Jane, Lady of the Jungle

As a child, Jane Goodall was enthralled with the Tarzan books and dreamed of visiting the exotic jungles of Africa. She realized her dreams at the age of 24, when she set up camp along Gombe Stream, in Tanzania, and began her life's work - studying wild chimpanzees. This past May, Michael Modzelewski talked with Dr. Goodall about her lifelong passion for animals and her efforts to help save the endangered chimp - man's closest living relative.

MM: Picasso once said something to the effect that happiness as an adult results from having been able to do what one enjoyed as a child. Did your childhood influence your career:

JG: Most definitely. When I was a year old, my mother gave me a toy chimpanzee with a music box in his tummy. I still have him!

Our house in England was filled with books. One day I read The Story of Doctor Doolittle. I had never loved a book so much. I was seven years old. I think that was when I first decided I would go to Africa someday. I loved Kipling's Jungle Books, and especially the books about Tarzan.

Besides reading, I watched the wild creatures near my home: squirrels, birds, insects. I even started a nature club, and in a hidden place in the garden, surrounded by bushes, we had our "camp." We went on nature walks and I wrote down what we saw.

MM: When you look back over your career, what were your most fulfilling moments:

JG: There are three. One was scientific: when I first observed tool-use by the chimps. And two were personal: when Flo came close to me with her newborn baby, showing her trust, and then when David Greybeard held my hand; the pressure of his fingers broke down the barriers of separate evolutions. [David Greybeard was one of the chimps Dr. Goodall observed early in her study. He was the first one to allow her to follow him closely.]

MM: Please tell me about your latest project, Chimpanzoo. How many zoos are participating?

JG: Chimpanzoo is a research program for the study of captive chimps, with keepers and students observing chimp behavior in zoo groups, just as we study their behavior at Gombe. Fourteen zoos in North America are already taking part and will share data on approximately 130 chimps. We hope the study will assist zoos in their efforts to improve living conditions for their chimpanzees.

MM: Have zoos already changed for the better?

JG: Yes, quality care for chimps has improved dramatically over the past 10 years. Ham, the space chimp, lived for a number of years in isolation in a zoo. But then he was sent to the North Carolina Zoological Park, in Asheboro, where he was integrated into their chimp group and spent the last four years of his life. Sedgwick County Zoo, in Wichita, Kansas, has a fine indoor facility. Oklahoma's Tulsa Zoological Park also has very fine accommodations for chimps.

MM: Geneticists say that we share with the chimpanzee all but 1 percent of our genes. Our genetic similarity has created a demand for chimps to serve as animal models for biomedical research, particularly with AIDS. You described a 1987 visit to the SEMA Inc. Laboratories [in Rockville, Maryland] as "a day that will haunt me for the rest of my life. It's quite one thing to see chimpanzees insane on film, and quite another to see it with your own eyes." Is lab care of primates still a nightmare?

JG: Of the 2,000 chimps in labs, more than half are maltreated, by my standards. This is not always deliberate; much of it is done through the ignorance of untrained staff. Chimps are more like humans than like monkeys. In the labs they desperately need larger cages and more varied environments. They are intelligent, social animals and should not be kept isolated singly in cages with nothing to do. Ensuring some psychological well-being of primates is the aim of one of the amendments added to the Animal Welfare Act in 1985. Regulations to enforce this and the other amendments, however, have not yet been approved. There is still debate, and wasted time, over what constitutes psychological well-being in chimpanzees.

MM: The listing of wild chimps on the U.S. Endangered Species Act was recently changed, giving them more protection. How did this change come about?

JG: Through the tireless efforts of many people and organizations, including the Worldwide Fund for Nature, The Humane Society of the U.S., and the Jane Goodall Institute [in Tucson, Arizona]. Geza Teleki, of the JGI, worked very hard on the petition to change the chimp's status from threatened to endangered. I made eight trips to the U.S. last year to talk to members of Congress. Of course, we are happy now that wild chimps are listed as endangered; but we want captive chimps outside Africa listed the same. As long as they are still classified as threatened, they can be used for biomedical research. And we need to develop cheaper, more efficient, more humane ways to conduct disease research.

MM: Exactly how are chimps taken from the wild for biomedical research?

JG: It is infants still clinging to their mothers who are collected. The mothers are shot. If the youngster survives the bullets and the fall from the tree, it faces a horrendous journey in an unsanitary, cramped cage. For every 100 chimps taken for research, as many as 1,000 have died.

