All About Anne
Anne was born on January 25th, 1933 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
In 2018, an award-winning documentary detailing Anne’s life was released, The Woman Who Loves Giraffes, directed by Alison Reid.
“Zoologist Anne Innis Dagg...offered a groundbreaking survey of the phenomenon [homosexual behaviour] among mammals in 1984 that was light-years ahead of her contemporaries…”.
- Author Bruce Bagemihl, Biological Exuberance (1999)
Anne was born left handed. In kindergarten her left hand was tied behind her back to force her to use her right. Teachers eventually gave up trying to “retrain” her. This distraction slowed her down - she had to repeat kindergarten - but it didn’t keep her down. She caught up a few years later skipping a grade and was back up to speed with her classmates.
Anne's favourite sandwich is peanut butter and lettuce on whole wheat bread. Her favourite drink is milk with Quik chocolate flavouring.
Anne wrote Giraffe: Its Biology, Behaviour and Biology, co-authored by Bristol Foster. It is widely considered by scientists, zookeepers and giraffe enthusiasts to be the “Bible” of giraffe.
In 1956, Anne was the first western researcher (woman or man) to study wild giraffe in South Africa.
Anne has always been a feminist by instinct. She wrote: The Feminine Gaze,
MisEducation: Women and Canadian Universities,
The Fifty Per Cent Solution: Why Should Women Pay for Men's Culture? and
Harems and Other Horrors: Sexual Bias in Behavioral Biology.
Rumoli and Scrabble were favourites in the Dagg family. Anne would adjust the rules of Scrabble so that any animal word was double the points!
Anne has authored 23 books and published over 60 refereed scientific papers.
Anne has been recognized twice by the Canadian Museum of Nature, the first in 1975 and again in 2018.
As a toddler, Anne saw her first giraffe at the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago which began her love affair with the world’s tallest animal.
In 2019 Anne was appointed to the Order of Canada, one of our country’s highest honours. Presented by the Governor General, the Order honours people whose service shapes our society, whose innovations ignite our imaginations, and whose compassion unites our communities.
Growing up Anne went to the local library determined she would read all the books starting at the letter “A”. She made it as far as letter “L”.
On her trip to East Africa in early 2020, Anne witnessed the locust swarms that were infesting the area - numbered in the hundreds of billions. Numbers that large hadn’t been seen in 70 years - just a couple of years before Anne’s first trip to Africa in 1956.
Anne’s children were not allowed to watch shows that she felt were too violent or sexist. For example, Bugs Bunny or Charlie’s Angels. She posted a list of shows that were not permitted in the tv room.