Jane Goodall
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Because we've always tried to be as unobtrusive as possible, to keep in the background, to let the chimpanzees get on with their lives, not to try and communicate with them, but to be part of the environment that they will ignore, and they can get on with their lives.
Well, I sometimes make the distance call, which chimpanzees at Gombe make when they're calling out from one side of a valley to the other, and they're basically identifying themselves, or perhaps questioning, who's over there?
Well, I can demonstrate it, but I just lean away from the microphone because it's rather loud.
really, is the non-verbal communication patterns, so that chimpanzees will kiss, embrace, hold hands, pat one another on the back, swagger, threaten by shaking their fists, tickle.
And the striking thing here is that not only do the patterns look like so many of ours, but they're used in the same context, so they obviously mean the same kind of thing.
Young English women didn't do that sort of thing.
But I had this great mother who always used to say, Jane, if you want to do something enough and you work hard enough...
and you take advantage of opportunities, you'll get there in the end.
And so when I was told by the British authorities that it wouldn't be appropriate for me to go out completely on my own without some kind of female companion, my mother was the one who offered to come.
Her brother was a surgeon, and he supplied her with all kinds of simple medications like aspirins and Band-Aids and Epsom salts, you know, that kind of thing, something that anybody can administer.
And she set up a little clinic on the shore of the lake for the local fishermen who were living around the park.
And she had so much patience and so much concern and care that with these simple remedies she sometimes worked wonderful, amazing cures.