The Mountain Gorilla: Ecology and Behavior (Hardcover with Dust Jacket, Very Good)

Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1965. Full grey cloth hardcover with metalic green lettering on the spine. Jacket has been price-clipped and there is light wear at the edges and a couple of small closed tears at the top of the spine. Overall a EXCELLENT book in a VERY GOOD PLUS pictorial dust jacket. Good gift. George Beals Schaller (born 1933 Berlin, Germany) is a mammalogist, naturalist, conservationist and author, and is recognized by many as the world's preeminent field biologist, studying wildlife throughout Africa, Asia and South America. Growing up in Germany, Schaller moved to Missouri as a teen. He is now the director for science for the Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society. 1959: "Year of the Gorilla" Schaller is perhaps best known for his landmark field research, begun in 1959, on the mountain gorillas (Gorilla gorilla beringe) of the Virunga Volcanoes in Central Africa. Little was known about the life of gorillas in the wild until the publication of The Mountain Gorilla: Ecology and Behavior in 1963 that first revealed to the general public just how profoundly intelligent and gentle gorillas really are, contrary to then-common beliefs. Schaller has more recently recounted his epic two year study in The Year of the Gorilla, which also provides a broader historical perspective on the efforts to save one of mankind's nearest relatives from the brink of extinction. The famed American zoologist, Dian Fossey, with assistance from the National Geographic and Louis Leakey, followed Schaller's groundbreaking field research on mountain gorillas in the Virungas. Schaller and Fossey were instrumental in dispelling the public perception of gorillas as brutes, by demonstrably establishing the deep compassion and social intelligence evident among gorillas, and how very closely their behavior parallels that of humans. "No one who looks into a gorilla's eyes - intelligent, gentle, vulnerable - can remain unchanged, for the gap between ape and human vanishes; we know that the gorilla still lives within us. Do gorillas also recognize this ancient connection?" Schaller later mused, when interviewed by National Geographic. . Third Impression. Full Cloth. Near Fine/Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Hardcover.