Renowned Primate Researcher Jane Goodall in Her Prime
12/14/97
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Headline: Renowned Primate Researcher Jane Goodall in Her Prime
Source: CNN
Date: 12/14/97
Copyright 1997: The Associated Press
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or
redistributed.
Copyright 1997: Cable News Network, Inc. A Time Warner Company
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
NANYUKI, Kenya (AP) Jane Goodall was a schoolgirl in
England, barely older than the droopy-eyed chimpanzee now in
her arms, when she decided she would live among Africa's
animals, write books about them and find Tarzan.
At age 11, she fell "madly in love" with the virile,
jungle-raised hero of Edgar Rice Burroughs' stories.
"I was incredibly jealous of Tarzan's Jane and I thought she
was a real wimp, and I'd have made a much better mate for
Tarzan myself," Goodall said in an interview. "That was when
I had this dream of going to Africa."
Goodall did, of course, go, and she became the world's most
renowned and revered primatologist.
"My mother used to tell me, `Jane if you really want
something, you work hard enough, you take advantage of
opportunities, you never give up, you will find a way."'
That is the message Goodall delivers in her latest projects:
advocating animal rights, raising money for chimpanzee
sanctuaries and doing conservation work.
"What is remarkable now is how all of this is coming
together, different bits of my passion, experience are just
seeming to be in the right place at the right time now," she
said.
Determined to learn about animals, Goodall worked as a
waitress to earn her ship fare to Africa. At age 23, she
settled into "a boring old secretarial job" in Nairobi,
Kenya, until anthropologist Louis Leakey agreed to send her,
untrained, to Tanzania to observe chimpanzees.
"Louis chose me without any scientific degree because he
wanted an open mind," said Goodall, now 64. Dian Fossey, who
studied gorillas, and Birute Gladikas, who studied
orangutans, soon followed her.
At Gombe National Park, Goodall made two discoveries
chimpanzees eat meat and use long grass as a tool to pluck
termites from a mound. She also described the personalities
of her group of chimpanzees, making Flo, Flint, Fifi, Pom
and Passion as familiar as family around the world.
She spoke of bonds, weak and strong, between mothers and
infants, sibling rivalry, male dominance and sexual
appetites all in human-like terms: Flo was a wonderful
mother, though promiscuous. Passion was cold-hearted and,
with her daughter, killed and ate all but one of the
offspring of other females.
When Flo died in 1972, The Times of London ran an obituary.
She was found face down in a stream by her youngest son,
Flint, who died from grief three weeks later.
"It's become like a soap opera. People are fascinated what
is the next installment in the Fifi story?" Goodall says.
For fans, she has an update: "They got this skin disease and
Freud got sick, and so lost his top position to his younger
brother, Frodo. Fifi lost her last baby."
Goodall is grateful she had no background in science when
she began her work it allowed her to view animals with
greater compassion. But Leakey insisted she earn a
doctorate.
"Louis told me, `Jane you must have a Ph.D. because if you
don't, you'll never be able to get your own money and stand
on your own feet, nor will you be able to make use of your
facts,"' she said.
Goodall earned a doctorate from the University of Cambridge
in 1965, the same year National Geographic published "Miss
Goodall and the Wild Chimps."
Now famous and equipped with a degree, "Dr. Jane," as she is
popularly known, returned to Gombe, and what has become the
world's longest study of wild animals nearly 38 years.
Goodall said her idyllic life researching "incredible
beings" in the forest was disrupted when she saw a horrific
film of experiments on laboratory animals at a conference in
Chicago in 1986.
"I knew I had to do something," she said. "It was payback
time."
Goodall has taken advantage of her reputation to enlist the
help of people great and small from President Nelson Mandela
of South Africa to schoolchildren in Billings, Mont.
"Doors open. They think of me as a legend. And they'll give
me an appointment because they want to see if I'm real, and
what I'm like," she said.
Goodall has passed through those doors to speak out against
the abuse of animals, to open sanctuaries for illegally
captured great apes and to encourage people everywhere to
make the world a better place.
Responding to criticism of her condemnation of lab
experiments on animals, Goodall says she supports use of
animals for necessary research, and notes her own mother's
life was saved by a pig's heart valve.
She has been criticized, too, for putting money into
sanctuaries for captured primates, rather than protecting
dwindling forests where the 250,000 remaining chimps live
mostly in the neighboring Congos, Gabon and Cameroon. At the
turn of the century, there were about 2 million.
"What the chimps have taught me over the years is they're so
like us. They've blurred the line between humans and
animals," Goodall said.
"Just as we can't turn our back on an orphan human child, we
can't turn our back either on these guys," she said,
cuddling sad-eyed Tess, a 6-year-old chimp.
Goodall calls airplanes her home because she spends so much
time traveling from lecture to lecture. She enlivens many of
her speeches with a loud crescendo the chimpanzee pant-hoot
call that delights Goodall groupies.
During a lecture trip to Kenya, Goodall spoke about how
logging has destroyed the habitats of chimpanzees and
gorillas and how roads winding deep into African forests
have left them vulnerable to poachers.
She also visited Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary, 212 acres
of grassland and forest on a river 110 miles north of
Nairobi.
There, beneath cloud-cloaked Mount Kenya, 26 chimps who
survived capture in Congo and war that surrounded their
sanctuary in Burundi have found safe haven. Goodall also has
sanctuaries in Uganda, Republic of Congo, Tanzania and South
Africa.
For Goodall, it was a reunion with old friends. Accustomed
to the curious fingers of chimps, she stripped off necklace
and watch, and wore her silvery hair swept back in a
ponytail.
Goodall issued a breathy "hah, hah, hah" from low in her
throat, mimicking chimpanzees' greeting. Chimps competed for
time in her arms. Bahati jumped on her back; Sophie wrestled
her to the mud.
She delighted in seeing the newborn son of Judy, who was
disabled by polio. Poco, who walks strangely upright because
he grew up in a tall, narrow cage, showed off with an
impressive display of stick swinging.
Goodall said she misses the time she used to have with
chimps, and for research and writing. But, she added, "while
I have the energy, I feel this is what I am meant to be
doing."