During his years at the Field, she assisted her husband in the creation of his groundbreaking Four Seasons of the Virginia Deer dioramas, and joined him on a 1906-07 collecting expedition to Africa.

Akeley later joined the American Museum of Natural History in New York where he continued his taxidermy work and conceived the great Africa Hall.

Back in New York, Carl Akeley spent his time raising money for the museum, sculpting models for his dioramas, and becoming better acquainted with Mary Lenore Jobe (1878–1966), a former debutante and Bryn Mawr graduate who had become an African explorer and ethnographer.

[9] Both Bodry-Sanders and Kirk suggest that Delia's obsession with the monkey, and increasing isolation from the outside world, contributed to the deterioration of the Akeley marriage, and an acrimonious divorce occurred in 1923.

[citation needed] In 1924, after her divorce, Delia continued to travel widely in Africa leading her own expeditions and concentrating more on the ethnography of the more reclusive tribes such as the Forest People pygmies.

[citation needed] Her autobiographical works include: She was one of the first authors to write a non-anthropomorphic but psychologically insightful biography of another primate: Together with Christina Dodwell, Mary Kingsley, Florence Baker, and Alexine Tinne, she was one of the five subjects of a book by Margo McLoone: Delia Akeley is included as a subject in a book on women explorers: