“Dian Fossey (January 16, 1932 – c. December 26, 1985) was an American primatologist and conservationist known for undertaking an extensive study of mountain gorilla groups from 1966 until her murder in 1985.[1] She studied them daily in the mountain forests of Rwanda, initially encouraged to work there by paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey. Gorillas in the Mist, a book published two years before her death, is Fossey’s account of her scientific study of the gorillas at the Karisoke Research Center and prior career.”
“Fossey was a leading primatologist, and a member of the “Trimates”, a group of female scientists recruited by Leakey to study great apes in their natural environments, along with Jane Goodall who studied chimpanzees, and Birutė Galdikas, (who just passed recently, rest in peace) who studied orangutans.”
“The deaths of some of her most studied gorillas caused Fossey to devote more of her attention to preventing poaching and less on scientific publishing and research.[40] Fossey became more intense in protecting the gorillas and began to employ more direct tactics: she and her staff cut animal traps almost as soon as they were set; frightened, captured and humiliated the poachers; held their cattle for ransom; burnt their hunting camps and even burnt the mats from their houses.[6][better source needed]
Fossey was reported to have captured and held Rwandans she suspected of poaching. She allegedly beat a poacher’s testicles with stinging nettles.[43] In a letter to a friend, she wrote, “We stripped him and spread eagled him and lashed the holy blue sweat out of him with nettle stalks and leaves…”[31] She even reportedly kidnapped and held for ransom the child of a suspected poacher.[31][44] After her murder, Fossey’s National Geographic editor, Mary Smith, told Shlachter that on visits to the United States, Fossey would “load up on firecrackers, cheap toys and magic tricks as part of her method to mystify the (Africans) in order to hold them at bay.”[45] She wore face-masks and pretended to practice black magic to scare away poachers.[31]
Writing in The Wall Street Journal in 2002, the journalist Tunku Varadarajan described Fossey at the end of her life as colorful, controversial, and “a racist alcoholic who regarded her gorillas as better than the African people who lived around them”.”
Imadumsheet on
Yeah fossey sounds absolutely batshit insane
Vanny1931 on
Poachers stink unless theyre poor and poaching pheasants owned by rich people.
stareagleur on
Fossey wanted to fight poachers with explosives, and Goodall discovered some tribes of chimpanzees actively engaged in warfare.
The obvious solution was they should have trained the chimps to use explosives and set them loose on the poachers.
conscientiousrevolt on
Based and Fossey pilled.
Xela975 on
……Yes poaching bad.
*Kicks cooler full of Asian carp under my truck smelling of a bed full of fish.*
it’s a joke we follow the limits on native fish, and my buddies use the carps for bait.
enthusiasm_gap on
I’m not like *pro* poaching or anything, but a lot of the talk around poaching is really dismissive of the conditions that lead to it, and verging on outright racist.
It reminds of how back in the early aughts there were a bunch of people in the punk and metal scene who thought “kill your local drug dealer” was a really cool slogan to wear on t shirts.
PermaBanEnjoyer on
As a younger man I ran off to sub-saharan Africa and worked with Damien Mander’s anti-poaching group the IAPF, fun times
SublightMonster on
I’ve read works by other primatologists who did fieldwork in Africa, and the common thread seemed to be that Fossey was a horrible person to have to work with.
9 Comments
“Dian Fossey (January 16, 1932 – c. December 26, 1985) was an American primatologist and conservationist known for undertaking an extensive study of mountain gorilla groups from 1966 until her murder in 1985.[1] She studied them daily in the mountain forests of Rwanda, initially encouraged to work there by paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey. Gorillas in the Mist, a book published two years before her death, is Fossey’s account of her scientific study of the gorillas at the Karisoke Research Center and prior career.”
“Fossey was a leading primatologist, and a member of the “Trimates”, a group of female scientists recruited by Leakey to study great apes in their natural environments, along with Jane Goodall who studied chimpanzees, and Birutė Galdikas, (who just passed recently, rest in peace) who studied orangutans.”
“The deaths of some of her most studied gorillas caused Fossey to devote more of her attention to preventing poaching and less on scientific publishing and research.[40] Fossey became more intense in protecting the gorillas and began to employ more direct tactics: she and her staff cut animal traps almost as soon as they were set; frightened, captured and humiliated the poachers; held their cattle for ransom; burnt their hunting camps and even burnt the mats from their houses.[6][better source needed]
Fossey was reported to have captured and held Rwandans she suspected of poaching. She allegedly beat a poacher’s testicles with stinging nettles.[43] In a letter to a friend, she wrote, “We stripped him and spread eagled him and lashed the holy blue sweat out of him with nettle stalks and leaves…”[31] She even reportedly kidnapped and held for ransom the child of a suspected poacher.[31][44] After her murder, Fossey’s National Geographic editor, Mary Smith, told Shlachter that on visits to the United States, Fossey would “load up on firecrackers, cheap toys and magic tricks as part of her method to mystify the (Africans) in order to hold them at bay.”[45] She wore face-masks and pretended to practice black magic to scare away poachers.[31]
Writing in The Wall Street Journal in 2002, the journalist Tunku Varadarajan described Fossey at the end of her life as colorful, controversial, and “a racist alcoholic who regarded her gorillas as better than the African people who lived around them”.”
Yeah fossey sounds absolutely batshit insane
Poachers stink unless theyre poor and poaching pheasants owned by rich people.
Fossey wanted to fight poachers with explosives, and Goodall discovered some tribes of chimpanzees actively engaged in warfare.
The obvious solution was they should have trained the chimps to use explosives and set them loose on the poachers.
Based and Fossey pilled.
……Yes poaching bad.
*Kicks cooler full of Asian carp under my truck smelling of a bed full of fish.*
it’s a joke we follow the limits on native fish, and my buddies use the carps for bait.
I’m not like *pro* poaching or anything, but a lot of the talk around poaching is really dismissive of the conditions that lead to it, and verging on outright racist.
It reminds of how back in the early aughts there were a bunch of people in the punk and metal scene who thought “kill your local drug dealer” was a really cool slogan to wear on t shirts.
As a younger man I ran off to sub-saharan Africa and worked with Damien Mander’s anti-poaching group the IAPF, fun times
I’ve read works by other primatologists who did fieldwork in Africa, and the common thread seemed to be that Fossey was a horrible person to have to work with.