Remembering iconic primatologist and conservationist Jane Goodall

British primatologist and conservationist Jane Goodall died last week at the age of 91. Goodall revolutionized our understanding of chimpanzees, our closest living relatives. She was mentored by the renowned anthropologist and paleontologist Louis Leakey, who helped fund her first trip to Tanzania in 1960 when she was 26-years-old. With no formal scientific training, she made the discovery that chimpanzees were capable of using and making tools – a skill scientists previously thought only humans were capable of doing. Goodall not only founded her own institute to promote the conservation of chimpanzees, she also embarked on a decades-long advocacy for humanitarian causes and environmental protections around the world.

In 2011, “Think Out Loud” host Dave Miller interviewed Jane Goodall when she visited Oregon. We listen back to that conversation about her remarkable life and more than a half century of studying chimpanzees that has helped shape insights into our own behaviors and evolution within the animal kingdom.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Over 60 years ago, Jane Goodall arrived in what is now Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. She was 26 years old and had no training in primate research. She came with her mother because the authorities said she needed a chaperone. Within a few years, Goodall had overturned decades of primatology orthodoxy. She showed that humans are not the only animals to use tools. Chimps, she discovered, stripped leaves from twigs and fished for termites. Goodall explored language and eating habits, family structures and daily rhythms. She also showed that we share a dark side with our closest animal relatives. She witnessed terrible acts of chimpanzee violence and aggression.

In the many decades that followed, Dame Jane Goodall broadened her work in the world. Through her institute and the Roots & Shoots Program, she became a tireless advocate for what she saw as the interconnected web of humans, animals and the environment. Jane Goodall died last week at the age of 91.

We talked to her in 2011, when she came to Salem for a speech. We’re going to listen to that conversation today in remembrance. I started by noting that there is a famous photo of her when she was 1 or 2, holding a toy chimp named Jubilee, that she apparently carried everywhere. I asked why she was fascinated with chimpanzees from such an early age.

Jane Goodall: Well, actually, it’s very funny. People look back and think that Jubilee made this huge part of making me study chimpanzees. Actually, it was animals. I loved all animals. And when my father found this stuffed toy, it was made to celebrate the birth of the first chimpanzee in London Zoo. And of course, I loved him because I loved all my toy animals. It’s just strange that he became my favorite.

Miller: So there was nothing in particular at that time about primates, no particular fascination?

Goodall: I was fascinated, but it was all animals. It really was all animals. But Jubilee was special. He played beautiful tunes, and he was big, and he was just very special.

Miller: I want to fast forward a number of years to June of 1960. This is early on when you had arrived in Gombe. And this is an excerpt from a letter that your mother wrote back to your family back home. She wrote, “Jane is seated almost motionless on an ant hill or a hummock of grass, staring, staring, remembering, noting, waiting and watching her monkeys. The sun beats down. Ants wander over her. Her nose peels, her forehead peels, but she’s there, never stopping her work for a single second, happier than I’ve ever seen her.”

What were those early years like?

Goodall: Well, it’s interesting, because that letter was written from a little island on Lake Victoria. I couldn’t go straight to Gombe because the fishermen were fighting over fishing rights along the beach. So I went to this island with my mother. We were all set to go to Gombe, and I was watching the vervet monkeys. You know, my mother was trained well enough that she wouldn’t call a chimpanzee a monkey. But it was magical. Those little monkeys, the lake all around me, I was in Africa, I was on my way to the chimpanzees, and I was happier than I’d ever been probably.

Miller: You’ve written a lot about the solitude you felt there and the pleasure you got in solitude, and you had to be motionless. I mean, from what I’ve read, you would have to sometimes go up to a hill and stay there for five or six or seven hours, just watching and watching, waiting to get your first glimpses of chimpanzees.

Goodall: Yes, and the big problem was that if I came upon them close by, they would run away. I mean, they’re very conservative. They’ve never seen a white ape before, which of course, is what I was. And so they’d vanish into the vegetation, and it was then … I was in my dream world in Gombe. I mean, it was just everything I’d imagined, except I knew if I didn’t see something exciting before the money ran out – we only had money for six months – that this would be the end of the study. So my mother was amazing, because when I’d get down in the evening, having had chimpanzees run away and stuff, she’d say, “Yes, but Jane, think what you are learning.”

And indeed, up on that peak where I sat and waited with my binoculars, I was learning how they make nests every night, how they go around, sometimes alone, sometimes in small groups. I was learning about what they were eating. And so she was boosting my morale all the time.

Miller: What was she doing during the day when you were there up on the hill with your binoculars?

