Johann Büttikofer

Dr. Johann Büttikofer (9 August 1850 – 24 June 1927) was a Swiss zoologist. Büttikofer was born in Ranflüh (part of Rüderswil, Canton of Bern) in the Emmental. He is best known for his two zoological expeditions to the Republic of Liberia (1879 to 1882 and 1886 to 1887) and resulting publications; from 1897 to 1924 he was the Director of the Blijdorp Zoological Garden in Rotterdam. After his retirement he settled in Bern, Switzerland. For his extensive contributions to the knowledge of Liberian fauna he is regarded as the 'Father of Liberian Natural History'.

Johann Büttikofer learned his love of nature from his father Jakob, who was a school teacher in his native Ranflüh. He attended village school until the age of 16 and then studied French for one year, after which he attended a teacher training college in Hofwil until the age of 20. He taught school in Graswil, Switzerland for six years, hunted, began to learn taxidermy, read travel accounts, and longed to visit the tropics. He left teaching to become a preparator at the Natural History Museum of Bern where he attended lectures by Prof. Theophil Studer, who had just returned from travelling around the world.

In 1878, Prof. Ludwig Rütimeyer of Basel recommended him to become an assistant to Dr. Hermann Schlegel, the director of the Royal Museum of Natural History (Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie, now Naturalis Biodiversity Center) in Leiden, the Netherlands. He became an understudy of Schlegel, who sought to expand the museum's role in understanding animal life in Western Africa. Büttikofer joined Dr. Schlegel on a study trip to the major museums of Germany and Austria.

Recognizing Büttikofer's capabilities and potential, Schlegel proposed sending him on a six-year expedition to Africa to collect zoological specimens from several largely unexplored forest regions, specifically Liberia, the Ivory Coast, the Gold Coast, Cameroon and Gabon. Liberia was selected as the first destination, principally because the expedition had been offered free transportation on the ships of the Rotterdam trading firm Hendrik Muller & Co. which had several trading factories along the Liberian coast. Two zoological expeditions to Liberia were carried out between November 1879 - April 1882 and November 1886 - June 1887; the great success of the Liberia expeditions, the death of Dr. Schlegel, and Buttikofer's own health considerations caused the other initially planned destinations to be dropped.

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