Christine A. Elmore
Wildlife scientists, says Martin Kratt, the writer of the forward to Victoria Miles' book,
Wild Scientist: Amazing Encounters Between Animals and the People Who Study Them
, are "often found in remote regions living side by side with other wild speciesand they have great stories to tell" (Miles 2004). This very aptly describes Jane Goodall, who at the age of twenty-six, went to Africa to study the chimpanzees. For hours at a time on hilltop or treetop Jane would sit, observe and record their behavior. Gradually these primates got used to Jane's presence among them and often chose to interact with her. Jane indeed has been a prolific writer of both children and adult books on her very interesting experiences with the chimps at Gombe. The bibliography lists many of these books. Similar to the writings of other wildlife scientists, her stories do show us her "deep interest in animals, a commitment to understanding them, and a passion for their protection" (Miles 2004).
Snapshots In The Life of Jane Goodall
"It was very stuffy and hot where I crouched and the straw tickled my legs. There was hardly any light, either. But I could see the bird on her nest of straw. She was about five feet away from me on the far side of the chicken house and she had no idea I was there" (Goodall 1988, p. 5).
Jane Goodall, in her 1988 book,
My Life With The Chimpanzees,
goes on to describe how she continued to stay very still and was soon rewarded for her efforts by witnessing the laying of an egg and the proud strutting of the hen afterwards. She was only 5 years old at the time but she would grow up and employ those same skills of slow and patient observation in watching the chimpanzees in the forests of Gombe in Tanzania. This henhouse experience was only one of many that Jane had as she grew up that exemplified her interest in animals. My students, as they immerse themselves in various biographies of Jane Goodall, including Paula Bryant Pratt's T
he Importance of Jane Goodall,
Elizabeth Ferber's
A Life With Animals: Jane Goodall,
Bette Birnbaum's
Jane Goodall and the Wild Chimpanzees,
and Jayne Pettit's
Jane Goodall: Pioneer Researcher,
will learn of her regular sessions during her childhood sitting up high in a tree in the garden outside London where she would watch birds and listen to their songs. Books like
the Story of Doctor Dolittle
and
The Jungle Book
as well as those about Tarzan captivated her. Jane became an avid reader of books about animals including, "stories of wolves, bears and wolverines in North American and Canada, jaguars, anacondas and sloths in South America, orangutans, Indian elephants, and tapirs in Asia" (Goodall 1988, p. 15).
Jane, on many of her nature walks as a child, wrote down what she saw, thus employing another important technique of the wildlife scientistkeeping a log or journal of one's observations and thoughts. One animal who taught Jane a lot about animal behavior was her dog, Rusty. She taught her canine pet many tricks and rewarded him, not with food but with exuberant praise. Through Rusty Jane learned that dogs can reason and plan. In her aforementioned book, Jane writes, "Rusty was the only dog I have every known who seemed to have a sense of justice. If he did something he
knew
was wrong (that is, something I had taught him was wrong), then he apologized the way dogs do, by rolling over on his back and grinning. But if I was cross about something that
he
thought was okay, then he sulked" (Goodall 1988, p. 23). What Jane learned from Rusty was that animals have feelings, minds, and, indeed, personalities.
Goodall approached her study of chimps with this same assumption and reported her findings describing how their minds worked. But her methods of reporting were ones that many professors and fellow students disapproved of. Unlike the ethologists (scientists who study animal behavior) in the 1960s, who assigned numbers to each animal they studied, Jane gave the chimps she observed names like David Greybeard, Fifi, William, Flo, Goliath, and Pom. Jane explains, "Once you have been close to chimps for awhile they're as easy to tell apart as your classmates. Their faces look different, and they have different characters" (Goodall 1988, p. 71). In her research Jane talked about their individual personalities and described David Greybeard as very cautious but determined, Goliath as exciteable and impetuous and William as very shy and timid"(Goodall 1988, p. 71). Especially shocking to the ethologists back then was Jane's ascribing emotions (like happiness, despair or grief) to the chimpanzees. This was unheard of and considered highly unscientific.
Jane, in fact held the view of a traditional naturalist and took a very personal approach in her study of and reporting upon the chimpanzees. Her notes took the form of narratives, that is, stories about individual chimps. Pratt (1997) described these new ethologists who so frowned upon Jane's work, as people who were much more scientifically oriented in their research. They viewed animals as subjects to be experimented upon in order to discover the mechanics of behavior. These ethologists insisted on taking an impersonal stance on the animals they studied in order to be viewed as the scientists they felt they were (not mere butterfly catchers) and to be taken more seriously.
Jane, on the other hand, had no great desire to be viewed as a scientist and just wanted to study the chimps. When she would report on how the chimps used their minds, these scientists were affronted, maintaining that only human beings had minds. Scientific journals also rejected Goodall's approach but this did not deter her and she went on to make two breakthrough discoveries about chimps. Through her style of patient observation, Jane discovered that chimpanzees are omnivores and hunt for and eat meat as well as vegetables and fruit. Before this time it was believed that they were strictly vegetarians. A second groundbreaking finding that Jane observed was chimpanzees making and using tools when termite fishing. To reach termites in a hole, a chimp will stick a long piece of grass down the hole and eat them right off the leaf. If the grass bends, the chimp will strip the leaves off a twig (actually making a tool) and use it to procure the insects. This was a new finding and Jane wrote, in her previously mentioned book, "Before this observation, scientists had thought only humans could make tools. Later I would learn that chimpanzees use more objects as tools than any creature except for us" (Goodall1988, p. 68). As a result of these findings the National Geographic Society, upon the request of Dr. Louis Leakey, Jane's mentor and employer, agreed to fund her continued research.