Goodall: Well, the Natural History Museum in Nairobi, Louis Leakey was curator, and he of course was my mentor …

Miller: The famous anthropologist and paleontologist.

Goodall: That’s correct. And he was the one who offered me this opportunity, when I had no degree, straight from England, crazy. It was amazing. He even got six months’ money from a wealthy American businessman. But everyone says, “Oh, you were so brave going off into the jungle.” I was going almost home, because I dreamed of it so long, ever since reading about Tarzan.

She was left on her own with a cook who was quite often drunk and the museum had asked her to collect butterflies. So she collected some butterflies. I took down samples of all the foods I’d seen the chimpanzees eating, and she pressed them and tried to keep them dry. And she did some writing.

Miller: So as you said, you had these six months, a little bit of a sword hanging over your head. You had to produce something in six months, otherwise the money was done, and you probably would have had to go home. What happened?

Goodall: Well, in fact … and it’s sad, that it was just after my mother left, because it would have been so exciting to share this with her – seeing a chimpanzee hunched over a termite mound, seeing a black hand reach out and pick pieces of grass, push them down into the mound, pick off the termites that were hanging on with their jaws. And then picking a leafy twig and stripping the leaves. Because seriously, it was thought humans and only humans used and made tools. We were described as “man the toolmaker.” So Louis Leakey, when I told him, he wrote back and said, “Ah, now we shall have to redefine man, redefine tool or accept chimpanzees as humans.”

Miller: Three different options there. We obviously haven’t done the last one. We haven’t accepted chimps as humans. What have we done, do you think? I mean, how has this new awareness of chimps making tools … and I think since then, we’ve found that other animals do that as well and that chimps don’t just make termite fishing poles, they do many other things with leaves and other things with twigs. How has this changed our understanding of humans or chimps?

Goodall: Well, I think over the half century since I made these first observations, yes, as you say, we’ve learned about chimpanzees across Africa, different tool-using behaviors passed from one generation to the next through observation, imitation, practice. That’s a definition of culture … a definition. So, they have their primitive cultures.

We’ve learned so much about the fact they kiss, embrace, hold one another, pat one another on the back, throw sticks, throw rocks and many other ways in which their behavior is like ours. The close bonds between family members, the fact that, as you said, they can be brutal and violent, but also loving, compassionate and altruistic.

And also, the scientists have come out with the extraordinary similarities in biology. We differ genetically, the structure of DNA by just over 1%. The brain is almost identical. It’s just that ours is bigger. So what this does, along with the incredibly complex behavior of many other animals, is to show that, after all, it is not a sharp line between us and the rest of the animal kingdom. It’s a blurry one. It’s getting more blurry all the time.

Miller: You dedicated one of your books, “Reason for Hope,” to various family and friends, but also to David Greybeard – who, as I understand it, was that first chimp who you saw fishing for termites. Introduce us to this one character, David Greybeard.

Goodall: Well, David Greybeard was special, in that he was the first to begin to lose his fear of me. So it’s no coincidence, I think, that he was the one I saw fishing for termites. The others in that situation will probably have run away. And he was the first one I saw eating meat and sharing the prey, because it had been assumed chimps were vegetarian. Because David began to lose his fear, if he was with a group and I got too close by mistake and they were ready to run, if he was there, he just sat calmly. And I could see them look from him to me and back, and “well, she can’t be so scary after all.”

So in a way, he led me into a magic world, the world of the wild chimpanzees. I was so fortunate to be the first person from the western world to explore this magical place where the wild chimpanzees lived. He was also gentle, calm. The young ones, when scared, if their mothers weren’t nearby, would run to him. He was a born leader, which doesn’t mean he was the top-ranking male. He was just one that the others would automatically follow.

Miller: And it sounds like, in a sense he was an ambassador … that, since he welcomed you in, he made it all right for the others to do so.

Goodall: Something like that. And over all these years, he was and is my very favorite chimpanzee. It was so amazing. Then of course, he came to my camp, and he stole bananas. That gave me the idea of leaving the bananas out. And then others, because he was a leader, they followed him. So I, then, for the first time, got to see them all close up.

Miller: David Greybeard, as I understand it, disappeared during a pneumonia epidemic in 1968. How did that affect you – never seeing him again?

Goodall: Well, for a long time, I didn’t realize he’d gone. He just wasn’t there. Sometimes chimpanzees go off on consortships, a male with a female, and they may be gone as long as two months. And by the time I realized he must have gone, well, it was just a very sad feeling. I’d never hear his particular distance call, the pant-hoot again.

Miller: Can you give us a sense for what that call sounded like?

