Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is Fresh Air.
Chapter 2: What were Jane Goodall's early experiences that shaped her career?
Jane Goodall, the internationally renowned conservationist and researcher of chimpanzees in their natural habitat, died last week. She was 91. Goodall had no scientific training when she made her way to East Africa at age 23. She went to work as a secretary for paleontologist Louis Leakey, who'd been hoping to find someone to study a group of chimpanzees on Lake Tanganyika.
Goodall took the challenge, and groundbreaking observations followed about the chimps' ability to make and use tools, their diet, their mating patterns, and their social interactions. Goodall shared her work in many books, articles, and documentaries, with herself as a character in the stories.
The University of Cambridge recognized her contributions by accepting her into its doctoral program, which she completed in 1965. As her career developed, she saw the need for protecting chimps' habitat and established the Jane Goodall Institute to advance her conservation work.
She wrote 32 books, 15 for children, and was recognized with a host of awards, receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom and being named a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Today we'll listen to parts of two interviews Terry Gross recorded with Goodall.
The first was in 1993, when Goodall had co-authored a book with Dale Peterson about the relationship between chimps and humans.
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Chapter 3: How did Jane Goodall change perceptions of chimpanzee behavior?
Jane Goodall told Terry that when she first began studying the chimps, she was discouraged from projecting human qualities on the animals, but she disregarded that advice.
For one thing, I gave them names instead of numbers. Terrible thing to do. For another thing, the first scientific paper I wrote, I talked about chimpanzees as he and she, and I said, this individual who, and the article came back, and it was substituted for he and she, and which was substituted for who. And then in those days, you couldn't talk about something like adolescence and childhood.
You couldn't talk about motivation. You couldn't talk about excitement. There was very, very little you could do in terms of describing chimpanzee behavior in terms that ordinary people would understand.
Do you think that that's changed? Do you think that your more personal style has become accepted scientifically?
I think that in most scientific circles today, these things that I've mentioned are accepted. I think people have come to realize that when we're talking about creatures who share over 98% of their genetic material with us, creatures whom we know to have very, very similar central nervous systems and brains,
You know, it's completely crazy to imagine that they wouldn't have similar feelings, similar ways of tackling problems in life. Mostly people accept today that that is so.
In writing about chimp behavior, you say that male chimps are more respectful of men, especially men with deep voices, and they take liberties with women. How did you find that out, and what kind of liberties did the chimps take with you?
Really until quite recently, there hasn't been that obvious a difference in the way they treat or they treated male and female researchers. But we now have one chimpanzee who's a rogue and he's actually very dangerous to female researchers and most particularly to me. And it's very sad, after 32 years in the field, that one chimpanzee has, in a way, made Gombe feel a little unsafe to me today.
What does he do that's a threat to you? He's probably ten times stronger than I am. I mean, a big male chimp is said to be four to five times stronger than an adult human male. And Frodo is the largest, heaviest chimp we've ever known at Gombe. He's 115 pounds. He's about 20 years old. He's absolutely magnificent. He's one of Fifi's offspring.
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Chapter 4: What challenges did Jane Goodall face while studying chimps in the wild?
Almost all of them, they grew up with us.
Did you learn to make the sounds that chimps used to communicate?
I can make most of them. Most of the people studying chimps can make those sounds, but we don't actually make them in the wild. I sometimes make them to chimps in captive groups, and they usually reply. Certainly the little greeting sound, when you want to...
approach a nervous young chimp which i have to do all the time because one of the things that we're doing with the institute is to rescue orphan chimps who whose mothers have been shot by hunters they're confiscated by the government and we care for them and to see some of those pathetic little orphans in the markets being sold at the street side they're dehydrated their eyes are dull they're losing hope they're losing health and you go up and you make this soft little
which is a gentle greeting, and they'll sometimes put their arm around your neck. How come you wouldn't use that language in the wild?
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.
