Galdikas thus become the third of a trio of women hand-picked by Leakey to study mankind's nearest relatives, the other great apes, in their natural habitat. In 1971, Galdikas and her then husband, photographer Rod Brindamour, arrived in one of the world's few remaining wild places, Tanjung Puting Reserve, in Indonesian Borneo. Orangutans comprise an exceedingly intelligent great ape genus native to Malaysia and Indonesia, who have long arms and reddish, sometimes brown, hair. It was there, as a graduate student, she first met famed Kenyan paleontologist Louis Leakey and expressed her desire to study orangutans in their natural habitats.ĭetermined to study and understand the world of the elusive 'red ape', Galdikas convinced Leakey to help orchestrate her endeavor, despite his initial reservations. In 1966, Galdikas earned her bachelor's degrees in psychology and zoology from the University of British Columbia and the University of California, Los Angeles, her master's degree in anthropology from UCLA in 1969 and her doctorate in anthropology, also from UCLA, in 1978. In college she studied psychology and biology. She later became a naturalized Canadian and grew up in Toronto, Canada. Galdikas was born in Germany to Lithuanian parents.
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