For close to the first ten years of their lives, baby orangutans maintain incredibly intense relationships with their mothers. During these years, the mother and juvenile are in constant contact; the babies become permanent fixtures on their mother’s bodies, clutching their caretakers at all times. This period of nonstop apprenticeship prepares the orangutan to lead a more solitary adult life. Adult males are the only truly solitary orangutans, spending most of their time traversing across the forest and foraging for food on their own. Their roaming range is typically at least 40 square kilometers. Orangutans never evolved the need to form social groups, perhaps because they subsist on large quantities of fruit, which they obtain by roaming …show more content…
She wrote about her research in the bestselling book Gorillas in the Mist, which continues to be one of the most seminal books about the relationship between humans and animals. Following her adventure around Africa, Fossey returned to Louisville and worked to repay her loans. Her visit to Africa had made a strong impression on her, and she published three articles in the Louisville newspaper, The Courier-Journal, describing her experience. When she learned that Louis Leakey would be making a stop in Louisville as part of a nationwide lecture tour, Fossey went to meet him with clips of her articles from The Courier-Journal. It was then, three years after her first trip to Africa, that Leakey offered to support Fossey in a long-term study of mountain gorillas. Jokingly, he suggested that she should have her appendix taken out, since she would be far removed from modern medicine in the mountain forests of Africa. A few weeks later, Leakey sent her a letter with more details about the job, and telling her that he was only joking about the appendix. However, by then, it was too late — in a show of commitment, Fossey had already gotten it