Jane Goodall |
May 22, 1997
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Jane Goodall
Founder and Director, The Gombe Stream Research Center; Director, The Jane Goodall Institute; Director, Roots & Shoots Global Peace Initiative; Messenger of Peace appointee, United Nations; Hubbard Medal recipient, National Geographic Society; Author, My Life with the Chimpanzees, The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior
Q: This person wants to know, what advice would you give to a person about ready to meet a chimpanzee in the wild for the first time?
A: It would actually depend on where you were. If you were in Gombe National Park, where the chimpanzees are used to people, you would just sit very quietly and the chimpanzee would ignore you and you'd have this amazing experience of looking into the eyes of another being. Looking into a mind that you know is summing you up as well as you summing him or her up. And it would be a marvelous experience unless you happen to meet our one bully, Frodo, who is actually quite dangerous and charges people and slaps them and hits them over.
If you were about to meet a wild chimpanzee in an area where chimpanzees hadn't been studied, you would expect to see a small piece of black fur vanishing very rapidly into the undergrowth and it would be disappointing.
Q: It seems that the fate of the chimps is tied to the condition of man in Africa, which is beset by disease, ignorance, war, and so forth. How will the chimps survive if the Africans are doing so poorly?
A: I think it's for this very reason that all our efforts at conservation are directed towards working with the local people. Because, quite clearly, people are starving, people are having to cut down forests in order to live, then there's very little hope for the wildlife there.
I had mentioned earlier that around Gombe National Park all the trees had gone. We have a reforestation program that's funded by the European Union and we also introduced conservation education, the Roots & Shoots program. In addition to that, projects for women so that, hopefully, as they rise up out of poverty, there will be a drop in the birthrate as there is in other parts of the world, wherever women have become better educated. We've managed to piggyback onto this - for us, a big project; for the European Union, it's very, very tiny. But we've managed to piggyback onto it so that with every car that goes out or boat that goes along the lakeshore, there is, in addition, somebody to talk about family planning, somebody to talk about AIDS education, and somebody to teach primary healthcare.
So it's only by working with the people and improving their lives with these imaginative rural development programs that we can hope to save some of the chimpanzees. I was talking earlier with the Rainforests Action Network and I know that we share much similar philosophy on ways of protecting the remaining forests.
Q: Well, you've walked into my next question which was going to be; how supportive are the local people for preserving animals in Africa?
A: We've employed people from around the Gombe National Park since 1968 to not just be trackers and guides and things like that, but actually to help us with the research. We've gradually trained them, taught some of them to read and write, and now they collect sophisticated information. They use eight-millimeter videos also. They are proud of their work. They talk about it to their family and friends and most important of all, they care about the chimps as individuals. That's why, even though this little 30-square park, I've said the long-tern viability is in question, the chimps there live their lives from day to day in safety. That's not so in other parts of Africa.
There are four field studies that I know, three in Uganda and one in the Ivory Coast where up to 60 percent of the adult chimpanzee population being studied has lost a hand or a foot as a result of getting caught in poachers' snares. In all the 37 years at Gombe, one snare for one chimpanzee.
Q: I'd like to shift gears a little bit just for a moment. San Francisco is voting on a bond issue, "Proposition C," in June, to rebuild the San Francisco Zoo. What is your philosophy about zoos in general, and how do you feel we could appropriately rebuild our zoo to accommodate the mission of animals, conservation, education, and even entertainment?
A: Well, obviously zoos are a kind of, you know, I have mixed feelings about zoos. It's best to see chimpanzees out in Africa in the wild, but it depends where they are in Africa. It isn't always that you're out in the wild and life is wonderful. It's fine at Gombe although chimps have their problems, too, just as we do, in their daily lives. But there are parts of Africa where I would hate to be a chimpanzee. Their trees are being cut down; they're being shot for food; they're catching their hands and feet in snares.
And then you go to a really good zoo where there's a nice group of individuals who have been together for a long time, babies are left with mothers: the zoo doesn't have an aggressive policy whereby individuals are just shipped out when they think the group's a bit big or just because another zoo wants to buy a breeding individual.
