Canadian primatologist of Lithuanian heritage who launched a study, the
Orangutan Research and Conservation Project, in Borneo's Tanjung Puting
National Park in 1971. She was the first scientist to observe
orangutans eating meat, to watch a wild female give birth in a tree,
and to learn that male orangutans occasionally rape females. The
difficulties of her studies of orangutans were multiplied by the fact
that they are solitary creatures. "Compiling data on the animals was
considerably tougher for Birute than for me,"
Jane Goodall once said.
"Chimps are very sociable. It might take her a year to see what I can
observe in one lucky day."