Anne Innis Dagg, who broke floor within the Fifties as one of many world’s first biologists to review giraffes within the wild, then spent a long time preventing sexism in Canadian universities earlier than lastly discovering long-overdue acclaim within the 2010s, died on April 1 in Kitchener, Ontario, west of Toronto. She was 91.
Alison Reid, who documented Dr. Dagg’s life within the 2018 movie “The Lady Who Loves Giraffes,” mentioned the reason for her loss of life, in a hospital, was pneumonia.
Dr. Dagg was usually referred to as “the Jane Goodall of giraffes,” however in a special world the attribution may need been reversed. Dr. Dagg traveled to Africa in 1956, 4 years earlier than Dr. Goodall did her first fieldwork with primates; in reality, she is believed to have been the primary Western scientist to review African animals of any kind within the wild.
On the time, little or no was recognized in regards to the habits of giraffes, particularly outdoors zoos. Dr. Dagg spent greater than 9 months within the South African bush, observing for 10 hours a day from her beat-up Ford Prefect how the animals ate, mated, fought and performed.
The outcomes, which she offered first in a 1958 paper for the Zoological Society of London and later in a 1976 e-book, “The Giraffe: Its Biology, Conduct, and Ecology,” established her because the world’s main skilled on the gawky-legged, mottled Giraffa camelopardalis.
That recognition was not sufficient to beat entrenched sexism throughout the tutorial world. She had a promising job as an assistant professor on the College of Guelph, in Ontario, and she or he had printed considerably extra peer-reviewed articles than a few of her male colleagues. However her division chairman advised her in 1971 that she was unlikely to succeed in tenure.
She utilized for the same place at Wilfrid Laurier College, additionally in Ontario, however was handed over for a much less completed male candidate. She filed a grievance with the Ontario authorities; the problem was drawn out for almost a decade, however the grievance was in the end rejected.
Dr. Dagg spent quick stints educating at different universities earlier than touchdown on the College of Waterloo as a part-time teacher. She used her spare time to write down books on biology — she was among the many first to review gay habits in mammals — in addition to on feminism and sexism.
Then, in 2010, a bunch of zookeepers invited her to attend a convention in Phoenix as their visitor of honor. A vibrant area, giraffology, had sprouted round her many papers and, specifically, her 1976 e-book.
“Each zookeeper, each scientist, had it on their bookshelf, however nobody knew her,” Ms. Reid, the filmmaker, mentioned in a cellphone interview.
The eye grew from there: tv documentaries, journal profiles and eventually Ms. Reid’s movie, which launched Dr. Dagg to worldwide audiences. She was appointed a member of the Order of Canada in 2019, the identical yr she acquired an official apology from the College of Guelph.
“I’ve been ignored my complete life, and simply to seek out out now that I’m truly an individual and folks actually assume I’m fascinating,” she mentioned in an interview with The Guelph Mercury in 2019. “It’s fairly wonderful. I find it irresistible.”
Anne Christine Innis was born on Jan. 25, 1933, in Toronto. Her dad and mom had been each well-known teachers on the College of Toronto. Her mom, Mary Quayle Innis, was a dean, in addition to a novelist. Her father, Harold Innis, was chairman of the political financial system division; one of many college’s constituent faculties was named in his honor.
She noticed her first giraffe when she was 3, throughout a household trip to the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago.
“It was very tall and I used to be very small,” she advised CTV Information in 2021. “And I bear in mind pondering: ‘That is lovely. I believe that is magnificent.’ And it went on from there.”
She acquired a bachelor’s diploma with honors in biology in 1955 and a grasp’s in genetics a yr later, each from the College of Toronto. All alongside, she centered on giraffes.
Her honors diploma got here with a small money award, and with that cash she seemed for a solution to get into the sphere. However she was rejected by greater than a dozen African governments and foundations, with the thinly veiled message that girls don’t belong in that line of analysis.
She modified techniques and started giving her identify as merely “A. Innis,” with higher outcomes. A rancher in South Africa with a 62,000-acre unfold, dwelling to about 95 giraffes, mentioned she might stick with him. When she revealed her gender, he hesitated, however he in the end welcomed her.
After almost a yr in Africa, she returned to Canada, and to academia, receiving her doctorate in animal habits from the College of Waterloo in 1967. Her dissertation turned the idea of her 1976 e-book, which she wrote with J. Bristol Foster — the primary full-length scientific textual content on giraffes and, for years after, the one one.
She married Ian Dagg in 1957. He died in 1993. She is survived by their kids, Mary, Hugh and Ian Dagg; her brother, Hugh; and a grandson.
Dr. Dagg’s many printed works embody a memoir, “Pursuing Giraffe” (2006), through which she recounted her time in Africa. The e-book, written within the current tense, ends on a bittersweet be aware, lamenting the truth that she would almost certainly by no means get again there.
“I’m grieving as a result of my dream of a lifetime is over at 24,” she wrote. “I concern that I’ll by no means once more go to the giraffe in Africa, and I by no means have.”
The e-book caught the eye of Ms. Reid, who thought of it first for a characteristic movie, then selected a documentary. As a part of the filming, she organized for Dr. Dagg to return to the South African ranch the place she had first labored, some 60 years prior — and to go to the giraffes the place she thought she would by no means see them once more.
