Delia Owens

Owens grew up in rural Georgia in the 1950s.[8][9] She and her then-husband, Mark Owens, were students in biology at the University of Georgia. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in zoology from the University of Georgia and a Ph.D. in Animal Behavior from the University of California, Davis.[10] In their early 20's, working on a shoestring, they self funded a research expedition in Deception Valley in the Kalahari Desert in Botswana in 1974. The area had had virtually no outside human contact, and many of the area's predators had little fear of people. The Owens initially concentrated their research on the social lives of brown hyenas. The work caught the attention of the scientific community, and they soon were funded by the National Geographic Society, the Frankfurt Zoological Society and others, afterwhich they expanded their work into studying lions and promoting conservation. Their popular book, Cry of the Kalahari, published in 1984, was a New York Times #1 bestseller. Since completing her PhD in Biology Delia has published her studies of African wildlife behavioral ecology in professional journals, including Nature, the Journal of Mammalogy, Animal Behaviour, and the African Journal of Ecology. She has also contributed articles to Natural History and International Wildlife aimed at a wider audience. See more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delia_Owens#:~:text=Delia%20Owens%20(born%20ca.,for%20more%20than%20a%20year.