![]() ![]() When she was near a group of gorillas, she dropped to her hands and knees and crawled after them, giving "belch" vocalisations and mimicking their feeding sounds. This process has always been easier with mountain gorillas than western populations, both because the thick ground vegetation makes mountain gorillas easier to track and therefore locate regularly, and because they have not been hunted.įollowing Schaller's technique for identifying individuals, Fossey drew "nose prints" - the pattern of wrinkles and creases above gorillas' nostrils. ![]() It was to become one of the longest running field studies in primatology.įossey's first task was to habituate gorillas to the presence of observers. Making a combination of the names Karisimbi and Visoke, the two nearest volcanoes, she christened the site Karisoke. ![]() After only six and a half months, political troubles forced her to move across the border to the Rwandan sector of the Virunga Volcanoes, where she set up camp. In 1967 Fossey arrived at Kabara meadow, Schaller's base in Congo's Parc National des Virunga. This is a brief review of that journey.Īfter George Schaller came Dian Fossey. Research on mountain gorillas has come a long way since then. His year of fieldwork in the Virunga Volcanoes culminated in his book, The Mountain Gorilla, published in 1963 a classic of quantified natural history, behaviour and ecology, it is still frequently cited and referred to. Fifty years ago, in 1959, George Schaller left New York for Africa to begin a study of mountain gorillas that would have lasting impact. ![]()
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