

 

Fossey took a break from direct research with gorillas in 1980.  She took a visiting assistant professor position at Cornell University, as well as took the time to publish her book, “Gorillas in the Mist”.  This book was later turned into a film, which documented Fossey’s life and studies of the gorillas she worked with throughout Africa.  She returned to Rwanda in 1985 and less than a year later she was murdered at her camp.  It is unclear who murdered her or why she was murdered, but it is speculated that it could have been any number of individuals since her aggressive tactics against poachers gained her numerous enemies. 

 

Ultimately, her work and subsequent death initiated a series of efforts that have successfully managed to preserve gorilla populations throughout Africa.  While gorillas remain critically endangered according to many conservation groups their populations have not drastically declined since Fossey’s death, a result she did not see happening.  Despite her questionable tactics she was effective in staving off gorilla extinction.

 

References

Hogenboom, M. (2015, December 26). The Woman Who Gave Her Life to Save the Gorillas. BBC.

No Author. (2020). Dian Fossey Biography. Retrieved from The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International: https://gorillafund.org/who-we-are/dian-fossey/dian-fossey-bio/

The Gorilla Organization. (n.d.). Dian Fossey. Retrieved from The Gorilla Organization: https://www.gorillas.org/about-gorilla/dian-fossey/