Original subtitles

Announcer: What is your name, please?

My name is Anne dagg.

My name is Anne dagg.

My name is Anne dagg.

Announcer: I, Anne dagg, am a university lecturer in zoology

and an expert on the giraffe.

I gained my knowledge of the world's tallest animal

at first-hand by studying the giraffe in its natural habitat.

The London zoological society published my findings

as a unique scientific record of the behaviour of the giraffe.

Can these young ladies all claim to be Anne dagg, giraffe expert?

And we'll start this cross-examination, if we may,

with Peggy cass.

Uh, number one, how come you decided to study the giraffe?

I always liked animals and the giraffes fascinated me

when I was a child and went to the zoo.

Number two, where did you study the giraffe?

In Stockholm.

Man: Number three, is the giraffe monogamous?

Does the male giraffe look around at the lady giraffes,

or does he settle down?

Uh, no, he's not monogamous.

He's not monogamous? This gets good, oh!

Announcer: Take your ballets and Mark them, if you will please,

for number one, number two or number three.

Man: Anne actually went to South Africa

to begin her studies of giraffe

before Jane goodall got to Africa

to study the chimpanzees.

She wasn't only a pioneering scientist

looking at animals in the wild,

but she was fighting all kinds of odds as a woman.

It takes an explorer's heart

to be willing to set off like that,

to go and study animals in Africa, in the 1950s,

as a single woman travelling the continent herself

in her little rickety car.

This was a different world then.

There wasn't the infrastructure, there were no mobile phones,

there was nothing.

She did the ground-breaking stuff.

But ironically, Anne has slipped under the radar

and doesn't attract the attention that she deserves.

Male panel member: I voted for number one.

Well, I voted for number one.

Man: Well, I voted for number one as well.

Woman: I voted for one.

I think she looks like the scholarly type.

Show announcer: Let's find out at once

which one of these ladies, in truth, is the giraffe expert.

Will the real Anne dagg please stand up?

Anne: If you'd never seen a giraffe before, I guess,

and came upon your first one, you'd be amazed,

because it doesn't look like any other animal in the whole world.

It has this lovely long, long neck, and a long black tongue,

a lovely long tail and then this beautiful head,

and two little ossicones, they're called,

but people call them horns.

Aren't they curious?

Other animals aren't curious like that.

Woman: We're at brookfield zoo

for the international giraffid conference.

The importance of being here is that this is where Anne dagg

first started her interest in giraffe.

Man: If you're working on giraffes, she was the pioneer.

Anne wrote the textbook.

Especially when I was doing my masters.

She was essential reading.

But outside our tight community of giraffe conservationists,

giraffe researchers, her work is very little known.

Anne was the first person to go to Africa

to study the behaviour of a wild animal.

In fact, with the exception of a red deer study in Scotland,

she was the first person to study the behaviour

of a wild animal anywhere in the world.

Anne's own inspiration was here at the brookfield zoo.

Anne: When I was about three,

my mother took me to the brookfield zoo in Chicago

and there were giraffe there.

I was very small, obviously, and they were very tall,

and I just thought, "these are magnificent.”

"I love these animals."

My love affair began right then, age three.

Young Anne: "August 2nd, 1956."

"Dear mommy,

today was my first sight and feel of Africa."

"When I stepped on the immortal soil,

I felt just as excited as when I saw my first giraffe."

"It shows what a great moment it was."

Here's this 20-something year-old girl

who gets out of college and goes by herself

to South Africa at the beginning of the apartheid,

in a time when women didn't do anything like that

and didn't care what the society accepted things were,

and she just pushed through,

and she was gonna do it because she wanted to.

Young Anne: "As we drove, I could hardly believe

I was about to see my first wild giraffe."

"This was the moment I'd been waiting for my whole life."

Lisa: Oh, giraffe!

John: Wow.

Anne: Oh, heavens, that's great. You forget how tall they are.

John: He's the first one

that I learned to recognize individually.

Lisa: Oh, really?

How funny that he should be the first one we see.

Yeah.

Oh.

Oh, look at him standing there, the way he's posing.

John: Yeah.

Anne: Oh, he's so beautiful.

John: Anne, if you look with your camera now,

at the base of his neck, you can see the trident, yeah.

A trident looking like what? Like a toasting fork.

Okay. Oh. That's how he gets his nickname.

John: So, they each have a nickname and a real name.

The nickname just helps us remember.

Young Anne: "August 25th, 1956."

"Life is as wonderful as ever,

and I am only a little apprehensive about snakes."

"When stalking giraffe,

I will have to decide between walking loudly

to scare off the snakes and walking softly

to not scare the giraffe."

"In this case,

I think the interest of the giraffe will come second.”

John: You see, he has no tail. It was bitten off by a lion.

Anne: Well, he's got a tail. It's just missing the tassel.

John: Yes, that's right. You know when they run,

especially when they run from a predator,

they coil the tail up over their backs.

Anne: Yeah, yeah.

I'm sure it's to avoid just that, you know?

Anne: Oh, dear. As you know,

they're supposed to live for maybe 25 years, aren't they?

Which is pretty rare.

In the wild. Yeah.

John: Yes, we're always worried that he's died, aren't we?

Man: Yeah.

John: Because he's so old.

Anne: It would be sad to be a lonely male, no friends.

I don't know. I quite enjoy it.

Anne: When I went to school,

if there were a chance to give a little speech,

I would be talking about giraffe and how they lived in Africa.

I'd asked my parents for a book about the giraffe,

and they said, well, there wasn't such a thing.

When I got to university, I thought,

"well, at last, now we'll maybe learn about giraffe,"

but we never learned about giraffe there, either,

because, actually, there was very little known about them.

When I was graduating, I knew I wanted to go to Africa now

and see giraffe in their wild place.

I was 23 and I'd been thinking for 20 years about going,

and I just had to do it.

Young man: "July 10th, 1956."

"Dear Anne,

I received your letter today and I am answering it immediately.”

"Certainly, you have Africa in your blood now

and you won't be satisfied until you see it,

but I still mean what I said by riverdale zoo."

Anne: I met LAN at the tennis courts.

He... he played tennis and I played tennis,

that's how we got together.

I said I was going to go to Africa for the year and he said,

"why don't we get married instead?"

I didn't know, really, what to do,

but I went to my mother and she said,

"you've always wanted to see giraffe."

"If you got married now, you probably never would."

And I agreed with her, so I told LAN we'd have to wait,

and if he waited, then we could get married.

And if he didn't wait, then we wouldn't.

Ian: "Dear Anne, it probably is wise to follow advice

and put off marriage thoughts for a while."

"Let's think on it and hope that you get to Africa and back."

"Such a dream to visit should not go unsatisfied."

"Love, LAN.”

To go to Africa, I'd have to play... find a place to stay

and somewhere near where there were giraffe

that I could watch every day

'cause I was interested in their behaviour.

