Goodall: 56 years of studying chimps in Tanzanian forest

Dr Jane Goodall thanks Natural Resources and Tourism minister Jumanne Maghembe upon her receipt of an award in Dar es Salaam recently. PHOTO | FILE

What you need to know:

  • She has six honorary doctorates and many other awards. Indeed, Dr Jane Goodall is a prominent British primatologist, ethologist and anthropologist.
  • In 2004, she was named a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Dar es Salaam. She has been feted in environmental, humanitarian and other arenas nationally and globally.

She has six honorary doctorates and many other awards. Indeed, Dr Jane Goodall is a prominent British primatologist, ethologist and anthropologist.

In 2004, she was named a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

In April 2002, Secretary General Kofi Annan named her a United Nations Messenger of Peace. Her other honours include the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, the French Legion of Honor, Medal of Tanzania, Japan’s prestigious Kyoto Prize, the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science, the Gandhi King Award for Nonviolence and the Spanish Prince of Asturias Awards.

She is also a member of the advisory board of BBC Wildlife magazine and a patron of Population Matters (formerly the Optimum Population Trust).

The Walt Disney Company honoured her with a plaque on the Tree of Life at Walt Disney World’s Animal Kingdom theme park, alongside a carving of her beloved David Greybeard, the original chimpanzee which approached Goodall during her first year at Gombe National Park.

After six decades of hard work, Tanzania recently awarded for her immense contribution in chimpanzee conservation.

On July 14, 2017 she marked 56 years of studying social and familiar interaction with the chimpanzee in Gombe National Park in Kigoma Region.

The award ceremony was attended by government officials, over 10 diplomats, her family members, relatives, friends and well-wishers.

A Tanzania National Parks (Tanapa) group sang a song to celebrate her work. The singers later gave her a CD of the song.

Natural Resources and Tourism minister Jumanne Maghembe, said the government appreciated Dr Goodall work and that was why it honoured her.

“Dr Goodall’s discoveries paved the way for more studies and interventions on wildlife conservation, increasing our understanding the importance of protecting nature. Environmental conservation is expensive, but the government will support it. We are raising funds for this endeavour.”

Dr Goodall has told Vice President Samia Suluhu Hassan about the encroachment of humans on the Gombe National Park, endangering chimpanzees.

“Poverty and people’s lack of awareness towards environmental conservation lead to environmental destruction,” said Dr Goodall.

For her part, the VP said that the government was committed to conserving the natural habitats or ecology of the national parks.

Ms Hassan promised Dr Goodall that the government would empower the people so that they take up other development activities instead of encroaching on the parks.

Her work at the park

In the year Dr Goodall started her study at Gombe, she came up with three remarkable discoveries among chimpanzees. She firstly discovered the use of tools by the creatures.

She observed a chimpanzee that she had named David Greybeard using a grass stalk as a tool to extract termites from a termite hill.

Later, she observed Greybeard and another chimpanzee named Goliath stripping leaves off twigs to create a tool for pulling termites.

Previously, tool use among chimpanzees was only rarely observed, and tool creation by non-human animals had never been observed.

Until then, tool making was considered one of the defining characteristics of being human.

A few months later, she discovered that chimps eat meat, dispelling the notion that chimpanzees are vegetarians.

In the early 1970s, she observed chimps in the community engaging in coordinated attacks against the chimps of the neighbouring Kahama Chimpanzee Community.

According to historian Ian Morris, this “Four Year War” represented the first time scientists had observed chimps “deliberately seek out, attack and leave for dead” chimps from another community, and it has been described as “the first record of lasting ‘warfare’ among the primates.

Parental influence

During the ceremony, Dr Goodall attributed her award to her mother who always supported her from a young age when she was adventurous with a great curiosity for animals.

She referred to some instances at her youth when she went out in their backyard and carried earthworms and brought them to her bed so that she can sleep with them. She continues saying regardless of how bad she messed up her bed with mud because of the worms, her mother still flashed a smile.

In one of the previous articles she was featured by The Citizen, she said she recalls spending several hours in a chicken house when she was five, trying to figure out how a chicken laid eggs.

Her mother encouraged her to pursue her curiosity of the animal kingdom and come to Gombe for her study on chimps.

“Mother told me that I could do anything if I put my mind to it. I am always grateful for that,” she said.

Personal life

Dr Goodall was born in 1934 in London to Mortimer Herbert Morris-Goodall, a businessman, and Margaret Myfanwe Joseph, a novelist who wrote under the name Vanne Morris-Goodall.

The British primatologist, ethologist, anthropologist, and United Nations Messenger of Peace is considered to be the world’s foremost expert on chimpanzees.

Goodall was married twice. On March 28 in 1964, she married a Dutch nobleman and wildlife photographer Baron Hugo van Lawick, at Chelsea Old Church, London.

She became known during their marriage as Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall. The couple got a son they named Hugo Eric Louis in 1967, however they divorced in 1974.

The following year, she remarried Derek Bryceson who died of cancer in October 1978.

Bryceson was a politician and a minister during President Nyerere’s regime. Although her husband was a politician, she decided not to be one herself and focused on what she was passionate about.

According to her, it was not a conscious decision to not remarry after Derek passed away, nor does she regret that it happened that way.

“It just happened,” she said and added: “Besides, I have my son, my sister, my work. Who would want to marry me? I am so busy.” She speaks of him as if he is still with her and adds that he once visited her at Gombe.

Connection with the Leakey family

Dr Goodall always wanted to came to Africa and finally she was brought for the first time by her friend who took her direct to Kenyan highlands in 1957.

Her friend advised her to call the notable Kenyan archaeologist and palaeontologist, Louis Leakey, to ask for an appointment to discuss animals.

By that time, Leakey was looking for a chimpanzee researcher believing that the study of existing great apes could provide indications of the behaviour of early hominids. However, he proposed that Dr Goodall work for him as a secretary.

After obtaining his wife Mary Leakey’s approval, Louis sent Dr Goodall to Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, where he laid out his plans.

In 1958, Leakey sent her to London to study primate behaviour and anatomy. Leakey raised funds, and on July 14, 1960, Goodall went to Gombe Stream National Park, becoming the first of what would come to be known The Trimates.

She was accompanied by her mother, whose presence was necessary to satisfy the requirements of safety by David Anstey who was a chief warden of the place.

Leakey arranged funding and in 1962, he sent Goodall, who had no degree, to Cambridge University. She went to Newham College, and obtained a PhD degree in ethology.

She became the eighth person to be allowed to study for a PhD there without first obtaining a bachelor’s degree.

Her thesis was completed in 1965 under the tutorship of Robert Hinde, former master of St John’s College, Cambridge, titled “Behaviour of the Free-Ranging Chimpanzee”, detailing her first five years of study at the Gombe Reserve.