Page 16 - IFV_Issue 4_2022

Nature

WOMEN HAVE IT. OK?

BY JAMES CLARKE
Francesco Ungaro, Unsplash

t is interesting how women have humans survived. But he and his students impressed by her papers, allowed her
taken over the science of ethology, were making no headway because the to study for a PhD in ethology even
Ithe scientific study of animal chimps would scatter in terror as soon as though she had no previous university
behaviour. The trend began a short time they detected a human. degree. This is something Cambridge
after Jane Goodall’s 1971 landmark book Leakey had noticed Goodall’s unusual had condoned only seven times in its
about chimpanzees, In the Shadow of ability to patiently and intelligently centuries’ old history.
Man. observe, and her deep and inquisitive Within 11 years of first setting foot in
Goodall began her celebrated interest in animals. He suggested she Africa, Cambridge awarded Goodall a
chimpanzee research project by living might like to take up the challenge of doctorate in ethology. It hadn’t been easy.
with a wild chimp community alongside studying the chimp society. Her mentors at Cambridge were aghast
Tanzania’s thickly forested Gombe Stream It was to take incredible patience. Day when she gave her chimps names. She
on Lake Tanganyika. after day she edged a few centimetres was told to assign them numbers, not
A Bournemouth girl, she’d been invited nearer where the chimps were most names. They said ethologists who gave
to Kenya for a holiday and there had active, but without reacting to them in names to their study animals could no
met the famous palaeontologist, Louis any way. She wanted them to treat her longer be objective. Assigning human
Leakey. Leakey was at the time studying as some inanimate object – like a tree feelings and emotions to non-humans
chimpanzees, believing they would stump but all the time she made notes. is known as anthropomorphising and
provide an insight into the way pre- In 1965, Cambridge University, anthropomorphism during most of the

14 • Issue 4 2022 • The Villager