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Chapter 5: How did Jane Goodall contribute to conservation efforts?
What else would you say to a chimp in captivity?
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? I'm here.
Is that a sound you could demonstrate for us?
Well, I can demonstrate it, but I just lean away from the microphone because it's rather loud. But...
In all your years in the field studying chimpanzees, were there particular aspects of chimp behavior that you felt you understood and were particularly like your own, particularly like the way humans behave?
Oh, I think a lot. One of the most striking... 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.
When you first went to the bush, you were given the opportunity to do that by the anthropologist Louis Leakey.
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Chapter 6: What personal insights did Jane Goodall share about her research?
And this was to be the first really long-term study of chimpanzees. Other people, I believe, had studied them for months at a time. You were supposed to go there for a few years. So you got there and you went with your mother because you weren't allowed to go by yourself. What was that story?
Chapter 7: How did Jane Goodall's approach to studying chimps differ from traditional methods?
Young English women didn't do that sort of thing. In fact, as I grew up, I was told I couldn't. That's what I'd always wanted to do. 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.
What did she do to help you when you were getting started?
Oh, she was fabulous. She had a clinic. 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. In fact, we found out later that she was known as the White Witch Doctor. And, of course, this was tremendously helpful in establishing friendly, good relationships with the local people, and those have remained ever since.
How long did she stay with you?
She was with me about, it was between three and four months. And by that time, the local authorities realized that, you know, it was okay and I was going to be all right. And I had a staff by then. I had a cook and a boat driver. And I'd made friends with the local people. And they said, all right, you can stay.
When you got to Tanzania and you knew you were there to watch and research the chimps, were they easy to find?
No, they used to run away. The first moment they saw me, they would depart into the undergrowth, and it was very frustrating. But gradually, from an open, rocky peak overlooking two valleys, one on the north and one on the south,
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Chapter 8: What did Jane Goodall learn about chimpanzee social structures?
I sort of was choosing music and things like that for these documentary films. And it was a fascinating job and I met lots of people but didn't pay very well. Lots of jobs didn't just after the war. So when I had a letter from a school friend inviting me to Kenya where her parents had just bought a farm...
I instantly handed in my resignation and went home and worked as a waitress and saved up my wages and my tips until I had enough for a return fare by boat. So once I got out to Kenya in Nairobi, I heard about Louis Leakey and somebody said, Jane, if you really are interested in animals, you should meet Louis. So I made an appointment immediately.
went to see him in his office at the Natural History Museum. And I think he was impressed because although I didn't have a degree, I'd gone on reading about Africa and animals and I could answer so many of his questions. So he gave me a job working for him that same day, the day I met him.
And what was your job when you were his personal secretary?
I was just writing his letters and speaking to people on the phone and, you know, that kind of thing. But I had the amazing opportunity of going with him, his wife, and one other young English girl onto the Serengeti, to the now famous Olduvai Gorge, where so many early human fossils have been found. But at that time, only the remains of prehistoric non-humans had been found.
So instead of being a road leading there as there is today, this was wild, untouched Africa. No tracks, no trails, just occasionally the odd Maasai walking by. And all the animals were there. So that after the hard work of searching for bones, fossilized bones during the day...
In the hot sun, Gillian and I were allowed to go onto the plains and, you know, there were giraffe and zebra and antelopes and one evening a rhino and one evening a young male lion who followed us quite a long way. And I think that's when Lewis realized I was the person he'd been looking for. You know, I didn't care about clothes and hairdressers and parties and boyfriends.
I just wanted to be out there with the animals. And so he gave you the Chimp Project to do, researching chimpanzees in the wild? Right.
He had two major problems to overcome. One was, how was he going to get the money for this crazy scheme? I mean, in those days, young people didn't go tramping off living with animals in the bush, especially girls. And finally, he got some money from a wealthy American businessman, Leighton Wilkie. And secondly, Tanzania, where the chimps are, was Tanganyika then.
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