Page 16 - Dainfern Precinct issue 3 2022

NATURE

WOMEN

HAVE IT. OK?

BY JAMES CLARKE Photo: Francesco Ungaro, Unsplash

t is interesting how women have active, but without reacting to them in It was by watching this big male
taken over the science of ethology, any way. She wanted them to treat her fashion a stick to ‘fish’ for ants down
the scientific study of animal as some inanimate object – like a tree an opening in a termite heap, that
Ibehaviour. The trend began a stump but all the time she made notes. Goodall was able to demolish the long-
short time after Jane Goodall’s 1971 held belief that humans were the only
landmark book about chimpanzees, In 1965, Cambridge University, mammals that made tools. Chimps
In the Shadow of Man. impressed by her papers, allowed her were considered to be vegetarians
to study for a PhD in ethology even until Goodall witnessed them hunting
Goodall began her celebrated though she had no previous university for meat, including the occasional
chimpanzee research project by living degree. This is something Cambridge small antelope and monkeys which
with a wild chimp community alongside had condoned only seven times in its they would corner by team effort. They
Tanzania’s thickly forested Gombe centuries’ old history. then shared the meat among their
Stream on Lake Tanganyika. associates.
Within 11 years of first setting foot in
A Bournemouth girl, she’d been invited Africa, Cambridge awarded Goodall a And who can forget Flo? Flo, the
to Kenya for a holiday and there had doctorate in ethology. It hadn’t been mother chimp who, after two years of
met the famous palaeontologist, easy. Her mentors at Cambridge were seeing an unresponsive Goodall being
Louis Leakey. Leakey was at the time aghast when she gave her chimps around, sat next to her and tentatively
studying chimpanzees, believing they names. She was told to assign them reached out her hand to touch her.
would provide an insight into the way numbers, not names. They said
pre-humans survived. But he and his ethologists who gave names to their That was most certainly a cathartic
students were making no headway study animals could no longer be moment in the history of ethology.
because the chimps would scatter in objective. Assigning human feelings
terror as soon as they detected a human. and emotions to non-humans is In the Shadow of Man had an
enormous impact on the reading
Leakey had noticed Goodall’s unusual known as anthropomorphising and public as well as among scientists.
ability to patiently and intelligently anthropomorphism during most of the
t
observe, and her deep and inquisitive 20 h century, was a deadly sin among Men had founded the relatively new
interest in animals. He suggested she scientists. science of ethology and indeed
might like to take up the challenge of Goodall, while respectful of science several had produced some highly
studying the chimp society. and its mores, went ahead anyway readable books. One remembers a
and gave her study group individual best-seller on wild elephants by Iain
It was to take incredible patience. Day names. Douglas-Hamilton in 1965. He named
after day she edged a few centimetres all his study animals. And there was
nearer where the chimps were most Who can forget her David Greybeard? George Schaller from Alaska, with
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