Goodall: Well, it’s a distance call. It would be greeting everybody who’s listening over space: “Ooh … ooh-ooh-ooh …” It’s, “Hello, this is me.” Everyone has their own individual voice.

Miller: And if he were half a mile away, you would know that was David Greybeard?

Goodall: Yes.

Miller: How many different chimps could you recognize from their distance calls?

Goodall: Well, all the adult males. Females are harder. Some are distinctive. Probably at any one time, about 12 males.

Miller: Here you talk about David Greybeard, about the qualities of his personality. And in your books, you write about many other chimps who you got to know really well. To me, it brings up this question of what they were for you, whether they were scientific subjects, whether they were friends, were they some blurry lines in between?

Goodall: Yeah, people often ask me, what was my relationship? It’s not “friend,” in the sense of having a human friend. It’s certainly not scientific object of study. No. It’s not like a dog, because dogs rely on you and the chimpanzees don’t. It’s just a deep respect for beings from another world and a deep desire to understand how they are in that world of theirs, rather than try and bring them into mine.

Miller: And what do you think the flip side was? What do you think they thought of you? You’ve described yourself as a white ape, and they’re conservative creatures, so they weren’t quite sure what to do with this strange white ape. Over time though, as you became more familiar, you were a more frequent companion. What do you think you were to them?

Goodall: Well, I think I was just… You know, in the chimp world, the most important other creature is another chimpanzee, that’s for sure. And then probably the prey animals that they hunt. I was just part of the environment. I was just another creature out there. And once they realized I wasn’t frightening … Somebody once said, “Well, any friend of Jane’s is a friend of ours.” So other people could come in and be treated with the same lack of fear as I was.

Miller: We got a question on our site from Monkey Do, who writes, “What advice would you give to a high school graduate that is not sure what he or she wants to do with his or her life? Do you think having a college degree is necessary in order to establish credibility in the scientific world today?”

Goodall: Well, unfortunately, yes. That’s why Louis Leakey made me go to Cambridge to get a degree. If you want credibility in the world of science, you need a piece of paper. You need a degree.

Miller: You got a PhD without having gotten a bachelor’s degree, if I’m not mistaken.

Goodall: That’s correct, because Lewis said there wasn’t to mess about with a BA. So, you can imagine when I got to Cambridge, having never been to college, Cambridge is the top science university in the UK. I was a bit nervous but very excited to know, how will I deal with all this data I was collecting?

So it was a bit of a shock to be told I’d done everything wrong, that I shouldn’t have given the chimpanzees names, they should have had numbers, and I couldn’t talk about them having personality, mind or emotion because those were unique to us. Fortunately, although I was very naive, I had a teacher when I was a child who taught me, absolutely animals do have personalities, minds and feelings. And that was my dog, Rusty.

Miller: How do you think that approach, or that understanding of what animals were, affected the research you did? If you’d gone in there and hadn’t named them, if they’d gotten numbers, and if you assumed that they didn’t have personalities, didn’t have feelings or emotions, how would it have changed the work you did?

Goodall: I think it would have changed it profoundly if I’d gone on thinking that way. On the other hand, I have to think that, even if I’d been rigorously trained to be that kind of observer, that the chimpanzees would have changed me. My supervisor at Cambridge was a very hard-headed scientist, initially a big critic of mine. But he came to Gombe for two weeks and afterwards he said that changed the way he thought more than any other thing.

Miller: We’ve got another question on our site, from Bart, who says, “Your research on the similarities amongst primates is world renowned, but what do you find are the greatest differences between man and chimpanzees?”

Goodall: Good question, because I’ve thought obviously about this a lot. And the interesting thing is that, because there’s nothing closer to us than a chimpanzee, it does give you a very good platform to say, “OK, here we are, the closest creature, how are we different?” And I suppose the greatest difference, and there are many, obviously, is the fact that our intellect has developed so explosively. So even though the brain is so similar, ours has gotten bigger and we can do things … well, technology and the way that you and I are talking with this technology that’s reaching out to hundreds of people or however many thousands.

So personally, I think that this has been triggered, at least in part, because we developed this way of communicating, which again, we’re using now. So we can talk about the past, we can plan for the future. We could make a plan that in five years’ time, we’ll have another conversation on this program. That’s what we could plan, and we can discuss, which we’re doing. And I think that has led to this explosive development of the human brain. That always leads me to the question, how come this most intellectual of all beings to walk on the planet is so busily destroying its only home?

Miller: Before we get to humans, I want to go back to chimpanzees and to some of the terrible deeds you saw chimps do to each other. What’s now known, what you’ve called the “Four Years War.” What was this?

