There was this fateful day when you observed a chimpanzee sticking a stalk of grass into a termite hole and then pulling out the stalk that was now covered in termites and eating them. But we can be altruistic thinking about the consequences to ourselves and realizing that if we move ahead to help that person, it may have serious negative impacts on us, but doing it all the same because of this compassion we have. ![]() Because while chimps can be altruistic, they’re responding to the immediate emotion. But I think our dark side is worse because we are capable of evil. Just like them, we have a good side and a dark side. Because to me, evil is not just responding to an aggressive impulse (which is what chimps do), but sitting deliberately in cold blood and planning the destruction of another human being or planning a war. Given the two poles that you discovered - some very trusting behavior and bonds, and some aggression and violence - do you think of chimps as being capable of altruism or kindness on the one hand, and malice or evil on the other? Jane Goodall And if they spy an individual from a neighboring community, they’re likely to chase. The thing is that they’re highly territorial and the males will get together and patrol the boundaries of their territory. I did think they were like us, but nicer. Do you think that at first you romanticized chimps and then had to move away from that view? Jane Goodall But I think you have never been shy about developing these loving connections with animals.īut as the years went on there, you did go on to observe some pretty serious violence between groups of chimps, and you’ve even referred to a war that broke out between these different groups. That was very taboo in the scientific community, where you were supposed to maintain this veneer of objective distance from research subjects. So it was actually helpful for you to be going into Gombe without having scientific training or an academic degree, because that enabled you to just see what you were seeing without those blinders having been put on you? Jane GoodallĪnd contrary to the scientific practice of the day, you gave the chimps human names, like David Graybeard or Fifi. He wrote this book and immediately all the other scientists pounced on him and said: “Well, these are captive chimpanzees, they’re only intelligent because our humanity has rubbed off on them!” I mean, how arrogant can you get? Sigal Samuel There was one wonderful book called The Mentality of Apes written by an Austrian psychologist about a colony of captive chimpanzees. The only research being done on chimpanzees at that time was in captivity. So I went knowing that of course the chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, would have emotions, would have personalities, and would be highly intelligent. I had absolutely no idea that scientists have this reductionist feeling about animals. What you have to realize is that when I went to Gombe, I hadn’t been to college. You cannot share your life in a meaningful way with a dog, a cat, a rabbit, a rat, a bird, a horse, a pig, I don’t care, and not know that they have emotions similar to ours and that they have minds that can sometimes solve problems. Well, actually, I learned it long before I got to Gombe to study chimpanzees, because when I was a child I had a wonderful teacher and that was my dog, Rusty. What was your first clue that chimps are reasoning, feeling creatures like us? Jane Goodall But you quickly discovered that’s just not true. And yet they were very sure that a scientist should not talk about a chimp having a mind, personality, emotions - only humans had those. ![]() When you first started studying wild chimps in 1960, scientists knew almost nothing about their behavior. ![]() All Rights Reserved.Subscribe to Vox Conversations on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All Rights Reserved.Ģ010 3rd Learning - "Lessons For Hope" Website. One exception to this similarity is that chimpanzees have shown a resistance to AIDS.Ģ010 Jane Goodall Institute: Lessons for Hope - Content. In addition to polio, chimpanzees are able to contract many of the same diseases as humans including tuberculosis, hepatitis, Ebola, and even the flu and common cold. Twelve of the chimpanzees were either killed or crippled by the disease, but the rest of the community was unaffected. In 1966, an outbreak of polio, traced back to a nearby village, struck the Gombe chimpanzee community. Although she never regretted this, she later decided to implement a no-contact rule as more research students came to Gombe and as she learned more about chimpanzees’ susceptibility to disease. Jane would allow the chimpanzees to touch her.
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