So I started to write to people, anyone I could think of.

I would write to the wildlife department

in each of the countries that I knew had giraffe.

I wrote to l.S.B. Leakey,

who eventually helped Jane goodall study the chimpanzees.

He was very kind.

He actually sent me three different letters.

And there just wasn't really a place in Kenya

that I could study giraffe.

Altogether, I'd have wrote 13 letters to wildlife departments

in each of the countries that I knew had giraffe.

All of them came back and said,

"I'm afraid there is no such place.”

"No one is interested."

One of them said, "well, I think this wouldn't be good

for a young woman to be alone."

I thought, "oh, maybe it's 'cause I'm a woman

that they're saying all this."

So then I started to use my initials

so they wouldn't know I was a woman

and could have been Andrew or some other a.

Then a man called Mr. Matthew, who was manager of a ranch

near the kruger national park in South Africa, said,

"you can come and you can bunk in with the males.”

"We have accommodations here for single men

which are equipped with electric light,

hot and cold running water, and are virtually free of malaria.”

And I remember my mother saying,

"wait a minute, you can't bunk in with the cowmen."

And then I had to write, of course,

and tell him I actually wasn't a man, I was a woman.

Mr. Matthew: "Dear miss innis,

when I received an application from a Canadian student,

I not unnaturally thought it meant a male student

and an offer was made on this misunderstanding.”

"It would hardly do for an old man of 57

to have a strange young woman into his household

without a chaperon.”

I was already part way to Africa at that point,

so I was really desperate.

I sent him another letter and said I just had to come.

"Please, let me come.”

So finally, he said yes.

I was so excited.

Yes, he said yes.

Young Anne: July 25th, 1956,

"dear LAN, the arundel castle is a super ship.

"It has oodles of deck space

"and even an open-air swimming pool.

"Li have been talking to an African boy at great length

"and we have been exchanging books.

"At least three whites have come up to me

"and expressed their disapproval.

"They say that I will soon lose my idealism when we land

"and see the African for what he is.

"Yipe!

"1 will write often

"so that you will get a good idea of South Africa.

"I wish you were coming too and were here now

"so that I would have someone to lie in the sun with.

"Look after yourself and write back.

"Much love, Anne.”

Anne's mother: "Dearest Anne, your letters enthral us all.

"Now, I have one serious thing to say.

"Please, promise me that you will let me know

when you need money.

"Li won't worry about you at all if I know you will do that,

"for you obviously have judgement

"and courage and intelligence enough for anything.

"With dearest love, mother.”

Young Anne: "Dear best of all possible mothers.

"Li am now the proud owner of a second-hand car called camelo,

"after camelopardalis, the original giraffe.

"It is a Ford prefect, which cost £200."

Anne: There are no busses and there are no trains

to this place in the transvaal,

and I set off to drive a thousand miles to Fleur de lys,

which was where Mr. Matthew lived.

I was driving 12 hours a day pretty well

and it ran out of water,

so I had to stop every 20 minutes and pour water into it.

I remember, I came up behind a truck full of workers

and they were all looking at me.

And I guess it's very unusual to see a white woman

all by herself in a tiny little car.

Young Anne: "I drove the last 80 miles to klaserie in the dark."

"On most of the hills, there were grass fires burning

"and the orange flames showed plainly against the black sky.

"The road got progressively worse

"until it was only a dirt track full of washboards.

"About 5 miles from the farm,

camelo stopped and refused to start.”

"I put some clothes in my knapsack, locked the car,

and started to walk."

Anne: I was just scared stiff and there was no moon.

It was incredibly dark, so I was inching along the highway,

knowing in a few hours I would get there

if somebody didn't get me, like a lion.

Snakes, which were very deadly, were about,

and I had to go very slowly

because I couldn't really see my feet.

All the time, I was thinking,

"this is the most scary thing I hope I ever do.”

And then about maybe an hour,

a car drove up and I immediately flagged it,

and it turned out to be someone from the ranch.

They said, "you must be the Canadian girl."

And I said, "yes, yes!”

And they took me and I got there.

Young Anne: "My dear LAN,

I finally met Mr. Matthew."

"He is a super-type person,

and tonight he is taking us to see my first wild giraffe."

The farm is called Fleur de lys

and has 20,000 acres for citrus and cattle farming,

and has 200 giraffe roaming around,

as well as zebra, wildebeest and impala.”

"Mr. Matthew said he'd take me down a few of the lanes

on the farm so I'd know where to go in camelo."

"As we rounded a corner,

"and she leaned down and took a drink of water

while we watched.”

"It was very close.”

"We were about 20 feet away."

"And when she finished drinking, she swished...”

She swished her head up and I was amazed.

I thought that she would have fainted

because the blood pressure difference would be so great.

Lisa: Yes.

Anne: But it's something I've learned since.

They have very efficient blood pressure

and that doesn't bother them at all.

They can go up and down many times.

Anne: "Dear mommy, life here is continuing as rosy as ever,

except it is rather hot."

"To be able to devote all day and every day

to those dear giraffe is unbelievable.”

"It is a disappointing day

when I don't make notes on at least 30.

"My car is playing an indispensable role

because when I drive up to within 25 yards of a giraffe

and stop, he pays no attention to me and goes on eating

or doing whatever he was doing."

Anne: Well, if I was doing an experiment,

I would just sit and watch what every giraffe within sight

was doing every five minutes.

Were they resting, eating, lying, drinking, walking around,

fighting, sparring?

So I remember one time I was thinking, "this is so boring."

The little car I had was just so hot.

So I got out at the side and thought they weren't looking,

and starting practicing ballet.

One of the females then saw me

and started walking towards me and I thought, "oh, no,"

which meant I had to stop and get back into the car

and pretend I wasn't there.

And then they went back to doing whatever they were doing.

You feel that what they're doing after that,

you aren't probably affecting them.

The whole point of behaviour

is that they not be affected by the person.

So you would never go and do anything

that would distract them

because then everything they were doing

would be null and void.

So you have to be as invisible as possible.

Young Anne: "Mr. Matthew has a professional type movie camera

and he is very keen to get a film on the giraffe,

which I am every bit as keen to take."

"It will all be in colour, which costs £4 for 100 feet,

so I will try and restrain myself."

"I think Mr. Matthew will pay for at least half the film,

which should help somewhat.”

"And I am getting to learn more about the giraffe,

even by studying them from a photographic point of view."

"Dear mommy, this morning I was out giraffing

and saw seven giraffes at once."

"They were all so close, I could see their eyelashes.”

"One of the giraffe snorted to see what I would do."

"Finally, the tension was too great

and they all cantered off.”

"You can see how conversant I sound with giraffes."

"Especially as this is my third day here.”

I'm pretending I know everything.

Well, it sounds like you did

a huge amount of behaviour observation.

How did people react to you as a woman alone like that?

Did that affect you at all?

