Page 29 - FWG Issue 3_April_2022
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Nature






                                             its mores, went ahead anyway and gave   in 1965. He named all his study animals.
                                             her study group individual names.   And there was George Schaller from
                                                                                Alaska, with his Year of the Gorilla (1965).
                                             Who can forget her David Greybeard? It   He also used names but only in his
                                             was by watching this big male fashion a   book in which he drew attention to the
                                             stick to ‘fish’ for ants down an opening   irrefutable similarities between human
                                             in a termite heap, that Goodall was able   society and that of other mammals.
                                             to demolish the long-held belief that   Douglas-Hamilton and Schaller drew
                                             humans were the only mammals that   attention to the fact that mammals, like
                                             made tools. Chimps were considered to   humans, display emotion and altruism.
                                             be vegetarians until Goodall witnessed
                                             them hunting for meat, including the   But ethology was still male-orientated
                                             occasional small antelope and monkeys   and, unsurprisingly, researchers were still
                                             which they would corner by team effort.   inclined to concentrate on the role of the
                                             They then shared the meat among their   male as the dominant sex.
                                             associates.
                                                                                An anthology published in 1998 - Intimate
                                             And who can forget Flo? Flo, the mother   Nature:  the bond between women and
                                             chimp who, after two years of seeing an   animals, referred to  “Ground-breaking
                                             unresponsive Goodall being around, sat   field studies by women scientists (which
                                             next to her and tentatively reached out   have) changed the way the world sees
                                             her hand to touch her.             animals”.


                                             That was most certainly a cathartic   The book’s American editors, Linda
                                             moment in the history of ethology.   Hogan, Deena Metzger and Brenda
                                                                                Peterson, came to the conclusion that we
                                             In  the  Shadow  of  Man had an enormous   have become increasingly separated from
                                             impact on the reading public as  well as   animals and from the natural world in
                                             among scientists.                  general. Their book, intended to be more
                                                                                literary than scientific, said, “For centuries
                                             Men  had founded the relatively new   now, male priests, doctors and scientists
                                             science of ethology and indeed several   have declared . . . creatures have no soul,
                                             had produced some highly readable   no capacity for pain, or emotion”.
                                             books. One remembers a best-seller on
                                             wild elephants by Iain Douglas-Hamilton   But “female scientists were replacing the
                                                                                hard, objective eye of the past with one
                                                                                of a softer sight, replacing a concept of
                                                                                anthropomorphism with one of empathy”.


                                                                                More and more women were now
                                                                                roughing  it  in  the  wilds,  the  Goodall
                                                                                way.  They wanted to be as close and
                                                                                unobtrusive as possible to the animals
                                                                                they were studying. It was inferred that
                                                                                men,  by  default  rather  than  intent,  paid
                                                                                too little attention to the fundamental
                                                                                influences that female animals had on the
                                                                                social behaviour of their species. This was
                                                                                despite the fact that most of the higher
                                                                                mammal societies they were studying
                                                                                were in fact matriarchal.

                                                                                Among the fundamental topics that
                                                                                male researchers tended to overlook
                                                                                were  motherhood,  social  bonds,  and
                                                                                the vital role of female animals in the
                                                                                development of the young. Judging by
                                                                                the volume of books on animal behaviour
                                                                                since the  ‘80s, it is evident that female
                                                                Vlad Kutepov, Unsplash
                                                                                scientists approached the subject with

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