20th-century Zoologist Quotes

Konrad Lorenz
Dian Fossey
Desmond Morris
Hugh B. Cott

If you believe in science you must have a rather strong faith.

One of the most frequent misconceptions which is constantly met in the zoo is the business of regarding the animals as prisoners. This is as false and old-fashioned as if in these days everybody still thought that radio and television sets contained little men who talked, sang and danced inside the sets.

Nearly all of the grand, fundamental discoveries and inventions by which man has lifted himself out of his dark animal past were but repetitions of discoveries and inventions which nature had made eras before our anthropoid ancestor first stood erect and looked up into the sky.

If a tree mouse did not exist and I were told to design one, I could hardly improve on Nature's product - a small, sure-footed beast dressed in the protective colors of fir-tree cones, adapted to a resinous diet, and adapted to moving about in a narrow ecological niche.

Fortunate are those who have learned to see, in the wild things of nature, something to be loved, something to be wondered at, something to be revered, for they will have found the key to a never-failing source of recreation and refreshment.

Hugh B. Cott
Hugh B. Cott
I like the look of frogs, and their outlook, and especially the way they get together in wet places on warm nights and sing about sex.

Get the experience of looking at fresh things. If you watch live animals, you gain clearer insights in shorter time than you would watching dead animals for much longer.

The discoveries of Darwin, himself a magnificent field naturalist, had the remarkable effect of sending the whole zoological world flocking indoors, where they remained hard at work for fifty years or more, and whence they are now beginning to put forth cautious heads again into the open air.

If sex evolved so that your children are not condemned to be just like you, intelligence evolved so that you are not condemned to be just like yourself.

It is a gift when someone can challenge you and open your mind to new ideas.

The scientist who has an independent mind and is able to judge the evidence on its merits rather than in light of prevailing conceptions is the one most likely to be able to realize the potentialities in something really new.

I shall never forget my first encounter with gorillas. Sound preceded sight. Odor preceded sound in the form of an overwhelming, musky-barnyard, humanlike scent. The air was suddenly rent by a high-pitched series of screams followed by the rhythmic rondo of sharp pok-pok chestbeats from a great silverbacked male obscured behind what seemed an impenetrable wall of vegetation.

Dian Fossey
Dian Fossey
Morphological information has provided the greatest single source of data in the formulation and development of the theory of evolution and that even now, when the preponderance of work is experimental, the basis for interpretation in many areas of study remains the form and relationships of structures.

I sense that, without sensitivity to physical pain and pleasure, man would not have known self-interest, and consequently know just or unjust acts. Thus, physical sensitivity and self-interest are the authors of all justice.

For those that endure until spring, existence is reduced to its elegant essentials.

A true bond of friendship is usually only possible between people of roughly equal status. This equality is demonstrated in many indirect ways, but it is reinforced in face-to-face encounters by a matching of the posture of relaxation or alertness.

Desmond Morris
Desmond Morris
I am not going to speculate about the emotions that might be involved in avian infidelity.

What is the use of their unceasing mutations, if they do not change? In sum, the mutations of bacteria and viruses are merely hereditary fluctuations around a median position; a swing to the right, a swing to the left, but no final evolutionary effect.

I am convinced that of all the people on the two sides of the great curtain, the space pilots are the least likely to hate each other. Like the late Erich von Holst, I believe that the tremendous and otherwise not quite explicable public interest in space flight arises from the subconscious realization that it helps to preserve peace. May it continue to do so!

Konrad Lorenz
Konrad Lorenz
Wolves had got under my skin and my mind was in turmoil. I felt nothing but contempt for my fellow man and nothing but admiration for these creatures that had admitted me into their world. Theirs was the world I wanted to stay in. It was safer than mine, more disciplined, and I had a greater sense of belonging.