Yeah, I never really thought about it, that me being a woman,

it was strange.

And they thought about it all the time, I think.

But you never let it stop you. Oh, no!

Well, 'cause I was thinking I was a person.

So I guess I'm thankful to my mother

for allowing me to be a person and not a woman.

Lisa: Yeah, was that something

you remember as part of your childhood?

Anne: Yeah, I just always did my own thing.

If I wanted to do it, I did it.

Ali: What did your mother think of you taking this trip?

Anne: Oh I think she was completely freaked out,

but she was really good about it,

'cause my father just died a couple years before,

which didn't help.

And my brothers and sisters had all left home,

so I was the only one left.

Mary quayle innis was my mother.

She married my father in 1921.

She had four children, but she also wrote many books.

My father was Harold innis.

He was a top economist in Canada, really.

They named a college for him at the university of Toronto.

They're still publishing books about him.

He was interested in animals,

so I was always interested in animals partly because of him.

My father died in '52.

I was in second year university.

They made my mother Dean of women at the university college.

Well, I guess I was closer to her

'cause my father was always working

and I'd just tell her everything.

It was like having a best friend.

I've always wanted to be just like her, really.

"Dear Anne, the giraffe pictures sound wonderful.”

"You must have seen more giraffes now

and learned more about them than anybody else in the world."

"You'll certainly have to write a book about your adventures.”

"As diamond kept saying, 'it's like a fairy story.'"

Mr. Matthew: "Dear Mrs. innis,

Anne is nicely settled

and working hard on her giraffe thesis."

"I don't think I've ever met any young person quite like her."

"There is no doubt she will be a famous lady some time,

and the fame will be well earned and well deserved."

"Kind regards, Alexander Matthew."

Young Anne: "October 4th, 1956."

"Ll am getting along very well in my African relations campaign.”

"I am working with the family of one of the cattle boys

that lives by the borehole where I sometimes wait

in hopes that an errant giraffe will come down to drink."

There was a camp of about 100 workers that worked on the ranch

doing citrus and cattle management.

So I wandered in and then I felt self-conscious because I mean,

I was invading their territory.

And then the secretary came out and said,

"don't go there again.”

"You're a white woman, you don't go there ever!”

And I said, "well, why not?" And he said,

"well, they're black, and white women don't go there."

So that was my first understanding

of how South Africa worked.

Young Anne: "Right now I am sitting by the borehole

waiting for something to appear, preferably a giraffe."

"When I wait in the car,

Enoch and Bella come over and sit on the running boards."

"Enoch is about six and Bella about thirteen."

"I was talking to Bella for about two hours yesterday."

"She would point to her belt and say what it was in 'besute'

"or fanagolo, then I would give the english word

and we would laugh because this always seemed to be very funny.”

Anne: Then I became friends with lots of the workers,

and occasionally, Mr. Matthew would ask me

to take one to a clinic if he were sick.

And then he'd get in the back and I'd say,

"no, no, drive in the front." "We can talk."

And they'd never been in the front of a car before

because obviously white people really didn't want

to have anything to do with the people working for them,

which I thought was ridiculous.

Young Anne: "October 7th, 1956."

"This report will have to consist mainly

of the big bull giraffe which was shot Friday."

"The provincial game warden shot it

and then came to tell us there was no use fussing."

"12 natives and two white men went off in a truck

to bring it in so that they could skin it

and cut it into hunks of meat for the natives."

"They put the stomach, and the intestines and the heart

in a big basin for me so that I could study them later.”

"The heart is reputed to weigh 25 pounds,

which I well believe after carrying it."

"The most upsetting part was when they cut up the neck

with an axe into lengths rather in the manner of cord wood."

"I separated all the intestines so that I could spread them out

and see how long they were."

"Ll measured them with a yardstick and they were 256 feet!"

"Yipe!™

"by studying the stomach,

I had hoped to find bits of leaves and twigs

that I might recognize

so that I could get a better idea of exactly

what their diet consisted of."

"However, all I found was a green juicy mess."

There were no books

on how to study the behaviour of an animal.

So I just thought, whenever they were eating at a certain tree,

when they wandered on, I'd get out of the car

and took the samples of these leaves up to Pretoria.

And a woman who studied plants was able to tell me

which ones they were, so I had a list, finally,

of trees that giraffe liked to browse on.

That's how you build up how an animal lives.

And no one had ever really studied an African animal

in the wild, or pretty well any animal in the wild,

so I was sort of breaking ground without realizing it.

Oh, this is from the very first day I saw a giraffe.

Incredible.

Each day I'd write down exactly what I did that day, what I saw.

"9:13, three standing, one feeding."

"9:15, two eating, two standing."

"9:18, two eating, two chewing.”

"9:32, three eating,

one at a low acacia bush and one chewing.”

"9:36, all feeding, very gradually moving north."

And then this is how far a group of giraffe moved from 10:35,

19 hours, and how many yards,

the speed at which, therefore, it moved.

I have it all worked out.

It usually got dark about 6:00 or 6:30.

We'd have dinner,

and then Mr. Matthew would want to tell me stories

about his Scottish past.

I was just so dead tired and I was desperate to stay awake.

And then at five in the morning,

there'd be the knock on the door, and he'd leave tea for me,

and I'd eat that, then we'd have breakfast

and then it was another day again.

It was super. Exhausting but super.

He made it possible for me. Every single day,

I'd have eight or ten hours out watching the giraffe.

He was just so kind, and I think he really liked a young woman

who was so enthusiastic.

I think that Mr. Matthew showed a lot of trust for you

and you for he. Yes, yes, yeah.

There was a lot of mutual respect.

Anne: And his wife wasn't there, his children weren't there,

and the neighbours were absolutely aghast.

And they were saying,

"here's Mr. Matthew, got this young hussy from Canada.”

John: So this one is October the 4th, 1956.

"Dear mommy." You haven't read these, have you?

Not since I wrote them. Since you wrote them, no.

Very interesting.

"This morning I was out giraffing

and I saw two males fighting with their necks

in the distance."

Young Anne: "Ll snaked up closer to them

and watched them through my glasses for about an hour."

"I have never had a more exciting morning."

"Two males were having a fight

and they were circling around each other and giving each other

upper cuts and left hooks in true boxing style.”

"Suddenly, one whipped his neck down and across

and hit the other one a terrific wallop on the chest.”

"It was a most spectacular display.”

"It is much better to watch than human boxing

because no one ever seems to get very badly hurt.”

"Ll don't think anyone has ever taken pictures of giraffe fights

of any sort, so I think I will have something.”

Anne: After one of these bouts,

it might last a couple of minutes, really.

One male might go behind the other and mount the male.

And I remember the first time I saw it, I was stunned.

I didn't know what on earth they were doing.

And then I thought maybe this is homosexual behaviour.

I thought it was fantastic to observe and find this out.

I was really excited and I remember thinking,

"well, should I tell Mr. Matthew?"