I've watched them sitting, contemplating, a big male up on a branch looking down. Contemplating his females and youngsters and they're grooming and their babies are playing. And I think to myself, well, I would rather be here. I haven't seen the plans for the San Francisco Zoo. I was just involved in plans for the Los Angeles Zoo, but the main thing that chimpanzees need is enough space so the males can do these dramatic charging displays. They need a good social group. There should be a good policy about what happens with so-called surplus individuals. And above all they need stimulation. They get desperately, deadly bored because in the wild they get up, they've got all these decisions to make. They can go on a boundary patrol and the males will creep along and repel strangers. Or they can go hunting or they can wander off by themselves and lie in the shade if they feel lazy with their bellies full.
So in captivity it's really necessary to recreate challenge in the captive environment to give them something to use their very considerable intellect on. I'm certainly hoping the San Francisco Zoo will be a zoo like that.
Q: We were talking at lunch also about the fact that there would, undoubtedly, be many questions regarding the use of primates in medical research. I mentioned to Dr. Goodall about the University of California, Davis, of course, which she is and we are all very much aware of. She had informed me that UC-Davis was one of seven primate centers of about that size that do testing for medical research. So the question, of course, is what are your opinions on the utilization of chimps and monkeys and apes for the testing of new drugs for cures for diseases such as AIDS, cancer, and so forth.
A: Well, as you all know, this is a very hot kind of question and it tends to create a good deal of tension in people who are standing on the one side or the other. The animal rights versus the medical community. And for a long time there was actually no dialogue. I've met animal rights activists who said, "How could you possibly go into the same room as the president of the university that has a large lab where animals are being tortured?" But if you don't talk with people how can you ever effect change?
I personally think it was terribly arrogant of us in the first place to just think that it doesn't matter what we do to other creatures who are not human, as long as it might benefit humans. Of course, the sad thing here is that we're not just limiting this to nonhuman animals, are we? We also perpetuate, we being the human species, we perpetuate terrible cruelty against other humans, too; the in-group, out- group. But to come back to the animal issue; supposing we never had cut up animals to see what happens. Supposing we never had tested drugs on animals. You hear that there would have been very few advances in medical science if it wasn't for the use of animals. That really isn't true and I spent a lot of time investigating this and speaking with very serious medical historians about it.
I think the issue boils down to this. First of all, we should acknowledge and accept, all of us, whether we believe in animal experimentation or not, that it does impose sometimes very considerable suffering on these beings. Whether they be chimpanzees or dogs, we should have learned by now - thanks to the chimpanzee blurring the line once seen so sharp between humans on one hand and animals on the other - that it's not only human beings with personality capable of rational thought and above all, capable of emotional feelings and knowing mental and physical pain.
Once we're prepared to admit that then we can start talking. What should we be doing? There are already amazing alternatives to the use of living animals in medical experimentation; 10 years ago people said, "Oh, we'll never be able to stop using animals for this kind of procedure." So one thing we can do is to make some kind of legislation that if there is an alternative and if it's been approved by the FDA, then animals should not be used for that particular procedure. That's one thing. Two, we should be putting more money, more effort and giving more public acclaim to those people who are working in this field and do make breakthroughs. Where are the Nobel Prizes? In fact, they tend to get shunned to some extent by many of the medical establishment just because it's threatening the status quo: "This is how it's always been done. This is the only way it can be done."
So obviously, if all animal experimentation were stopped tomorrow there'd be total chaos. It would lead to massive suffering, but I'm not advocating that. What I'm saying is, let's not be confrontational. Let's sit down, let's discuss solutions, and let's above all, admit that as long as we continue to use animals, we are inflicting sometimes almost unendurable pain.
Q: There is someone here in the audience that's in the travel business and they submitted a very good question. They want to know what your view is on the role of tourism in East Africa in terms of animal conservation?
A: I'd like to extend that beyond East Africa. That's probably Abercrombie and Kent who are mostly in East Africa. But let's extend this question of tourism across Africa. It's a two-edged sword because overexploiting an area for tourism can be extremely damaging, and I can think of places that have been almost totally destroyed by huge numbers of tourists coming in, Africa or anywhere else. I think you know from the American National Parks that this is a big problem.
