Jane Goodall

They stayed when I could approach, and they would look up, and then they'd continue their grooming or their playing or their feeding or whatever it was they were doing before I came.

Oh, no.

Absolutely not.

They just continued with what they were doing.

Well, you see, we tried to discourage all that kind of thing.

They would sometimes come up to peer if there was a banana anywhere.

But as we discouraged any kind of contact, we didn't really have that much.

There was one short period.

It was before I realized we could make this a really long-term study.

And it was so exciting to be able to go up to and groom bananas.

a completely wild adult male chimp, David Greybeard.

It was so exciting when a mother allowed her infant to come up and touch me.

It was so incredibly moving when a juvenile allowed me to play with him.

And I wouldn't have foregone those experiences, but in a way they were wrong, because it was...

dangerous to try and establish communication with them.

It was dangerous to the objective collection of information.

Yeah, I mean, it would be very easy to become part of the group.

And then, for one, that would disturb the natural behavior more than we do by being there anyway.

And for another, it could be very dangerous because they do attack each other quite often for no very obvious reason sometimes.

And they are very strong.