Anne Innis Dagg

Anne Innis Dagg (born 1933, in Toronto, Ontario) is a Canadian zoologist, biologist, feminist, and author of numerous books. She has been referred to as "the Jane Goodall of giraffes" and has made a “significant contribution to giraffes worldwide in an unprecedented way.”Dagg traveled to Africa in the mid-1950s to study giraffes out of captivity, making her not only the first scientist to study giraffes in the wild, "but also the first person to study animal behaviour in the wild in Africa"

Anne Innis earned a master's degree in genetics from the University of Toronto. She went alone to Africa in 1956–57 to study the behavior of giraffe. On returning to Canada, she earned a PhD at the University of Waterloo, analyzing and comparing the gaits of giraffe and other large mammals. At the time this university did not hire women in the biology department, so she worked in a program where students did the hiring. Today she works in Independent Studies, an evolution of that Program. Her research produced over 60 refereed scientific papers on such subjects as homosexuality, behavior of mammals, sociobiology, feminism, sexism at universities, and the rights of animals. She has also written 20 books and over 100 articles on these topics.

Anne Innis’ parents were both academics, her father, Harold Innis, an eminent professor at the University of Toronto and her mother, Mary Quayle Innis, an author of short stories and books of history. Anne Innis married Ian Ralph Dagg (1928-1993) in 1957. He taught at the University of Waterloo’s Physics Department from 1959 to 1993, and served as chair of the department from 1988 to 1993. The marriage produced three children, Hugh, Ian and Mary, and ended with his death.