And then I thought, no, I didn't have the nerve to mention it,

so I never told anyone about it

until I wrote about it in the paper.

Because you have to say what's true in science.

You wouldn't really know they were fighting

for... if you didn't just... If you just glanced at them.

John: No.

Anne: You have to stay around for a while.

John: People think it's courtship, don't they?

Anne: Oh, yeah, I've seen that for a Valentine card.

John: It's very appropriate, really.

That's what Valentine cards lead to in the end.

Anne: Oh, John!

The other unusual behaviour was the flehmen behaviour,

in which the male tests the urine of the female

to see if she's in estrous.

And if she is, then he'll try and mate with her.

The strongest bull does most of the mating and will go around

and sniff the urine or even take some into his mouth

and he can tell from that if the female is coming into heat.

So again, this was something

no one had ever written an article about it before.

After I'd described the behaviour of the giraffe

in a paper, the head of the zoological society of London

wrote back in a very friendly manner

and said he would love to publish.

And that was one of the top ones in the world.

And I was really excited that they would accept it.

Young Anne: "September 10th, 1956."

"My dear LAN, if I wasn'tin 7th heaven

because of my present location,

I would be annoyed with you."

"I have had no letter from you dated after August 14th

and it will take even longer for any mail to be forwarded."

"I may have run off with a giraffe by then!"

"Notice chilly opening.”

Young LAN: "Dear Anne,

may you not find cause to use a chilly opening paragraph

in your letters because of my natural tardiness."

"Your last letter of complaint

about the flow of letters from here has driven me to buying

these air letter mail forms which will make it easier

to write more, if shorter messages."

He was supposed to write every week, but it was getting so that

he would write every two weeks,

and so I wrote and said if he couldn't write every week,

then we shouldn't get married.

And in novels, you know,

they always write four times a day, so...

Oh, yes, oh, yes, yes.

So I guess he thought, well, maybe I should write a bit more,

and so he did write.

Young Anne: "Right now, I am in a super mood

because I just got mail and would give anything

to have you here so I could rush across the room

and jump on you and crush you to death in my exuberance.”

"You can see I am still the same gentle little female."

"All my non-familial love, Anne of the bushveld.”

Lisa: He must have been a remarkable man for the time

because you were not a shrinking Violet.

Anne: No.

Lisa: You were very determined, extremely intelligent woman.

Anne: Well, yeah.

And he played tennis really well.

Ah, there you go! A good tennis partner.

Woman: Did he beat you?

No. No, no.

Young Anne: "Dear LAN, this time I am really annoyed.”

"Every day at meal time,

I get cross and irritable when there is no LAN letter,

and for the next hour I go around muttering 'blast him!'

under my breath.”

"If you want to call the whole thing off,

then for heaven's sake, don't be a chicken and write and say so."

Young LAN: "Perhaps I have not given you enough reason

for being sure of me."

"Let me repeat, girl, that I am in love with you."

"I very much want to come to england and to marry you there,

or anywhere you want.”

"And nothing can change that.”

Anne: He said he would fly over to London

and I'd meet him on the way back from Africa,

and we'd get married in London and then

we could have a honeymoon there.

Then we took a ship back to Canada, back into real life.

When we got home, we moved to Waterloo,

where my husband got a job as a physicist

in the physics department.

I taught at wilfred laurier university for three years

and I really loved it.

I realized that if I really wanted to be a teacher,

I should earn my phd.

In biology, often you have to kill animals

and I was determined I would never do that,

so what could you study about them

that you didn't need their body?

One of the things, of course, is how they move.

They're magnificent runners,

incredibly fast, about 35 kilometres per hour.

But to see their legs going in slow motion

and their necks going forward and back with each gait,

they're just a symphony of perfection.

I spent the next two years using film

that I'd collected in Africa and comparing the gaits of giraffe

with the gaits of large ungulates.

One of the things I found about the giraffe

was that it had difficulty walking like other animals

because its long legs would hit each other,

so it had to walk in a rather special way

so that it wouldn't become confused

and tangled up with its legs.

They're quite incapable of trotting

because they have to move two legs on one side first

and then two legs on the other side.

So it's rather a different gait than most animals have.

So I made a really interesting paper

about how evolution had produced all these various forms

and why they might have evolved that way.

Since I had children at that point,

this was rather a busy life.

I had my first son, Hugh.

And he was born, and then two years later, LAN,

named after my husband.

We were going to stop at two because we knew environmentally

this was the right thing to do,

but I just wanted a daughter so much.

And then my daughter Mary was born.

Mumsie!

How are you doing? How are you?

Good to see you.

And how's things going with your, uh, birds?

Well, it depends on the time of day.

They come in the morning and then they come about 2:00.

I've trained them.

Mary: I guess my mom's approach to life was a very, what I feel,

a very scientific approach.

I must have been maybe about ten or eleven

and my mother had gone out on a walk

and came across a dead bird.

So she put the bird in the baggie

and put it in the freezer.

Her thought was she would, at some point,

take it out to study it.

So of course, my dad didn't know anything about this, so one day

he went to the freezer to get into the ice cream

and what would fall out but this dead bird...

In the baggie.

And dad just, he said, "that's it!"

"That's it!"

Anne: I'd always wanted to be a scientist.

Having earned a phd at the university of Waterloo,

I knew that there was just a huge amount more I could study,

and I thought if I became a tenured professor,

they usually get four months off every year,

and then I would spend my time in Africa

studying giraffe and be able to write more papers

and know more about them.

What she expected when she got back to Canada

was that she'd done all this research.

She went back, got her phd,

was extremely well-versed and educated

and ready to share her knowledge in a university environment,

and, uh, was very disappointed in several occasions

where she'd gone to university

and jobs that she, in some ways, may have been overqualified for,

she was not getting.

Anne: Sandy, he was a prof at guelph

and he was one of the few that actually talked to me...

As opposed to most of them would ignore the women.

And there were about three or four women at that point.

Man: Well, well, well, look who's here!

Anne: How are you?

It's a long time no see, Anne!

Oh, it's so good to see you!

It's wonderful.

Sandy: Anne was appointed in 1968,

so that's how I met Anne.

She came as a colleague in the department.

When I was appointed to promotion and tenure committees,

then, of course, I became aware of her cv

and all of her publications

and her, um, research record before that time.

To be a professor, I had to get tenure.

I'd had, I don't know, maybe 15 or 20 published papers by then,

and I thought, well, there's no way they can deny me tenure.

They can't deny that I have this list of published papers

from journals all over the world.

Sandy: The proceedings of the promotion and tenure committee

were confidential.

It was a very critical and judgmental process.

You're playing with people's futures here.

Decisions you make are going to have dramatic impact

upon how a person succeeds or does not succeed.

It was just a decision that was made and, uh, usually then

you got it in a letter slipped under your door or something

on a Friday afternoon before you went off for the weekend.

