BirutÄ— Galdikas

Birutė Mary F. Galdikas (also: Birutė Marija Filomena; born May 10, 1946 in Wiesbaden, Germany ) is a Canadian zoologist and ethologist and is considered the most experienced connoisseur of the orangutans of Borneo.

Life

Galdikas ' parents were from Lithuania and were on their way to the Canadian exile when she was born in Germany. She grew up in Toronto and studied at the University of California at Los Angeles psychology and anthropology and in 1978 was there even a doctorate.

Galdikas is next to Dian Fossey ( gorillas ) and Jane Goodall ( chimpanzees) one of three women who started at the suggestion of paleontologist Louis Leakey beginning of the 1960s, long-term studies on apes. Leakey hoped to draw from these behavioral observations to draw conclusions about the behavior of the hominids. Together with the National Geographic Society Leakey made ​​it that Birutė Galdikas has set up a research station in Borneo to study the behavior of wild orangutans.

If it is not located in the rainforest of Borneo, Birutė Galdikas has worked as a professor of anthropology at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby in the Canadian province of British Columbia.

Works

• Birutė M. F. Galdikas: My orangutans. 20 years under the shy forest people. Joke -Verlag, Munich 1995, ISBN 3- 502-15225 -X (1998 paperback, Luebbe, ISBN 3-404-12828-1 )