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Gorillas in the Virunga Hills. Dian Fossey came to study endangered populations of mountain gorillas in the late 1960s and returned until she was killed in 1985. Credit: Brent Stirton/Getty Images for WWF-Canon
Fast facts
Milestones: Diane Fossey is found murdered
date: 27 December 1985
Where: Karisoke Research Center in Rwanda
WHO: The killer is still unknown
In late December 1985, a worker opened the door to a remote cabin in Rwanda’s Virunga Mountains and encountered a horrific scene: gorilla researcher Dian Fossey, whose aggressive approach to conservation had pitted him against the local community, had been hacked to death with a knife, and his cabin had been razed.
Fossey had been working with the endangered gorilla population in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park since the late 1960s. along with Jane Goodall and Birute galdicas, she was one of three “trimates” chosen by Lewis Leakey to study primates in their natural habitats.
Fossey had no formal training in ethics, the science of animal behavior, when he left for Africa. She began her fieldwork in Kabara, Congo, living in a small tent with mountain gorillas ((Gorilla beringae beringae) there After the civil war broke out in 1967, she fled to the Rwandan side of the mountain and established a new research project near Mount Karisimbi in Rwanda.
Fossey was inspired by the work of George Schaller, a biologist who also studied the gorillas of the Virunga Mountains in 1959.
“I knew that animals try to stay out of your way. If you approach them quietly, they come to acknowledge your presence. That’s what I did with the gorillas. I went close to them day after day, which was very easy because they form cohesive social groups. Soon, I recognized them as individuals, both their faces and behavior, and I sat and watched them. 2006 interview.
Fossey operated on this principle of patient, unobstructed observation. Even so, the gorillas initially ran away from her, and she spent hours chasing them through the misty forest.
Diane Fossey published her book “Gorillas in the Mist” in 1983. Fossey’s aggressive tactics to protect the gorillas did not endear him to the locals. | Credit: San Francisco Chronicle via Peter Brenning/Getty Images
After a year, they stopped running in her presence and started beating their chests and vocalizing. It was a bluff to scare him, but it was still far from their normal, natural behavior, she said. A 1973 lecture. Two years later, he acquired two young gorillas, Coco and Pucker; rehabilitate them; And learned about young gorillas by watching them.
“I learned the gorillas’ need for love and affection and the young gorillas’ need for constant play,” she said.
It will take three years for the gorillas to accept his presence and exhibit more natural behavior, he said in the lecture.
During his decades in Virunga, Fossey Described and learned to imitate the sounds of gorillasincluding “belch vocalizations” that indicate contentment. He also explained their tight-knit family structures, Marriage and mating ritualsas well as documentation Occasional killing of infant gorillas by rival men.
Although she would eventually earn her doctorate in zoology from Cambridge University, Fossey spent her first year studying gorillas with no formal training. Perhaps because of her lack of early training, she formed a close bond with individual animals and tended to describe their actions in more humanistic motivations and detail than is usually accepted in formal zoology. She often described gorillas as more benevolent than humans.
“You take these nice, royal animals,” she reportedly told an interviewer The New York Times. ‘How many fathers have the same sense of fatherhood? How many human mothers care more? The family structure is incredibly strong.”
She formed an especially close bond with a gorilla she nicknamed Digit. So named for his damaged finger – who had no peers their own age. Ank was killed by poachers in 1977.
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The last years of Fossey’s life were focused on protecting the gorillas’ dwindling habitat and fighting poachers. He used confrontational methods, such as burning traps, wearing masks to scare poachers, and spray-painting to prevent herders from entering the national park. Diane Fossey Gorilla Fund.
She shot tourists in the head to scare them and asked her graduate students to carry guns. According to The Washington Post.
As many people living near the park lived in poverty and resorted to ranching and herding to survive, this did not earn him good will with many locals.
Fossey’s murder was never solved. Many believe that hunters were responsible for the murders, but others Principles are also presented.
