Pursuing Giraffe: A 1950s Adventure

by Anne Innis Dagg

A captivating memoir from one of the first zoologists to study wild animals in Africa.

In the 1950s, Anne Innis Dagg was a young zoologist with a lifelong love of giraffes and a dream to study them in Africa. Based on her extensive journals and letters home, Pursuing Giraffe vividly chronicles Dagg's realization of that dream and the year she spent studying and documenting giraffe behaviour. Her memoir captures her youthful enthusiasm for her journeys--from Zanzibar to Victoria Falls to Mount Kilimanjaro--as well as her naïveté about the complex social and political issues in Africa.

Once in the field, Dagg recorded the complexities of giraffe social relationships but also learned about human relationships in the context of apartheid in South Africa and colonialism in Tanganyika (Tanzania) and Kenya. Hospitality and friendship were readily extended to her as a white woman, but she was shocked by the racism of the colonial whites in Africa.

Reflecting the twenty-three-year-old author's response to an "exotic" world far removed from her home in Toronto, Pursuing Giraffe is a fascinating account that has much to say about the status of women in the mid-twentieth century, and the book's foreword by South African novelist Mark Behr (author of The Smell of Apples and Embrace) provides further context for and insights into Dagg's narrative.

Genres: Nonfiction, Animals, Memoir, Africa, South Africa, Nature

300 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Canadian Anne Innis Dagg has loved giraffes her whole life. She pioneered a study of their behaviour for a year in Africa in the 1950s, and has written many scientific papers and four books about them. Her ground-breaking early research and lifelong commitment to giraffe conservation make her one of the worlds leading giraffe experts and a true friend to giraffes everywhere. She lives in Waterloo, Ontario.

Reviews

[Taveri · Rating 4 out of 5]

An adventure of a young woman travelling through parts of Africa in search of giraffe to study in 1956/57. Her greatest danger was from white men trying to take advantage of her. Written some decades after her travels she compares her perceptions at the time with more recent points of view. She was disgusted and puzzled by apartheid in South Africa as to how fellow humans could be treated that way. I enjoyed her tellings of visiting Zanzibar, climbing Kilimanjaro, going on safari, travelling to Malawi (then known as Nyasaland), exploring Great Zimbabwe Ruins and enjoying the magnificance of Musi-O-Tunya (Victoria Falls), as these are all things i did in the early 80s. So much hadn't changed except i didn't encounter the level of discrimination she mentions but then i wasn't allowed into South Africa.

She left Canada to study giraffe while having a beau who wanted to marry her. There was some suspense as to whether they would marry after her year away as he wasn't as good a correspondent as she was and the author doesn't even mention that they exchanged letters until a half year into her exploits; we are left to wonder who she ends up marrying as she encounters some potential candidates while abroad and many more cads than you would think were around.

[Philip · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, so I have to admit to having a bit of a crush on 89-year-old Anne Innis Dagg - but if you read this book or watch the EXCELLENT documentary "The Woman Who Loves Giraffes (available on Kanopy or your library may have a DVD copy; you can also watch the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_vDC...), you'll immediately understand why.*

If Daggs is known at all, it's as "the Jane Goodall of giraffes;" but that's not really fair to Dagg, as she was researching her giraffes in Africa four years before Goodall even got there - in fact, she was the first person of either sex to seriously study any wild African animal in its natural environment, (you can read more about Dagg and giraffes in general at my review of her delightful children's book 5 Giraffes here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...).

Unlike 5 Giraffes, this book is a memoir of her year (1956-57) spent both studying and traveling in Southern Africa, and so covers much more than just her work with giraffes, but also less than her whole career (which is discussed more in the movie, and focuses in large part on Canada's then highly discriminatory tenure system). As such, we get a more narrow but absolutely delightful snapshot of an eager, naïve 24-year-old first spreading her wings and going out into a world she'd been dreaming of since the age of two; not only spending considerable time at the Fleur de Lys Ranch near the Kruger National Park, but climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, "exploring" Victoria Falls, and visiting the now-gone (or at least renamed) countries of Tanganyika, Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Bechuanaland, Swaziland and Basutoland, long before the days of widespread tourist travel to the continent. Less enjoyable - but more importantly - she paints a damning portrait of South Africa in the early days of apartheid.

So whether read as an "Out of Africa"-style memoir, natural history popular science text, or political indictment - this is one wonderful book, which (despite it's frankly weird cover) I hope enjoys more wide-spread - and certainly well-earned - recognition, much like the author herself.