Anne: So, one evening,

I remember I came back from working all day at guelph,

and I looked at my table

and I had a letter, and I thought, "oh, what's this?"

And I opened it up and it said "you've been denied tenure."

"You can teach one more year and then you're out,"

which I remember crying all the way home.

Well, it just meant that

that was the end of everything that I hoped for.

'Cause, no, I couldn't be a professor.

That meant that everything I loved,

working with students and...

It just meant the... I just couldn't, I just...

It was just very upsetting.

Because it just was so,

so depressing after working so hard.

I don't think my voice was heard, quite frankly.

I had spoken in favour of Anne's profile, and all the others,

as we went around the circle, were quite negative.

There was a power structure with four or five male individuals

at the top who certainly had a strong, strong influence

on the department.

Anne: Did they all tend to vote whatever Keith voted?

Yes, that tended to be the pattern.

It was Keith's line or no line, yes.

And that's when I said,

as far as promotion and tenure was concerned,

my impression was there was one mould for a successful academic,

and if you didn't fit that mould you were out of luck.

Yeah. Yeah.

This is from Dr. Ronald, who was head of the department.

He says, "the college tenure and promotion committee

is not satisfied that these standards have been met."

And for the research it says, "the quality of publication

does not seem to be of desirable scientific sophistication.”

And these are some of the top journals in the world.

I thought that that was incredibly unfair.

I wrote back and said,

"well, I think this is wrong and I would like to show

what I've done during the year.”

And so, I did ask them to reconsider it,

and I remember gathering together all the information,

and I had a really good students report on my teaching,

or I had more papers than most professors.

I'd written books.

They said, "well, we'll give you one more year,

and then we'll look at it again,

and we'll decide at that time if you can stay on."

But it was still the same committee

and they were behaving so strangely,

so I thought, "I'll just leave now."

"There's no point in waiting another year

and then losing the job again.”

Sandy: It's not being fired, but essentially, that's what it is.

If you're denied tenure,

you're not going to continue in the department,

and so you would have to move on

to look for opportunities elsewhere.

Anne: I already knew I couldn't go at the university of Waterloo

because the Dean had said he wouldn't hire any married women.

If you were a married woman, your husband would support you,

so, of course she would never be allowed to be a professor there.

I applied for a job at wilfred laurier,

but they gave it to a man with many fewer qualifications.

So I realized it was hopeless.

That was a very low point.

I just thought, you know, this is so, so hard. Why?

I've done everything you needed to be good

and then they just said, "oh, well, you're a woman."

Sandy: I felt that she was not given a fair hearing.

She was in a department that had a very

male chauvinistic attitude towards women.

She ran into the old boys' network,

she got the short end of the stick.

I think that she was unfairly judged

and I think it destroyed her career.

Mr. Matthew: "Saturday, march 31, 1973.

"Dear Annie,

"I was sorry to hear

"that at the time of your February writing,

"you were jobless.

"Don't you have any of your constitutional rights,

"or even 'women"s lib' in Canada?"

Anne: Just about all the universities really, really,

really didn't want to have any women professors it seemed,

especially in science.

That got me thinking, if they could do this to me,

I mean, they could do it to any woman.

In Waterloo, for example, there were six women.

All of us had phds and none of us could get a job.

And so, then I thought, "I'll just push the envelope

"because it isn't just that I'm saying I'm good,

"I've got the documentation to show I am good."

And so, I went to the ombudsman

and I went to the Ontario human rights commission

and I said, "could you please look into this

"because I think it's unfair."

Mary: This one's "in the matter of the human rights code, 1970."

Anne: And it's the supreme court of Ontario.

Mary: The supreme court of Ontario.

So, you've got you as the applicant

and then your respondent is the human rights commission

and the minister of labour.

And the date here is 1979,

wherein the court refused judicial review.

So, I guess you went to the case, you were denied,

and this is you challenging...

Anne: Actually that's '79.

I left the university of guelph in '72,

so I fought for 7 years.

Young Anne: "Dear sir or madam,

"as one who has a case coming before

"the Ontario human rights commission,

"I would like to make a plea for better communications

"between complainants such as myself, and the commission.

"Whatever the outcome of my case may be,

"it has been extremely distressing..."

"Thinking it was being heard first in October,

"then November, then December,

"when in reality it has not yet come before the commission."

Argh!

"The uncertainties and delays

"surely cause more mental suffering than need be.

"Li know I would be most grateful to know what's going on."

Yeah, that was coming from the heart...

When you'd phone them month after month after month

and they, "oh, yes, it's going along,

"it will come soon. Oh, yes." Ugh!

The ombudsman just said I can't have it

and the human rights commission went to trial

and John sopinka was the person fighting me.

And they went on and argued and argued,

and sopinka won, so I lost again.

I was really deeply depressed.

It seemed there wasn't any future in the whole world.

You just sulk around and drive people nuts.

Poor LAN, and the kids, I'm sure.

You know, you don't feel like laughing

or really doing much of anything.

Ian was very supportive of me.

He backed me up. That was very good of him.

Because many, I think, would have divorced their wives

if they were that activist.

I think there was probably part of dad that would have said,

"can you just be a good professor's wife,

"who's very demure and entertains

"when professors are visiting from out of town

"and chats with the wives?"

But having said that, dad being dad,

he was very supportive.

And a lot of credit to him because it probably was,

at times, quite stressful,

where he really was hoping she would be more conservative,

and it just wasn't who she was.

Anne: We had a wonderful life until he died.

We played tennis twice a week

and badminton often twice a week as well,

so we did a lot of activity.

And this was our usual Friday night game, and at the end,

he went to the back of the court and collapsed

and-and... Yeah, it was... it was terrible.

Yeah.

I had nothing before me

and I didn't know what to do.

But then I thought, "well, what I could do

"is write a book about the giraffe."

I had done my own studies and I had a friend, Bristol foster,

who had been working in the field for five years.

Together, we decided to write a whole book about giraffe.

A lot of it was from what I learned at Fleur de lys.

Here we are.

So, this is "the Bible."

And it just has a picture of a giraffe

and it has lots of diagrams

and various chapters on what happens for giraffe.

I've been collecting books on Africa since I was a kid.

That's really when I got into Africa,

and the Anne dagg and foster book was the Bible on giraffe,

and it was one of the first in my collection. It had to be.

Even as a 15, 16-year-old,

I knew that was a book I needed to get.

Zoe: I first became interested

in looking at giraffe behaviour and biology

when I was studying for my master's degree.

And of course, when I went to do some research

about what we knew about giraffes,

Anne dagg's name was the first thing that came up,

and, really, the only book available was her book.

Anne's book was the only book that you could find

that covered giraffe ecology and biology

and a little bit about management

and wild captive populations.

It's a book that you'd find

on every giraffe keeper's bookshelf.

It's just the Bible to giraffe, really.

