Archive Interview - Jane Goodall
 Dr.
Jane Goodall is a world-renowned primatologist. Her years
of groundbreaking work with chimpanzees have given the world
an eye-opening look into the society of some of our closest
primate relatives. Cool Green World was honored to meet
and talk with this amazing pioneer...
CGW: How did you come to be involved with studying chimpanzees?
JANE: I was absolutely fascinated by animals from the time
when I was a tiny child and spent all my time out in the
garden looking at birds and insects and things like that.
By the time I was about 9 years old I dreamed of going to
Africa, in fact when I grew up I knew I would live with
animals and write books about them. Eventually, to cut a
long story short, I saved up my money by working as a waitress
until I had enough to go and stay with a friend in Kenya.
And that was when I met the late Louis Leakey and he gave
me a job as his assistant and he let me go with him and
his wife and one other young girl out onto the plains where
he was searching for human fossils. The magic was that in
those days there were no tracks, no roads, there was nothing.
It was absolutely wildest untouched Africa and after the
hard days work digging in the rock for fossils I was allowed
to go out on the plains and there were giraffes and zebras
and wildebeest and there was a rhino one night and then
2 young male lions and it was absolute magic--this was my
dream and I was living in it! And that was when Louis Leakey
began talking to me about a group of chimpanzees on a far
off lakeshore and I suddenly realized he was asking me if
I was prepared to go and study them.
CGW: which you did...
JANE: I began in 1960 to try and find out something about
our closest living relatives and that study is still continuing
today with the help of various students and many Tanzanian
field staff.
CGW: In your years of studying chimpanzee society how
similar, or dissimilar, to humans have you found them to
be?
Jane: I think perhaps the most fascinating thing of all
about this long term chimp study is that as the years have
gone by and we've been able to accumulate more and more
information about the life cycles of these amazing beings,
who can by the way live for as long as 50 or 60 years, it's
become increasingly clear just how like us they are--or
how like them we are. And these are in things like the complexity
of the social structure, the long term affectionate supportive
bonds between family members, the long period of childhood
during which learning is as important for the chimp as it
is for us, and chimps, like humans, can learn by observation,
imitation, practice...the fact that in the non-verbal communication--that's
communicating by touch and posture and gesture--the similarities
are absolutely extraordinary...embracing, kissing, holding
hands, patting on the back, swaggering, tickling...and it's
not just that these look like gestures that we use, but
they use them in the same context. And we find that in the
realm of intellect chimps are capable of performances that
we used to think only we humans were. And so it shouldn't
really be suprising that emotionally they show so much similarity
to us and although it's hard to prove empirically, anyone
who has worked with chimps closely for a period of time
will agree that chimps show emotions similar or maybe identical
to those that we call joy, fear, despair, and in all these
ways we are, in a way, looking at the kind of creature that
maybe we were millions of years ago.
CGW: Have you become part of the family structure of
the chimpanzees you have been studying?
Jane: A lot of people ask if I feel about the chimpanzees
as I would feel about a family member and the answer is
no; because although I know them so well and they know me
so well and we have a relationship of trust and mutual respect
I've never tried to interact with them. I have never wanted
to get into their society because in order to really understand
their structure you have to be a bystander you have to be
able to look at it objectively. That doesn't mean that you
don't empathize with them, it doesn't mean that you don't
feel pain when they're hurt and happiness when things go
right for them - but if they started interacting with me
or the other field researchers then suddenly their whole
society would be spoiled.
CGW: What do you think you've most learned about human
nature through your study of chimpanzees?
JANE: I believe that the most important thing I've learned
from chimpanzee behavior that's applicable to us is the
tremendous importance of early experience. The difference
in a young chimpanzee's life--depending on the type of mothering
that he or she receives, the position in the family, the
early experiences--and we find now from looking at these
long term family histories that chimpanzees who had supportive,
affectionate, protective mothers tend to do very much better
as adults and, most importantly, they tend to have relaxed
relationships with other adults. Whereas those individuals
whose mothers were perhaps harsher and less protective,
less supportive, tend to be very jumpy and nervous as adults
when they're interacting with others. Now if that's true
for humans, as I believe it is, then we look around at the
early experience of children today, and maybe that can help
to explain some of the tremendous social problems that we
see facing us today.
CGW: How endangered are chimpanzees?
JANE: Chimpanzees are highly endangered today. They used
to be present in hundreds of thousands at the turn of the
century, right across the central equatorial forest belt
in Africa...well, for one thing it's no longer a belt, it's
sections of fragmented forest, and the habitat is disappearing
very, very fast so that the we believe the maximum number
of chimpanzees existing in the wild today is 250,000. That's
fewer than a medium sized American town. The only places
where there are reasonable populations are in the very center
of their range, that's Gabon, Cameroon, Zaire and Congo,
and everywhere else you get these pathetic remnants in these
small patches of forest. So, they're disappearing very,
very fast. And in addition to destruction of habitat, which
is caused by the logging companies and also by human population
increases, there's also the hunting of chimpanzees--partly
for the live animal trade, but mostly today for the bush
meat trade, and this is absolutely decimating the remaining
wildlife of forests in western central Africa.
CGW: Just how serious is the bush meat problem?