Goodall: It was the main study community, all the individuals I knew so well and studied in the ‘60s – they split, and a small portion moved into the south of the range which they had all shared at one time. And at first, the relationship between them was, well, they just didn’t interact at all.

And then it became hostile, and groups of males regularly patrolled the boundaries of their territory. And if they come upon individuals from a neighboring social group, they may attack them. In this case, it was the males of the larger part of the split that began systematically moving into the area that the smaller portion had taken for their own home range.

If they encountered an individual of that smaller group, then groups of males would attack. Viciously attack, gang attack, and leave the victim to die of wounds inflicted. It was horrible. And of course, it was like a civil war. They were attacking known individuals. And they succeeded in annihilating the small portion that split off, taking in the younger females, but even killing the older ones who’d moved off with those males.

Miller: Were resources scarce?

Goodall: No, they weren’t scarce. And it was fortunate that it was the chimpanzees who’d moved away from the banana feeding who were being attacked. Otherwise, people would have said, “Well, they came in because they’ve been deprived of bananas, and it was all your fault.”

Miller: So how do you account for the violence?

Goodall: It’s almost as though the chimpanzees who moved away had forfeited their right to be part of the group. It’s the in-group, out-group situation that we find with people, you know, I’m a member of this group – like a gang. It’s very much like gang warfare. And they’re members of another group, so we treat them very differently. And in fact, when they were attacking, or when they are attacking individuals of different groups, they use tactics that they might use when trying to kill a prey animal, but never seen in fights within a community.

Miller: How did this affect your understanding of both who and what chimps were and how humans treat each other?

Goodall: Well, it was very shocking to me. It took me a long time to come to terms with this dark side of their nature. The shocking thing was …

Miller: Was it a complete surprise to you? Up until that point, I mean, for you and for other primatologists, had this ever been seen before?

Goodall: Well, we’d seen some of the boundary attacks, one or two, but the fact that it was so systematic and continued over four years until all of them had gone, was completely new and completely unexpected. And the sad thing is it made them even more like us than I thought before. They have a dark side just as we do.

If you believe that way back, 6 million years ago or something, we had a common ancestor, an ape-like human-like creature, then have we brought those aggressive tendencies with us through the long path from then to now? And if so, which I sort of believe – I mean, you can’t look around the world and not realize we can be very aggressive – we can take comfort from the fact that chimpanzees also show these qualities of love, compassion and altruism. So we brought those with us too.

Miller: If that brutality is innate, is either part of learned primate culture or in our genes somehow, but somehow passed on and a part of who we are and a part of animals with whom we have a common ancestor, how do we get rid of it?

Goodall: Well, I think we go back to the brain. We go back to the fact that most people, most of the time, don’t act the way they feel. They may feel violent, and our language says, “I could kill her.” But for the most part … although, of course, the media brings up all the violence, because people want to read about murders, I suppose. But there’s just as much of the other side, and it’s up to us, which side are we going to, what do we want to be?

Miller: Let’s take a call. Actually, we’ve just lost a call from John. We got a comment from Brennan on our site, though, who says, “Do you have any comment for people who deny our relationship to primates and their disdain for being associated with or related to these animals?”

Goodall: Well, usually when I meet somebody who doesn’t think the same way as I do, I remember what my mother taught me, that’s to listen first. Listen. Because maybe they’ve got some points you haven’t thought about. And then usually I find if they’re set in their thinking, there’s no good trying to persuade the brain to think differently. Let’s try and get to the heart, and how do you get to the heart? With stories. So I tell stories about some of the amazing things that chimpanzees do, or other animals for that matter.

Miller: Do you think that can get somebody who doesn’t believe in evolution to believe that we share a common ancestor with chimpanzees?

Goodall: Probably not. And I don’t try. I always say to people, quite honestly, where we are today, how we got here is much less important than how we get together to get out of the mess that we’ve made, because we are damaging our planet and we shall reach the point of no return.

Miller: We lost a call from one of our callers, but I think the question that he wanted to ask was if you’ve seen chimpanzees or other primates hurting their environment, not necessarily in the same ways that humans do, but in ways that might echo our effect on the environment?

Goodall: In fact, chimpanzees are very kind to their environment. One of the big differences is that in the wild, chimpanzees don’t have the number of children that we do, so they’re not overpopulating their habitat. That’s very important. But also, you see chimpanzees arriving up in a tree which is filled with fruit. If they’re very hungry, they just pick it and stuff it in their mouth.

But once the edge of hunger is worn off, they’ll squeeze a fruit or gently bruise it with their teeth and smell it, rather than pick it, bite it and drop it if it’s not ready to eat. So they are conservative. And then, of course, they carry the seeds around the forest as they’re digesting the fruit. They’re gardeners really, they’re spreading the seeds.

