Cynthia Moss (born 1940 in Ossining, New York) is an American conservationist, wildlife researcher and writer, who specialises in elephant behaviour. She has published several books including Portraits in the Wild: Animal Behaviour in East Africa (Hamish Hamilton 1979).
Moss graduated at Smith College in Massachusetts in 1962, majoring in philosophy. She worked as a reporter for Newsweek, specialising in theatre and the dramatic arts.
However, while visiting Lake Manyara National Park in Tanzania 1967, she met leading elephant researcher Dr. Iain Douglas-Hamilton in Tanzania. The following year she quit her job at Newsweek to work with Douglas-Hamilton and in 1972, she started the now famous Amboseli Elephant Research Project at Amboseli National Park in Kenya.
Portraits in the Wild: Animal Behavior in East Africa, Hamilton, 1976, ISBN 9780241024539
Elephant Memories: Thirteen Years in the Life of an Elephant Family, University of Chicago Press, 2000, ISBN 9780226542379
Elephant woman: Cynthia Moss explores the world of elephants, Authors Laurence P. Pringle, Illustrated Cynthia Moss, Atheneum Books, 1997, ISBN 9780689801426