Photograph by Emily Shur
Jane Goodall began to observe chimpanzees in the Gombe forests of Tanzania 45 years ago. Her observations redefined primate research and led to the remarkable conclusion that chimpanzees make and use tools. Since then, she has shown that they have complex minds and emotions, and they pass on culture to their young. Now nearing 70, Goodall spends as many as 300 days a year crusading for conservation, research, and education and seeking funding for her Jane Goodall Institute. Her documentary, State of the Great Apes, airs on June 12 on Animal Planet.
Why do you spend so little time in Gombe?
G: There came a point of suddenly realizing that chimps are going, the forests are going, chimps in captivity have been tortured. So I couldn’t be really happy in the forest because I would know that I wasn’t doing what I could be doing to save it. I’m not needed in the forest. I’ve got to be outside of it and keep the forest inside.
What about chimpanzees attracts you?
G: Chimpanzees blur the line between humans and animals. Once you blur the line, once you realize that we’re not the only creatures with personalities, minds, and above all, feelings, that gives you a new respect, not just for the chimp but for other creatures. You know, we’re part of the animal kingdom, not separated from it. And that should be very exciting.
How so?
G: Think of the wonder that’s out there, and all the different ways of seeing, the experiences that we could have if only for a few minutes—if we could be a dog and know what is coming to that little nose through the window. If only for a few seconds we could be a bat flying through the darkness with echolocation or a dolphin way down under the sea using sonar clicks. If we could just experience these things, how enriched we would be. And that’s what science at its best is.
People compare you and Dian Fossey. . . .
G: Dian had a tremendous amount of contact with her subjects. I touched the chimps at the beginning—probably a mistake, but on the other hand, after a year of them running away, it was kind of just so magical that I would do it again. But from the beginning I really wanted to be an observer, to sit back and look through a window into a magic world and not be a part of it. Whereas she did. She would go and sit on the lap of a big male gorilla, and she’d make the gorilla sounds. So she wanted to be integrated into that world. I didn’t want to be integrated into that world. I never used their behavior, none, other than the odd gesture.
Why do you think she was murdered?
G: Unfortunately, although we talked about this many times, Dian refused to incorporate the local people into the study of the gorillas. To use them as trackers, yes, but they were never to be within sight of the gorillas. She thought that would make them even more vulnerable to poaching. And I said, if you hire some of these people in the villages where the poachers come from and they get to understand the gorillas, that’ll reduce your risk. We didn’t have any poaching of the Gombe chimps until refugees from civil wars arrived very recently. Zero.
Why are the two of you often compared?
G: Louis Leakey deliberately chose women because he thought they made better observers. I think his reasoning was that if you look at human mothers, they’ve got to have patience to be successful. Secondly, any human female must have some kind of programming to be able to understand the wants, the needs of a small creature that can’t speak. They have to devise ways to figure it out. And thirdly, women traditionally have been responsible for keeping peace within the family: You know, keep Little Joey away from Uncle Frank when Uncle Frank’s in a bad mood, or when Joey’s particularly mischievous. And all that means a lot of patience and ability to just watch for little nonverbal signs. So that may give one an edge on looking at very complex social behavior.
What is left to learn about chimp culture?
G: Chimpanzees actually seem to have quite an aesthetic sense. The captive ones, some of them absolutely love painting and drawing, and they will tend to balance a picture. So if they make their marks here, they tend to make them there to balance the thing. One study suggested they were capable of representational art, and I’ve always wanted researchers to look at that more.
What research would you still like to do?
G: What I was going to do before I got off on the road of this crazy life: going back and analyzing all the data we’d collected of the relationship between the mother and the child, the personality of the mother and the child’s development, just analyzing the data and looking at what we already know about how the mother behaves and how the child grows up, how the child behaves as an adult. We know roughly, but details interest me.