Amy: When I was in high school

and I knew I wanted to be a giraffe keeper... 1 loved them...

I read her first book.

And it was really hard to get through at 15,

but I did it, and I highlighted it, and I took notes,

and I memorized every little piece

of giraffe information I could find.

And working in this field, there was nothing else

really coming out for a really long time.

I had worked in the field for over ten years

and most of what we relied on still

was Anne's book from so long ago.

Anne: About 30 years passed

when I really didn't have any contact with giraffe.

I couldn't afford to go to Africa

because I didn't have any research money

because I never could get a position

that allowed me to teach

or earn any reasonable salary.

I guess it just closed off one happy part of me.

As the years went on, I kept on writing things

and I wrote many scientific books on animals,

but much of the rest of my life was fighting,

trying to get fairness for women.

I wrote various feminist books

and decided to spend a lot of my energy

trying to expose the sexism in universities across Canada.

I got together with other women and we formed committees

and we did all sorts of things for about 20 years,

just worked at it all the time.

I'm not sure that we made that much progress,

but it felt good to complain.

Eventually, I wrote this book called pursuing giraffe.

So, this was just looking back at the year I spent in Africa

and everything that happened.

Amy: She published pursuing giraffe and I thought,

"oh! Something new from Anne!"

You know, it was this amazing opportunity

to learn more about this person,

this young woman who did this amazing, brave thing.

Her contribution so many years later was still so great.

But in this field where we needed that expertise

and we used it every day, we didn't know her.

Fred: Anne's name is not known in the public.

Part of it is because

she just didn't have the PR media behind her.

She had herself

and she was doing her science, and that's it.

And part of it is people are infatuated

with chimpanzees because they can see themselves in them.

Giraffe... everyone likes,

but they just don't have their heartstrings pulled

and they just can't identify with them.

There is this kind of odd paradox

that people love giraffes and yet somehow,

they don't receive that global attention

in a way that primates or elephants do.

There may be a sort of element of alienness.

Giraffes are kind of other, aren't they?

They're about as likely as a unicorn.

They're so different from us.

Andy: For whatever reason,

the giraffe doesn't attract the attention that it deserves,

and that's the reason

why I think Anne has slipped under the radar.

Amy: I was the little girl

that that woman was a hero for,

and so it was really important to me

that we be able to find her.

And we were putting together our conference and we thought,

"wouldn't that be amazing

"if we could find this woman who wrote this text,

"and we could bring her back into the fold

"and see what she's doing and see what she's about."

We were searching for Anne

because we really didn't know if she was still alive or...

We all worked together to track down information

about how we could contact her,

and we sent her an email and just said,

"we'd love to have you here

"and we'd like to present you with this award.”

I had no idea giraffe even had conferences

because I'd been cut off from the subject for so many years.

When Amy got a hold of me,

I was stunned and incredibly excited to be invited

and said, "yes, yes, yes, I want to come."

It's huge! I mean, it's huge!

Yeah.

Hi Anne, I'm Dana. Welcome!

Look at that, eh?

Excellence in giraffe science award.

"You authored 20 books,

"countless trailblazing scientific papers,

"and inspiration for many."

You didn't know your mother was so clever!

I didn't, no, no.

Her love of giraffe, which had always been there,

maybe lying dormant, suddenly came alive again.

And being invited to conferences like this,

suddenly getting awards,

where she was being told you inspired all these people,

this piece of her life that seemed a long time ago

all came back, bubbled up to the surface,

and it was just so exciting for her

and it was just overwhelming.

Gareth: The queue to meet her

was like queuing up to meet a beatle.

Everybody wanted to see her. I took my book

that I bought when I was 17 years old

to the conference so she could sign it for me.

I confess to being a shameless autograph hunter

because I brought my book with me that I've had for years.

Zoe: I was super excited to meet her,

a little bit intimidated.

But what struck me the most is how interested she was

in everybody else's work. She was really passionate about

listening to what you were doing with giraffes

and she just genuinely wanted to know more.

David: Even though she thought that she was forgotten,

she was very well known in the giraffe community.

She was a legend, she was literally our Jane goodall,

and she founded the study of giraffe biology.

Isn't that good? Some more? Yeah.

Chew that one and then you can have... oh, okay.

Fred: To me, having a pioneer at a meeting like this,

a figurehead who's published everything...

You won't get a giraffe article out there

unless you cite Anne dagg...

Seeing her in person works wonders for students

and zookeepers to interact with her.

Anne: This was just magic

to find you had a whole community of people

that loved animals as you did.

And they all seemed to know me

because of the book I'd written and it was one happy conference.

It was... it was wonderful.

Amy: It was the beginning of, I guess, this chapter,

which, I think,

is one of the things I'm most proud of in my career,

that I have the great privilege

of being part of a group of women

that brought her back to this field.

John: Before I present Anne with the award,

I'd just like to say that

I feel sometimes increasingly isolated in a world

where the definition of wildness is changing.

That I'm not alone

in clinging onto the idea of a real wild world.

So, with that,

I'd like to invite you to come up to the stage, Anne.

Anne: I always wanted to go back to Africa and see giraffe,

but I would have thought it very unlikely.

I had no contact there at all.

Lisa: I learned that she hadn't been back to Africa

and I told her that I would be coming back.

If she wanted to come, she was more than welcome.

We will be travelling

and seeing giraffe in many different situations,

please come, and eventually, she said yes.

Anne: When you think that I haven't been to Africa

for half a century, it's a scary thought.

Hi. Oh, it's so good to be here.

Welcome back to Africa.

It has been a long time.

Lisa: Hi, how are you? Oh, welcome, welcome, welcome.

Oh.

Oh, it's so good to be here.

When I was in Africa in the early days,

60 years ago, it never crossed my mind

that there wouldn't be giraffe forever in Africa.

It just... It just was inconceivable.

I thought I could study them all the rest of my life

and there'd be still equal numbers.

Mr. Matthew: "April 4, 1974.

"Dear Annie, do you still have the film

"that you made of the Fleur de lys giraffes?

"Sad to say, those that are left

"have to put up with an air polluted

"with automobile exhaust,

"the reek of hot asphalt from the black top highways

"that now cut through Fleur de lys in all directions.

"How lucky we were

"to know it all before this development took place.

Anne: The situation now is appalling.

Everyone is worried about the elephants,

but no one has been worried about the giraffe at all,

whose numbers are far less.

John: In 1998, there were an estimated 28,000

reticulated giraffes throughout their range.

And we think that there are certainly

no more than 5,000 left.

That's greater than an 80% decline in 15 years.

80% in 15 years is a crash.

You know, that's a population

that is plummeting towards extinction.

And of course, that's happening across Africa.

There's been a 30 or 40% decline

in the total giraffe population in Africa.

Anne: They're being killed for bush meat all the time.

The reticulated giraffe population

is near 12.5 million people that have no homes.

They've been chased out by war.