Miller: How much time do you still spend in Gombe these days?

Goodall: Well, virtually no time. I get there twice a year. Usually, unfortunately, there’s a film team or a group of VIPs that have to be attended to. But I always carve out at least one day of the four or five that I get there, in the forest by myself. That’s really important for me.

Miller: One day. In the ‘60s, you would have years on end when it was basically you in the forest. And now you’re down to one day by yourself.

Goodall: One day, twice a year by myself. You know, when I think back to those days, it’s just like a sort of magic world, but nothing can take it away. It’s there. It’s part of me. And it’s not difficult, in my one day, to get back the same feelings of peace and eternity. So different from this modern rat race, and what am I doing now, traveling 300 days a year around the world, crazy – airports, hotels.

Miller: One of our regular commenters says, “What’s the most important task you want to complete in the future with regard to chimpanzees?”

Goodall: The big task now is to conserve them and that means protecting their forests. We all know that deforestation is one of the most terrible things that’s going on. It’s one of the main causes of greenhouse gas. And so we work very hard at the Jane Goodall Institute on forest conservation, and not just in Tanzania where Gombe is, but other African countries as well.

Miller: Another one of your initiatives is ChimpanZoo, which, as I understand it, is gathering information on captive chimps, largely in zoos around the world. Should there be chimpanzees in zoos?

Goodall: Well, it would be lovely to think of all chimpanzees living out free in protected areas like Gombe. The sad thing is that most chimpanzees in the wild are not protected, and logging companies are moving in, opening up the forest with roads, hunters are going in. The bushmeat trade is the commercial hunting of all wild animals: gorillas, chimpanzees, elephants and so forth.

Miller: How robust is that trade right now?

Goodall: It’s enormous and it’s not just Africa. It’s right across Asia. It’s throughout South America. We’re eating many species to extinction, as we always have done, starting with the dodo. And some people say – and they’re right – “What about the fish? They’re the bushmeat of the sea. We’re overfishing.” We’re just, with our increasing numbers, destroying the planet. So saving chimpanzees and rainforests may seem far away to people living in this area, but the destruction is all around us, and we’re responsible for some of the destruction of faraway places because of the products that we buy.

Miller: What do you want to be known for? You’ve done many things in these 50-plus years. You’re still going very strong. What do you want to be known for?

Goodall: I think two things. One … and I know that this is true because hundreds of people have told me they read “In the Shadow of Man,” the first book I wrote, and it changed their attitude towards animals. One of the reasons I’d like to be remembered is helping people understand what I believe to be the true nature of animals, that they are thinking, feeling beings, at least those with reasonably complex brains.

But the other thing is developing our youth program, Roots & Shoots, which is now in 130 countries, having started 20 years ago in Tanzania. And that’s helping young people to understand the problems around us, but empowering them to do something about it. To use their powers of language and discussion to get together, to choose themselves, projects to do that will make the world better for people, for animals, for the environment that we share.

Miller: You wrote in one of your books that you learned that raising children should actually be fun, and that you learned that from chimpanzees and you tried to apply it when you were raising your own son, largely in Africa when you were living there at the time. What else have you learned in your life, that you apply on a daily basis, directly from chimpanzees?

Goodall: Well, it’s certainly true that I learned a lot about the kind of mothering that’s important. At least I feel it’s important to raise a sort of healthy, normal child. My son, I’m very proud of him, and he’s doing great stuff.

Miller: You actually learned about mothering from chimpanzees, things you may not have picked up if you’d watched fellow humans?

Goodall: Well, maybe not. I don’t know. It was a mixture of watching chimpanzees, the way I was brought up myself. All of those I applied, but the important thing, the tremendous effect of the first two years of life in developing subsequent behavior.

But also, chimpanzees practice something that I also think is very important that my grandmother used to drum into me when I was a child. She used to say, “Let not the sun set on thy wrath.” In other words, you must make up your quarrels before you go to sleep. Chimpanzees, if they’ve had a conflict – and there are many – unless it’s a major conflict such as those I described leading to death, but within the group, the victim will usually approach the aggressor with some kind of submission and in response gets patted, embraced or kissed. And then social harmony is restored. It’s very important to them.

Miller: Jane Goodall, thank you so much for sitting down with me.

Goodall: Thank you.

Miller: Jane Goodall died last week at the age of 91. We spoke back in 2011.

“Think Out Loud®” broadcasts live at noon every weekday and rebroadcasts at 8 p.m.

If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983.