* PERSONAL NOTE: Dagg is obviously a force of nature all by herself, but in her late-80s also bears an uncanny resemblance to my equally remarkable mother in her own final days, and so I found this wonderful film especially endearing.

[Bev Simpson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well done, Anne Innis Dragg!
I enjoyed this biography of your adventures in Africa in the 50's having visited many of the places you travelled. And I enjoyed your many discussions on the political (apartheid) and social (anti-feminism and horrific racism) you presented so well.
I'm delighted you decided to publish this book more than 50 years after your adventure especially that you interspersed (very well I might add) many interesting comments about how things are today so many years later.
I was pleased to hear of your long marriage, 3 children and your success at the University of Waterloo (my daughter's alma mater), even though it was so difficult for women to be taken seriously and have the same opportunities as men did.
Kudos to you!

[Booknblues · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading West with Giraffes, I wanted to learn more about giraffes and did a search about them. I found a text by Anne Innis Dagg as well as a memoir about her time in Africa observing giraffe in 1956. I chose the memoir as an easier read and hoped it would be both informative and entertaining. I am pleased to say it was.

Anne took copious notes about her time in Africa, but did not write her memoir until 2006, at which time she could reflect back on the changes in both Africa and the world.

As a young child she loved giraffe and carried this love with her to adulthood and got a graduate degree in zoology so she could study giraffe in the wild. In 1956 she set out to do so after finding a farmer, Mr. Matthew of Fleur de Lys Farm in South Africa who was willing to allow her. She was the first ever to conduct a long term study of African wildlife with Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey coming after her.

It was intriguing to follow in her footsteps in Africa in the 1950s. Innis is opinionated and outspoken which caused certain disagreements. She at 24 was somewhat naive and there were moments when I thought "Oh, that isn't a good idea." And yet she survived and thrived. While in Africa she also visited Zanzibar, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and toured Victoria Falls.

I found the book fascinating.

[Cynthia Nicola · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little less giraffe than I was expecting but still a great read! Dagg did a great job of capturing her experiences, emotions, and adventures of the 1950s in South Africa. What surprised me the most was the restrictions placed on unmarried women.

[Jenny Gray · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was more of a 3.5. I sought this out after watching a documentary on the author, which was excellent. I found that book, while a fascinating tale, was less about giraffe and frankly more about the poor behaviour of most of the men (in particular) she encountered in her travels around Africa. While it is part of her story, no doubt, it makes the retelling of this grand adventure somewhat sad.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful book by a fearless pioneering woman scientist; the first to actually study giraffe in the wild. Traveling to Africa, by herself, as a 23 year old, was extraordinary in itself, but the meticulous notes she took about giraffe and the society in Africa at the time have served both as a foundation for others studying animals in the wild and as a searing indictment of apartheid, very much in favor then.

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A young Canadian women studies giraffe in Africa in the 1950's. The book is written from her year-long journal. Most interesting to me is the perspective of an egalitarian North American toward the implementation of apartheid.

[Avary Doubleday · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book after reading of Anne Innis Dagg's recent death. She saw her first giraffe on a vacation in Chicago when she was two years old, when it became her lifelong favorite animal and life's work. In 1956-7, she traveled along to South Africa and spent about a year studying giraffe in the wild. She was probably the first Western scientist to study African animals in their natural habitat, four years before Dr Jane Goodall began her study of chimpanzees.
In addition to writing about giraffes, Dagg describes her impressions of race relations in several African countries in the mid-1950s. She describes her experiences traveling alone as a young woman (23) in Africa. She compares the observations of Paul Therous in "Dark Star Safari," written about his travels in the same places 50 years later.
I thoroughly enjoyed this well written, honest memoir, which ends sadly: "I'm grieving because my dream of a lifetime is over at age twenty-four."

[Milli · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a GREAT read! Ann Innis Daag was the first woman to study an animal in Africa, the Giraffe, in 1956/57, 3 years before Jane Goodall arrived to study chimpanzees. Her book is a wonderful mix of her adventures studying giraffes, her notes and thoughts on the racial divide in Africa, and her difficulties being a woman scientist in the late 1950s. I read it with my mom, and we both really liked it!

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Seth found this for me for Christmas. It was the perfect book for me as it was about giraffes and pioneering women in science. Obviously, I loved it!

[Ellen Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Awesome if you like giraffe. If not you're out of luck.

[Shelly Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was pretty interesting. I loved hearing the Swahili words I know, plus an unexpected surprise to me when she visited Kisumu!

[Linda Scott]

birthday gift from my room mate, finally getting started on it