By Clyde Noel
Town Crier Correspondent
Forty years ago, the world knew very little about chimpanzees, but thanks to Jane Goodall, we now know they are almost human and, sadly, almost extinct. While we are human beings, Goodall calls them chimpanzee beings.
“Chimpanzees have given me so much. The long hours spent with them in the forest have enriched my life beyond measure. What I have learned from them has shaped my understanding of human behavior and our place in nature,” Goodall said.
Goodall’s haunting rendition of a chimpanzee woke up the audience at Celebrity Forum Speaker Series engagement April 6 at Flint Center.
She explained through a fable how she came to do the work she is famous for. “All the birds gathered for a competition to see who could fly the highest. The eagle soared above all the other birds and appeared to be the winner, when a little jenny wren flew out under the eagle’s wing and went higher,” Goodall related. “We all need our eagles, and every single feather plays its part. You are the feathers on my eagle.”
Goodall’s eagle was Louis Leakey, the famous anthropologist who hired her because of her passion for animals, even though she was just 23 with no academic training. Along with Leakey she went on a trip to Olduvai Gorge in Tanganyika (now Tanzania). It was wild, untouched Africa, overflowing with grazing animals. It was her dream come true.
As Goodall grew up, she read animal books like “Dr. Dolittle;” at the age of 7 she read “The Jungle Book” and “Tarzan.” Goodall always thought that Jane was a real wimp and she would make a much better girlfriend for Tarzan.
In 1960, Goodall, then 26, was sent by Leakey to observe the chimps in Gombe National Park in Tanganyika. They could not get permission for a young woman to go into the park alone, so Goodall chose her mother, who set up a clinic tending to the locals’ medical needs while Goodall ventured into the unknown bush.
Observing the chimps took patience, because it was difficult for her to find them every morning. They had never seen a human being and hid from her. After a couple of months, a graybeard chimp came to accept her presence. She watched as he used a blade of grass to poke into a termite mound and withdrew it full of juicy termites. Goodall witnessed that chimps had used an object as a tool to get food. Before her discovery, scientists thought only humans made tools.
Goodall pointed out that chimps have a personalities and emotions, and some express themselves by shaking their fists at competition. The relationship between mothers and their offspring is fascinating. With DNA we can now find out who the fathers are in a family of chimps.
There is a sad part to Goodall’s story. Bush meat is a delicacy and fetches a high price in the local and international market for protein. Mother chimps are shot so their infants can be captured and sold. Some are smuggled out of Africa for entertainment and medical research. Others are sold locally as pets and are abused, taught to smoke and dressed in clothes. An estimated 200,000 chimps are left in the world today.
Goodall spends 300 days a year on the road, lobbying and campaigning for the Jane Goodall Institute for Wildlife Research, Education and Conservation.
The institute provides ongoing support for field research on wild chimpanzees.
“There is hope for the future if we can educate the young. I also have faith in the resilience of nature, the human brain and the indomitable human spirit,” Goodall said. “If we don’t have faith we may as well give up.”
Goodall’s pioneering work, which sheds new light on human evolutionary development, has been acknowledged as one of the world’s great scientific achievements.
Goodall spent a short time speaking about Roots & Shoots, the institute’s environmental and humanitarian program for youth. Its mission is to foster respect and compassion for all living things and to promote understanding of all cultures and beliefs.