And if they saw a giraffe, you can reason,

"well, you know, I'm really hungry,

"and my children are hungry, why don't we just kill it?"

I mean, you can just see that happening.

John: That's quite different, isn't it?

When people are eating wild animals, it might be illegal,

it might be undesirable,

it might ultimately lead to the extinction

of some of the creatures that I care about

and a lot of other people care about.

But if somebody's starving, if all their livestock have died...

The goats, the sheep, the cattle,

if even the camels have died...

It's very hard to blame people who are starving.

We got a call because a giraffe had been hit in the night.

So, by the time we got there, as the sun was rising,

people were gathering from all directions

with sacks and machetes

because this was a bonanza for the local people.

But there were so many people trying to get hold of this meat

that there was not a scrap left.

Does it remind you

of the giraffe that was shot by the ranger at...

Oh yeah, yeah, for sure.

What they did was, for example, the neck,

they just cut it into a lot of bits

and people were biking away with a roll of neck.

When the female giraffe was cut up,

out sort of slithered this beautiful little foetus.

You know, it meant that, effectively,

we lost two giraffes that day instead of one.

Yeah. Poor little thing.

Oh, that is so sad.

Yeah, yeah.

Anne: Jacob leaidura has lived in this area all his life.

When he was born, there were a lot more giraffe,

so he's seen a lot of them being wiped out.

With John, the two work in tandem,

and together, they're trying to figure out

how to keep giraffe alive.

Right.

Anne: Right now, are you living just outside the reserve or...

Jacob: Oh, yes, yeah.

And you'd like that if you could stay there?

Oh, yes. Water willing, eh?

Yes. Lots of rain.

And these are sheep and cattle mostly?

Oh, yes.

Anne: It's absolutely essential that the children of Africa

be really involved in their heritage

and in all the animals living in their area.

Do you know why the tongue is so long?

I mean, why would you need a tongue that comes way out?

No, they don't know.

You think you can guess?

Okay, go on.

So that the giraffe can pick leaves.

Right! Very good!

It's their country, it's their giraffe,

it's they who are going to be either

not having them or having them.

What I want to know is,

which animal do you think is the most dangerous predator

of the giraffe?

Lion.

Interpreter: The lion, miss. John: Lion.

Interpreter: Yes?

Leopard. Leopard.

The most dangerous predator of the giraffe

is the one that you see when you go to the bathroom

and you look in the mirror.

It's the human being.

Anne: If you can get the young people in the tribal areas,

then that's going to be the difference.

A lot of them have never seen a giraffe.

It seems unbelievable that they live right among them,

but they've never seen a giraffe.

Francois: To bring down a giraffe is really dangerous,

and I always use the same capture team

and the same experienced people,

so that we don't make mistakes.

What we've learned by collaring giraffe, in my view,

completely changed the way we are thinking about giraffe.

Every time, she's on the ground, the vet will take blood samples

and hair samples and internal parasites, external parasites,

even faecal samples,

and we'll try and collect as much as possible.

We always cover the eyes

and we'll cover the ears,

so the least amount of stress is added to the process.

I'm the youngest

giraffe scientist with active boots on the ground,

and I think Anne would be the oldest giraffe scientist

living and still pitching ideas.

He's doing all the cutting-edge research, which is so cool.

And I guess most of it, he just completed his phd,

so this is really exciting.

My first objective was just to design a GPS collar

that will fit, that is not harming the animal

or influencing its natural behaviour.

My first collars only collected every four hours.

This ear tag just behind the ear

can do it every five minutes and go two years longer.

What we're doing now is I would use a little drone,

type in the coordinates where the giraffe is.

I send the drone

to take aerial footage of the giraffe, see if she's fine...

Anne: Can you do this now?

Francois: Yes.

The giraffe showed and identified

the areas they prefer, so I could go and evaluate that area,

compared to the areas they don't prefer.

Right.

And what is their habitat qualities

and how we can maintain or sustain that

in management principles.

We can forget about saving giraffe

if we don't protect the habitat they live in.

Exactly.

Jason pootoolal works at the African lion safari.

We've become good buddies

because we're so close and I can drive over there

and see the giraffe.

When Jason said they had a baby giraffe, it was exciting

because it had been done with artificial insemination,

and this was one of the few times in the world

that it had been done, and it was done in Canada.

Hey, hey! Surprise, surprise!

Nice to see you!

So, Mara, the one with the head up, is the bigger sister.

So, she's generally gentle with the other one.

And Sahara's the little sister, so you can see she fights dirty.

She always goes for the legs.

I mean, I've never really seen female giraffes spar.

Anne: That's fantastic.

That's not even in the literature.

You've got to get it in there. Hi.

One more? Oh, you must be so full.

Jason: Right now, there's a giraffe pregnant

with an artificially inseminated embryo,

and so we're going to be able to take a look

and see how that baby is developing.

Back!

Thank you.

Anne: She's not worried, is she?

Jason: No, she does this quite often.

Anne: All the time? Yep.

That's one long sleeve.

I've got a far way to go.

It's a bit of a search to find it.

How old is the baby?

168 days, I believe. Wow.

So, there's the heart beating there.

Oh, oh, you can see it beating!

The heart is one of the early things to develop.

So, even when it's kind of this amorphous shape of life,

you can see a little heart beating.

So, there, the neck, you can see it's curling down.

Oh, yeah, right.

And so, the literature always said that

the giraffes probably develop like this

later in their gestation, but we were able to see they get...

All the tell-tale signs of a giraffe happen very early.

And you can see the brain there developing.

Oh, that's amazing! Wow.

And you do this just to make sure everything's okay?

Exactly, yes, and not only that,

because this is the only herd of giraffe

that's followed this way, we're able to take measurements

and actually track how the giraffe grows.

So, not just al versus natural,

like it's just to study giraffe reproduction in general.

These animals that we have now

are being artificially inseminated

with genetic material that has been stored for years

and years in cryo-tanks. It gives us the hope

that these animals that are no longer with us

are able to still contribute to a larger genetic population.

That's janga. He's special because he's the first giraffe

conceived using frozen semen.

Our tank's now full of genetic material

that we're going to be able to use as long as we possibly need.

Oh. Oh.

Getting back into the giraffe community

really changed my life.

I met all sorts of people that I can now email with all the time

and because I met all these people,

when Cambridge university press wanted to have a new,

updated giraffe book,

now I knew individuals working in all these areas.

I could talk to them,

find out what they thought were the important papers,

and that enabled me to write a new book

on the science of giraffes.

Fred: She had put together

all the information available for her first book.

Then, more and more information began to pile up

and she put it into her second book,

and some of the ideas were completely different.

And even though most scientists will tell you,

"oh yeah, I'll change my mind any day with new information,”

secretly, they won't. She did.

She publicly said, "you know, if the new information says

"that the old had a misinterpretation,

"then the new is good.”

Andy: She had the humility to rewrite it,

stand up and say that she had made mistakes

and assumptions, but this was early days.

There's an awful lot of things that we found out subsequently.

But not everyone is so humble to stand up and admit

to the failures or admit to the mistakes.

And she's rewritten the book and the book's tripled in size

and it's far more comprehensive now than it was.

Fred: One of the key examples was, in the earlier work,

they thought giraffe were just randomly wondering around,

loose associations, flexible herds,

mothers and their calves don't have strong relationships.

Then, one of my first studies was actually they have friends.

They do hang around not randomly,

and mothers and adult daughters can stay together,

and that was a key finding duplicated at a few sites.

So, the second book really emphasizes those social networks

and the friendships and, yep,

giraffe are actually a lot more complicated than we think.

Anne: This is very interesting. This is how science works.

You do your best and then you find out something changes

and then you change your mind

and this is what's so wonderful about it.

Mr. Matthew: "January, 1985.

"Dear Anne, in a few months, 28 years will have passed

"since you set foot on the farm, Fleur de lys."

"All that hot, dry day, I had been in nelspruit..."

"And was returning to the farm late at night.

"As I had come over the hill at bushbuck Ridge,

"ll could see there was a big field fire raging

"in the direction of Fleur de lys, and within a mile or so,

"I found a score of our farm labourers

"busily engaged in fighting the fire.

"Just at that moment, farney, our young bookkeeper,

"drove up in his small and very much used car,

"stuck his head out of the window and said,

"" Mr. Matt, I have your Canadian student with me, '

"as though that explained everything.

"And so, began our long friendship

and the sharing of many hours of giraffe watching

"on Fleur de lys. Your oom, Alex."

Anne: I knew him until he died at the age of 96,

so instead of calling him "Mr. Matthew,”

later on, I would call him "oom Alex". "Oom" is uncle.

At the end, he said, "you're my fourth daughter”.

He was one of the best people I ever met.

See the buildings? In the trees?

Straight ahead, slightly to the right.

Anne: Oh. Mary: Oh, okay.

Anne: And look at these trees.

This is completely different. There were no trees.

Ernest: You'll probably recognize it as we get...

Yeah, because I usually went right to the giraffe

and didn't pause.

Mary: So, look over there, ma. Huh? Can you see?

Yeah, the office reception.

The roof's not thatched anymore, but it's the same building.

Mary: Yep. You can see the five pillars.

Anne: Oh, it's exactly the same!

Ernest: You stopped on this road here.

Camelo was parked right where we are now.

Let's get out and have a look.

Mary: Yeah. Oh, absolutely.

Wow.

John: Let's go around this way and have a look.

Oh.

Nice to be back here?

Oh...

Alex, his office would have been on the right-hand side.

Anne: This would be Mr. Matthew's. Yeah, that's right.

That's right, and I remember...

Incredible.

Oh. It brings back so many memories.

It's pretty amazing, eh?

Oh, dear.

So, the front door...

This is the bedroom, we thought might have been your bedroom.

And there's a tree, you said you had...

And that's the big tree that might have had the mamba?

This is it.

This is my room, then.

John: It took her a while to work it all out, you know,

which was her room, where she got up in the morning

to retrieve the cup of tea that Mr. Matthew had left for her.

In all of this changed landscape,

so much is different, but every now and then,

we've stumbled across little pools of the past,

little scenes,

which are immediately recognizable from long ago.

When we saw our first giraffe at Fleur de lys

in the place where it all began for her,

they were almost invisible because they blended in so well

into the landscape, and Anne spotted them very quickly.

Anne: See there? See there?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You can see them...

Look at their eyes. Mary: Yeah, I see them.

Anne: Can you see his eyelashes, John?

John: Yeah.

Those giraffes were almost certainly

direct descendants of the animals that she had studied.

Anne: Aren't they amazing?

John: Hey, look at this,

bull's come out from behind the tree.

Anne: Oh, look at that one! Oh.

John: Wow, look at that.

Anne: He's huge.

Mr. Matthew: "Sept 8, 1990.

"Dear Anne, Fleur de lys,

"on which you studied your favourite animal,

"has been sub-divided and sold off as 'game farms".

"Giraffe are being sold at about 2500 rand.

"How lucky you were to see the lowveld when you did.

"Your oom Alex."

We know that there are so many fewer giraffe now around

than there were in my day.

Do you think they'll disappear entirely?

Or is there hope for them?

To be very honest, without human interference,

I don't think they're going to make it.

It doesn't matter the species or the mammal,

there's no example that we as humans can claim

where we interfered enough

that it was a success.

Wow.

Francois: We need to look at how to preserve

the last few little habitats that are still left

and then giraffe would be saved.

So, we need more people like you to carry on with what you did,

we need more people to become involved.

If we are not going to save giraffe,

me and you and people that listen to this,

if we don't save giraffe, who is going to do it?

Anne: Yeah.

Young Anne: "May 31, 1957.

"Dear mommy, I have sold camelo for the grand sum of £137

"to a student who wants a rough-tough car

"to take him up to Nairobi.

"I showed him the immortal giraffe film,

"which begins with camelo arriving at the lowveld.

"This was to add a human or car interest

"in case the rest of the film was too exclusively giraffe,

"if that is possible.

"Very much love, Anne of the bushveld.

Mary: "May 27th, 1957."

Anne: So, that's just after I left I guess.

Yes, yes, just after you left, and it's from oom Alex.

So he says, "dear Anne..."

Mr. Matthews: "All I wish to tell you now

"is how much I appreciate how much you have done for me

"and for everyone at Fleur de lys.

"Li hardly need say that so long as I am at Fleur de lys,

"Fleur de lys will always be happy and proud

"to be of service to you

"and honoured if you accept its hospitality.”

"Our doors will always be open,

"and I hope the time will come again when you will be there

"and come and go as freely as you choose.”

And here you are, in Fleur de lys.

Yes.

He would be amazed to think of you here tonight, wouldn't he?

I think he would.

Anne: We're going to the march tomorrow,

so we don't how actually that will go.

If we're not shot, I think we might have a nice bon-ami going.

Crowd: Donald Trump has got to go, hey-hey, ho-ho!

Donald Trump has got to go, hey-hey, ho-ho!

Donald Trump has got to go...

Anne: To see a million women and a lot of men

all walking together for the rights of people,

it was just fantastic.

All the women were shouting what they felt.

Women can do anything and we're not going back to the '50s.

A lot of people wouldn't even know what the '50s were like,

where everything was completely masculine.

Now, a lot of women are professors.

We're making huge progress.

Crowd: Yes, we can! Yes, we can!

Anne: We're fighting now and then,

I mean, you just have to take it 'cause you were just one

and you didn't have any friends who felt the same way,

or not many.

And then, when I went on the march, I realized there are...

So many strong, strong people who are not going to take it.

So, I'm really much more hopeful.

There is a future, but it's going to be a hard fight.