[INTERVIEW] 'Giraffologist' shares her bond with the animal

Canadian zoologist Anne Innis Dagg, second from left, poses with giraffe zookeepers at the Seoul Grand Park Zoo in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province, Saturday. Innis Dagg visited Korea to screen her documentary, "The Woman Who Loves Giraffes." Courtesy of Anne Innis Dagg

Canadian zoologist Anne Innis Dagg shares her love for giraffes, fight for gender equality

By Kwon Mee-yoo

The giraffe is one of the most unique-looking animals in the world, with its long neck and spotted patterning and is loved by people young and old.

But Canadian zoologist Anne Innis Dagg's love for the giraffe is extraordinary.

"The first time I saw a giraffe was when my mother took me to a zoo in Chicago when I was three. There was a huge giraffe and I just thought it was so wonderful and (since then) I loved it forever," Innis Dagg said during an interview with The Korea Times at a cafe in Seoul, Saturday.

The 89-year-old giraffe enthusiast was on a visit to East Asia, sharing her achievements in the field of zoology as well as women's rights. While in Korea, Innis Dagg showed the 2018 documentary about her, "The Woman Who Loves Giraffes," at an international school in Incheon, the Canadian Embassy in Seoul and the Seoul Grand Park Zoo, and met with students and zookeepers to talk about her all-time favorite animal.

"By the time I got to university, I understood that there's going to be a problem with animals in Africa. So I thought, 'Well, I better go and see one. And then I could maybe save one,'" Innis Dagg recalled.

However, it was virtually impossible for a single female to travel to Africa, let alone to study wild animals there in the 1950s. She had to write numerous letters to farms and reserves in Africa to find a place where she could stay so she could study giraffes in the wild, until a citrus farmer in South Africa accepted her request only because he mistook her for being male, as she used only her initial in her letters after being turned down multiple times.

Her trip took weeks. First a train from Toronto to Montreal, then a boat from Canada to England and another to South Africa. When she arrived in Cape Town, she drove hundreds of miles alone up to Fleur De Lys, where the ranch was located.

Innis Dagg relished her chance to observe giraffes wandering freely in the wild.

"I was just over the moon," she said as she recalled her first encounter with wild giraffes.

"It was kind of funny, because I never thought I could see a giraffe on the other side. Then I thought, 'Well, how do you introduce yourself to somebody that's new?' I'd never come to it," she said.

"Anyway, I decided I would come out and say hello and maybe we could be best friends, but they weren't (at first). Eventually they became my friends because I stayed there every day for a year, watching them," she continued.

She even nicknamed some of the giraffes according to their spot patterns, such as "Pompom" and "Star." She wrote down everything she observed about the giraffes in notebooks and brought tons of notebooks back to Canada, which became precious source material for books she wrote later.

She still keeps all those books at her home in Canada, one of which is also filled with pressed leaves.

"Every few weeks, I would take the tree leaves that the giraffes were eating to a botanist who would give me the name of the giraffe's food," she explained.

Canadian zoologist Anne Innis Dagg, right, poses for a photo with Canadian Chargee d'Affaires to Korea Tamara Mawhinney in front of the Canadian Embassy in Seoul, Friday, after screening her documentary at the embassy. Courtesy of Anne Innis Dagg

When she returned to Canada, she wanted to be a biology professor so that she could continue her research on giraffes. However, even after earning her doctoral degree and teaching at a university, she was not able to obtain tenure.

Innis Dagg considered herself a "person," but universities back then were dominated by male faculty and reluctant to hire and grant tenure to female professors, especially when she was married to a male professor, as Innis Dagg was.

"I was so angry," she said, explaining why she filed a complaint to the human rights commission against the university, which refused to hire her but instead picked a male candidate who was less qualified than her. "(Discrimination against women in academia) still exists." It is her opinion that women still don't get a lot of respect and considered "women rather than scientists."

However, she lost the case and turned her energies to years of writing which produced over 20 books on giraffes as well as the subject of gender inequality in academia. That was, until the next generation of zookeepers and giraffe researchers contacted her, looking for the person who wrote the books they had all read.

Reconnecting with the giraffe researchers allowed Innis Dagg to return to Africa after some 60 years and establish the Anne Innis Dagg Foundation to preserve wild giraffes, opening up a new chapter in her life now with the long-overdue recognition of her work in academia as well as her fight for gender equality.

Innis Dagg will turn 90 next year and she hopes to make a trip to Africa once again to see her favorite animal in the wild. She also hinted that there might be another movie about her, this time a scripted film focusing on her adventures in Africa in the 1950s.