![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() I'd observed them using and making tools which was the big break-through observation that enabled us to get money for me to continue after the first six months. I knew a good deal about the structure of their society and I'd worked out which were the families and I noticed quite a lot of the interactions between them. Not as much as we know today but at least the beginning of an understanding. When I first got to Cambridge I'd been, as I say, one and a half years in the field and I'd begun to know.first of all, I got to recognise many of the individuals and as I got closer to them I'd begun to understand something of their different personalities. Remember, I came from high school, and there was no way.I mean, in those days there were no faxes, let alone emails, so I had to wait a while for letters to go back and forth. We don't have time to mess with a BA,' he said, 'you have to go straight for a PhD, and I have acquired for you a place at Cambridge University to do a PhD in ethology.' When I first went to Cambridge University in 1960 and had been already out in the field for one and a half years with no degree of any sort, my mentor Louis Leakey sent me a letter and said, 'Jane, I'm not always going to be around to get money for you, you have to stand on your own two feet and for that you need a degree. An individual, I suppose the mother, came back,' his words, 'and reached towards the child most tenderly at which point I shot her.' So he goes with his tracker and these were his words as he came close and looked into this tree, he said, 'After a while the chimpanzees noticed me, and with remarkable speed and silence they disappeared from the tree except for one infant who was too small to climb down by itself. Until one day his tracker comes and says that there is a large group of chimpanzees feeding on ripe fruits and they probably can get quite close before the chimpanzees notice, because when chimpanzees do gather in large numbers they are very excited and there's a lot of displaying and vocalisation going on. Well, his time in Africa is coming to an end and he's managed to shoot many of the different animals on his list, but the chimpanzees have proved elusive. Included on his list was 'chimpanzee family, male, female and young one'. I found a piece of writing, an 18th century explorer's journal, and he went exploring in Africa and he was asked by one of the big museums in New York if he would collect specimens of different kinds of animals that they could then mount and set out for public viewing. Let me start off with a couple of stories because one of the things that is fascinating is to think of the changing relationships between humans and non-humans over the years. And as every individual has his or her own unique voice, you would know exactly who was calling, and this is how the individuals of the scattered community maintain contact with each other because they don't travel in a stable group or troupe like baboons and so many monkeys and of course also gorillas. So the greeting you would hear if you came with me to Gombe National Park and climbed up the hills in the morning, wondering if there were any chimpanzees out there, and if you're lucky you hear. But first of all let me give you my traditional greeting and welcome and bring into this room, for the first time I'm sure, the voice of the chimpanzee, this amazing being that I've spent 46 years learning about and whose secrets we still have not even begun really to uncover. As I introduced her she gave me a big kiss and soon broke into fluent chimp. She did that by watching real wild animals where they live, not in zoos or laboratories. Dr Goodall, as you'll hear, transformed the field of animal behaviour. Today we join the renowned Dr Jane Goodall at the University of NSW. Robyn Williams: You're on ABC Radio National, and welcome to another summer Science Show. ![]()
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