However, if you have a very poor nation like so many African nations are, and if it's been desirable to try and protect certain areas of wilderness, forest or plain or whatever it is. If, for example, there is suspected mineral welfare or oil wells, you actually can't expect the government not to sell off this timber concession or mining concession or whatever it is. So one has to first of all work together with those people and see if it can be done in an environmentally friendly way like Conoco was doing. But over and above that, the more money the government has coming in as foreign exchange, through tourism, the more they're prepared to listen to the desirability of setting aside land. Not necessarily land with oil fields under it; that'll probably never happen. But certainly land which is threatened by human population pressures and where the local people want to take it over for grazing their cattle and so forth.
If you can show that there's revenue coming in from foreign exchange from tourism, and if some of that revenue can be directed to establishing the kind of rural development programs I talked about, then tourism has to be seen as an extremely beneficial development. And in addition to that, a constant stream of tourism, as long as it's not too great, going through an area where there's a lot of poaching, for example, again can serve as a deterrent to poaching. It makes a presence and that can only be beneficial.
Q: We are running a little short of time and I want to try to group some questions together here about the traits of chimpanzees. I know you mentioned how humanlike they are in so many ways. There's a question here about violence in the chimpanzee society, another one on the emotional life of chimpanzees. Here's a real interesting one, the likelihood of interspecies communication. Could you try to comment on those, please?
A: Ah, well, that's a tall order, isn't it? Chimpanzee violence: chimpanzees can be extremely violent. As I said, they have a dark side to their nature. The males fight more than the females. The males are the dominant sex. The males fight most often in competition for social rank; who's going to come out above who. You remember I said there are lots of similarities in humans and chimpanzees in all kinds of ways. So chimpanzees can be very violent. They have a wonderful mechanism in place for restoring harmony to the social group after a violent episode. That is that the victim, even though very fearful, (may have been thrashed by a big male), will very often approach that aggressor and make some kind of submissive posture or gesture reaching out a hand, turning and crouching, screaming and whimpering. And usually the aggressor will then reach out and reassure the supplicant patting, embracing, or kissing.
So there is violence, but we don't see real savage violence very often. Just occasionally when males are fighting each other for social dominance and intercommunity violence when one group of males is attacking an individual from a neighboring community. That can be extremely violent. The worse violence we've ever seen, this hatred of strangers. What was the other thing you wanted me to comment on? Males, violence, what was the other one?
Q: Interspecies?
A: Interspecies? Interspecies communication. Maybe the question here was getting at the fact that chimpanzees in captivity can be taught humanlike languages. They can learn many of the signs of American Sign Language, as can gorillas. You had a very famous signing gorilla right here in San Francisco with Penny Patterson's Koko. The chimpanzees can learn 300 or more signs, communicate with each other in social groups as well as with their trainer although they do tend to fall back into chimpanzee, not surprisingly, unless they're being specifically asked to do things. One young chimpanzee, who was never taught anything by a human, nevertheless acquired from his companions - who were all American Sign Language chimps - 56 words by the time he was 8 years old, and he wasn't taught anything by any human. Out in the wild, chimpanzees and baboons have amazing interspecific communication and certainly we understand most of what the chimpanzees are meaning with their postures, gestures, and calls.
And the next one was emotional life. I think we sort of touched on that. There's no question but that young chimpanzees and young human children look just about the same when they show joyful, happy behavior and they show joyful, happy behavior in the same kind of context. When they're out playing in the dirt, when they've got good food in front of them, they behave in the same kind of way. They behave very similarly, too, when they're upset and sad and distressed. Also, as I've described, a chimpanzee may actually die of grief in the case of losing a mother.
Unfortunately, we have run out of time for any more questions. I would just like to say in closing, Dr. Goodall, that you have impressed me and I'm sure the over 500,000 people and listeners who listen to our radio broadcast weekly, hearing today's program. I'd like to make this commitment to you that I will join the Jane Goodall Institute personally and I would encourage our Commonwealth Club members and guests who are here today to consider doing the same. We all need to support your efforts in the environment with animals and in community issues. Thank you very much.
Our thanks to Dr. Jane Goodall, Founder of The Jane Goodall Institute for Wildlife, Research, Education, and Conservation for speaking to us today. Thanks to all of you for attending today's program and I invite you to join us again soon for another meeting of The Commonwealth Club, the Nation's premiere public affairs forum. This meeting is now adjourned. Thank you.
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Tom Campbell
Dee Dee Myers