Sadly, yesterday marked the passing of another renowned pioneer in the field of primatology: Biruté Galdikas, who studied the orangutans of Borneo in their natural habitat. With more than 50 years of experience in the field in Indonesia, she was the world’s foremost authority on orangutans. Galdikas’s death follows the passing of Jane Goodall in October 2025, who was widely recognized for her life’s work studying chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Gombe National Park.
According to Orangutan Foundation International, Galdikas had decided by second grade that she wanted to dedicate her life to being an explorer. This decision came after her initial interest in primates was sparked when she checked out her first library book, Curious George, at the age of six, and felt inspired by the man in the yellow hat and his mischievous monkey. Galdikas earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology and zoology in 1966 and her master’s degree in anthropology in 1969 at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).
An All-Women Trio of Trailblazing Scientists
At UCLA, Galdikas met Kenyan anthropologist Dr. Louis Leakey, with whom she passionately communicated her desire to study orangutans. After three years, Dr. Leakey finally secured the funding for Galdikas’ orangutan studies, as he had previously done with both Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey for their respective studies on chimpanzees and mountain gorillas. In the years to follow, this all-women trio of trailblazing scientists would become the foremost primatologists specializing in great apes in the world, eventually known as the “Trimates.”
Following a similar pattern of resistance and doubt that both Goodall and Fossey initially faced before embarking on their field excursions as women, many (including her professors) told Galdikas that she had pursued an impossible task and would fail at studying orangutans in the wild, as they were too elusive, living almost entirely in inaccessible terrain composed largely of deep swamps and dense rainforests.
Nevertheless, refusing to take “no” for an answer, Galdikas persevered; she first began her field studies at the Tanjung Puting Reserve in Indonesian Borneo. At that time, this location was extremely isolated; no telephones, roads, electricity, or regular mail service existed on-site. Despite the challenges and criticism, her motivation ultimately paid off; she collected invaluable data on wild orangutans, including documenting the long orangutan birth interval (an average of 7.7 years) for the first time, describing their social organization and mating systems, and recording their consumption of over 400 different types of food. Four years later, she wrote the cover article for National Geographic Magazine, bringing orangutans widespread international public attention for the very first time. After spending 40 years in Tanjung Puting, now a national park, Galdikas impressively conducted the longest continuous study by one principal investigator of any wild mammal in the world. Altogether, throughout her lifetime, Galdikas helped return 500 orangutans to the wild and conducted over 150,000 hours of observations on them.
Dr. Galdikas and her colleagues set up Orangutan Foundation International (OFI) in 1986 with its home base in Los Angeles, California, which eventually grew into a network of sister organizations established in Australia, Indonesia, and the United Kingdom to support work with orangutans on a global scale. After serving as Senior Advisor on orangutan issues to Indonesia’s Ministry of Forestry, in 1997, she won the prestigious “Kalpataru” award, the highest honor given by the Republic of Indonesia for outstanding environmental leadership. According to OFI, she is the only person of non-Indonesian birth and one of the first women to be recognized by the Indonesian government for this award.
The Legacies of Galdikas, Goodall, and Fossey
The works of Galdikas, Goodall, and Fossey not only helped the world better understand the behavioral ecology of great apes but also helped inspire humans everywhere to preserve their rapidly diminishing natural habitats, combat threats like poaching, and protect the peoples and cultures that flourish in these environments. They each played a major role in helping humans around the world feel a more tangible, emotional connection to our non-human cousins, while also pointing out the differences between each ape and highlighting what makes them so “great.”
Each scientist of the “Trimates” – despite having to forcibly overcome obstacles that women faced during a time that denied them many personal freedoms and opportunities – individually revolutionized the field of primatology by pioneering long-term, immersive field studies that required gaining the trust of the animals to get close enough to observe them, focusing on learning their individual personalities and social structures with the goal of long-term conservation. They replaced detached observation with intimate, empathetic, and often, participant-observation methods, fundamentally altering our understanding of apes and human evolution on a collective level by viewing them as sentient individuals first.
As such, we at Born Free USA thank Dr. Galdikas, Dr. Goodall, and Dr. Fossey for doing what many deemed the impossible – and succeeding. Not in spite of all being women, but because of it. Thank you to the “Trimates” for showing future generations what is possible.
Keep Wildlife in the Wild,
Devan
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