MM: What is the current wild population?

JG: Between 150,000 and 200,000 - down from several million only 50 years ago.

MM: How has Gombe itself changed from the isolated Eden you described in In the Shadow of Man in 1971?

JG: At first there were only about 50 fishermen on nearby Lake Tanganyika. Now more than 1,000 go through Gombe to get to their village. Unorganized tourists from all corners of the world come to Gombe, bringing human diseases such as polio, which the chimps can catch. The Gombe Stream Research Center is now pressured on all its borders. It encompasses only 30 square miles. The chimps there are on an island - a zoo, if you will, in the wild.

MM: How does your Tanzanian staff view what is happening to the chimpanzees in Africa and around the world?

JG: They think of it as being similar to the slave trade; that's how much like people they think the chimps are.

MM: What advice would you give a young person today wanting to be an ethologist? Has being a woman helped or hindered you?

JG: Being female helped me. Louis Leakey [the famous paleontologist, who encouraged her to study the chimps] believed that women work better in the field, that they are more patient and observant. Chimps do tend to be less fearful of women than of men. And human females usually spend several years with non-verbal creatures - their own infants.

It is difficult to be an ethologist today. You will succeed if you must study animals to have a meaningful life. You must be ready to seize an opportunity and be willing to sacrifice for it. I saved up money to go to Africa by working as a waitress.

MM: With all the demands upon your time now, what sort of personal schedule have you evolved?

JG: I spend about four months of each year at Gombe watching the chimps, four months in Dar es Salaam writing, and the rest of the year raising money to pay for the fieldwork. Even if I didn't need to raise the money, I would go on the lecture tours. Telling the public [about the chimpanzees and the threat to their existence] is most important.

When I return to Gombe each year, the chimps look up as if to say, "Oh, here she is again!" And they carry on. The are incredibly tolerant.

MM: Heading into your fourth decade with the chimpanzee study, do you still have the same enthusiasm for fieldwork? Are there as many things to discover with the chimps, compared with the early days?

JG: Oh yes, there are still many doors to open, keys to turn. We don't know why, for instance, some young females leave communities in which they were born and go to other areas and stay there; or why some adult males are obsessed with getting to the top of the community when there's no obvious gain. Even low-ranking males can sneak a female in estrus out to the perimeter of an area to sire a child.

The most moving thing we've seen in 30 years was when a baby orphan chimp was adopted by an adolescent 12-year-old male from a completely different family. We don't know why Spindle adopted the baby. Maybe it filled a space in his heart, for when Spindle was young, he too lost his mother.

MM: It's been written that the social organization of a chimpanzee community is so complex that you felt you were making a study of village life. How many inhabitants of that original "village" remain?

JG: Only three: Fife, Everend, and Gigi. I'm currently writing a sequel to In the Shadow of Man - more about the extended family.

MM: The last time most people saw your son, Grub, he was a small boy. How old is he now and what is he doing? Is he interested in a career in wildlife research or conservation?

JG: Grub is 22 years old, and like most young people, he wonders what he should be doing. He lives both in Africa and England. He went on his first chimpanzee mission in April. Chimps are smuggled into Spain and used by photographers for tourist shots. They beat the chimps and burn them with cigarettes to gain the upper hand. Grub went "undercover" to photograph the chimps so we could record their faces and try to learn who they are. He found seven kidnaped chimpanzees in the Canary Islands and four on the mainland. His photographs show what wretched conditions they must endure.

MM: Grub as a covert agent for conservation.

JG: Yes, sometimes situations demand that. Cruelty is a terrible thing. I believe it is the worst human sin.

MM: With such widespread pollution, destruction of habitat, and so many species on the very brink of extinction, how do you maintain optimism?

JG: I feel hope for the future because there has been an amazing improvement in attitudes. Humanity is becoming aware of it's inhumanity. The media and press are the only allies the animals have. And with my own books and lectures, far more than raising money, I'm asking for understanding.

MM: "My name is Mowgli," Kipling wrote. "I am of the Jungle. The wolves are my people, and Kaa is my brother." We seem to have lost that belief and innocence, that innocence of belief.

JG: Children have a natural interest and love for animals; keeping that alive is critical. Even if we make a vast improvement now, the follow-up has to be there. Helping to educate the next generation, encouraging respect for all living beings, and improving conditions for chimps and other animals used in medical research are my goals.

Perhaps the most important part of my life is still ahead of me...