Cynthia Moss

Cynthia Moss (born 1940 in Ossining, New York) is an American conservationist, wildlife researcher and writer, who specializes in African elephant family structure, life cycle, and behavior.^[1][2] She is director of the Amboseli Elephant Research Project in Kenya, where she has studied the same population of elephants for over 40 years, and is Program Director and Trustee for the Amboseli Trust for Elephants (ATE).^[3]

Life and work

Moss graduated at Smith College in Massachusetts in 1962, majoring in philosophy. She worked as a reporter for Newsweek, specializing in theater and dramatic arts.

While visiting Lake Manyara National Park in Tanzania 1967, she met leading elephant researcher Dr. Iain Douglas-Hamilton. The following year she quit her job at Newsweek and moved to Africa to become a research assistant for Douglas-Hamilton. In 1972 she started the Amboseli Elephant Research Project at Amboseli National Park in Kenya.

Moss is most famous for her study of Echo, an elephant matriarch who has been the subject of several books and documentaries.

Awards

• 2001 MacArthur Fellows Program

Works

Publications

• Moss, Cynthia J.; Croze, Harvey; Lee, Phyllis C., eds. (2011). The Amboseli Elephants: A Long-Term Perspective on a Long-Lived Mammal. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226542232.
• Moss, Cynthia (2000). Elephant Memories: Thirteen Years in the Life of an Elephant Family: with a new afterword (Univ. of Chicago Press ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-54237-9.
• Pringle, Laurence (1997). Elephant Woman: Cynthia Moss Explores the World of Elephants. Photographs by Cynthia Moss (1st ed.). New York: Atheneum Books. ISBN 978-0-689-80142-6.
• Moss, Cynthia (1997). Little Big Ears: The Story of Ely. Photographs by Martyn Colbeck. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 9780689800313.
• Moss, Cynthia (1994) [1992]. Echo of the Elephants: The Story of an Elephant Family. Photographs by Martyn Colbeck. Quill. ISBN 0688135137.
• Moss, Cynthia (1976). Portraits in the Wild: Animal Behavior in East Africa (2. impression. ed.). London: Hamilton. ISBN 978-0-241-02453-9.

Featured in documentaries by PBS Thirteen/WNET, HBO and BBC-TV

• An Apology to Elephants (2013) – HBO
• Echo: An Elephant to Remember (2010) – PBS, Nature
• Echo and Other Elephants (2008) – BBC, David Attenborough
• Echo of the Elephants (2005) – PBS, Nature

See also

• Ethology
• Elephant cognition

References

1. Robinson, Simon. "Kenya's Elephant Team". Time magazine. February 28th, 2000.
2. Holloway, M. (1994) Profile: Cynthia Moss – On the Trail of Wild Elephants, Scientific American 271(6), 48-50.
3. "Who we are". Amboseli Trust for Elephants. Retrieved 24 March 2013.

External links

• Cynthia Moss, profile — Amboseli Trust for Elephants
• Cynthia Moss, director of the Amboseli Elephant Research Project in Kenya — Elephant Encyclopedia