JANE: In many parts of Africa the hunting of animals for
bush meat poses by far the biggest threat and it's a much
greater threat than people have believed. It's really been
exacerbated by the logging companies because what happens--first
of all the road is opening up the interior of the last remaining
forest to the hunters, as well as to settlement and so forth,
but in addition the trucks that are bringing out the logs
are also bringing pieces of sundried or smoked meat. It's
no longer just subsistence hunting, it's not just hunting
to feed the family and the village, this is a business.
You send truckloads of meat into the towns, to the markets,
and the wildlife cannot sustain this kind of exploitation.
CGW: What can be done to solve the problem?
JANE: There are big attempts at the moment to pressure European
members of parliament so that the logging companies will
make serious efforts to prevent the use of their lorries
in this way and to adopt really a more responsible attitude
to the wildlife in the areas where they are exploiting the
timber. And of course the logging companies also have to
learn to log in a sustainable way and stop this terrible
clear cutting because that leads to a desert. So what's
happening is that this last rape of the African forest is
destroying the wildlife, is destroying the forests, and
ultimately it will spell doom for the people there too because
this desert is slowly spreading.
CGW: How do you feel about the use of chimpanzees for
experimentation?
JANE: I think it's very arrogant of us to assume that we
can use any animal for our own good. Not just in medical
experimentation but also in intensive farming and fur farming
and all these ways where we just accept that providing it
may perhaps be good for us well then it's fine to do anything
we like to a non-human animal. And when it comes to medical
experimentation and particularly pharmaceutical testing,
most of it's unnecessary--there are new ways, and more ways
are being discovered all the time, where you can test without
the use of any non-human animals. And we're brainwashed.
We're taught that if we stopped using animals in medical
research all progress would come to an end and that simply
isn't true. If you look back through medical history the
major breakthroughs have not come as a result of experimenting
with animals, they've come from clinical research and epidemiological
research. Yes, today scientists are forced to test new cures
on animals because otherwise they can't be marketed, but
there are very, very poignant examples of cases where a
drug was tested and found to be safe for animals and then
was given to people with horrible results--like thalidomide.
And on the other side some drugs were withheld from people
for as long as 10, 15 years because they damaged animals
but eventually turned out, as the scientists thought, to
be extremely beneficial for people.
CGW: How involved are you in trying to bring an end to
the use of chimpanzees in animal experimentation?
JANE: One of our mandates in the Jane Goodall Institute
is to show concern for the welfare of captive chimpanzees
and other animals. I've been quite actively involved for
quite some time in first of all trying to create better
conditions within the medical research labs for chimps and
other monkeys. Of course that doesn't go far enough and
of course I would like to see the cages emptied and no longer
any chimps used. But whatever I say, that's not going to
happen today--we have to work for that tomorrow, and in
the meantime we want to make conditions a little better
inside. One of the most important ways of doing that is
to establish a dialogue with the experimenters because you
find that, very often, particularly the scientists who are
working on new experimental drugs and so forth, they don't
know anything about chimpanzees. They just ask for some
blood and they do things to it and then they say we'll put
this into a chimpanzee. And when you talk to them and when
you explain what chimpanzees are like, it really does make
a difference--I've seen it make a difference. And when you
go into the labs--which for me is like going into hell--and
you talk to the technicians and you talk to the caretakers
and you try and explain to them what chimpanzees are really
like, that makes a difference too. We've started some enrichment
programs. There's one lab where chimpanzees used to be kept
in 22-inch by 22-inch cages. Just try to imagine two 6-month-old
chimps like that. Well, today the whole lab is completely
changed, there are no more cages like that left, and people,
instead of looking grim faced, are smiling and bringing
their children in to play around the chimps at the weekend.
CGW: Looking down the road, do you feel positive about
the future?
JANE: A lot of people ask me if I have any hope for the
future, because as I now spend my entire life traveling
to different parts of the world to raise money and raise
awareness I do get to see pretty depressing things--like
the destruction of the forest, the truckloads of bush meat,
and chimpanzees who were pets who are now tied up outside
on chains or in little tiny cages. You see areas that were
lush and green are now desert, you see terrible pollution,
everywhere you see this ever increasing numbers of the human
population, so is there any hope for the future? I believe
there is, and the way that I am trying to contribute towards
that future is with a program for young people. It's the
Jane Goodall Institute's Roots and Shoots program which
began in Tanzania with a small group of secondary school
children. It's a symbolic name, roots creep under the ground
and make a firm foundation, shoots seem new and small but
to reach the light they can break open brick walls and the
brick walls symbolically are all the ills that we humans
lay over the planet, including cruelty, warfare, drugs and
violence. So the message is one of hope that hundreds and
thousands of Roots and Shoots, hundreds and thousands of
kids around the world, can break through those walls. The
program's most important message is that every individual
matters; and the chimps teach us it's not just human individuals
that matter but non-humans too. That every single one of
us has a role to play and every single one of us makes a
difference. You know, you can't live through a day of your
life without impacting the world around you, and you have
a choice--do you want to use your life to try and make the
world a better place or don't you care? Our goal is for
everyone to contribute and for everyone to realize what
a difference they can make.
You can learn more about Dr. Jane Goodall and her work
at her website. Go
there now!
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