10.2.25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to radioi's Diary of Science and Nature. Your reader's
Kelly Taylor. I'll have articles on the topic of science
and nature. But first a reminder that RADIOI is a
reading service intended for people who are blind or have
other disabilities that make it difficult to reprinted material. Well,
today we're going to begin something a little different, commemorating

(00:27):
the passing of Jane Goodall, one of the Titans of
nature conservation, who passed away at the age ninety one.
And National Geographic has published online a reprint of an
article that originally appeared in that Geo August of nineteen

(00:50):
sixty three. And this was written by Jane Goodall and
is our original article about the chimpanzees of Gumbay Stream
Game Game Reserve. Up on the mountains, the midday sun
glared fiercely, but down in the valley near the swift

(01:12):
running stream, it was cool and still. I stood listening
until I heard a faint rustling of leaves, the only
sound to betray the presence of the group of chimpanzees.
I was trying to approach, slowly and quietly, but making
no attempt to hide. I moved toward the great apes
until I was only thirty feet away. As I sat down,

(01:34):
they watched me, staring rather hard, and a young female
who had been lying on the ground climbed a little
way up a tall fig tree. One of the males
stood upright to watch more closely. He was a superb specimen,
standing about four and a half feet in height, his
massive shoulders and bull neck suggesting the tremendous strength in

(01:55):
his arms. He must have weighed a good one hundred
thirty pounds, and he was strong enough to snapped me
with one hand. I'm sorry he was strong enough to
snap with one hand a branch so tough that a
man would be hard put to break it with two.
Later I was to learn how it feels to be

(02:15):
slammed on the head from behind by a large male chimpanzee,
but fortunately for me, he did not continue his attack.
After a moment or two, the group stopped looking my way,
recognizing me for the strange hairless primate they had grown
accustomed to seeing amid the other mountain fauna. The six
adults rested on the ground or stretched out along the

(02:37):
branches of a wild fig near by. Four youngsters played quietly.
I thought then, as I always think, when I am
face to face with mature chimpanzees in their native forests,
of the striking difference between the wild apes and those
in captivity. The chimpanzee imprisoned behind bars is bad tempered, immaturity, morose, moody,

(03:00):
and frequently rather obscene. In his freedom, he is majestic
even when excited, and for the most part, dignified and
good natured. For about an hour I sat with the group.
Then one of the males stood up, scratched thoughtfully, and
moved off down the valley one by one. The others followed,

(03:20):
the infants riding astride their mother's backs like diminutive jockeys.
The females and youngsters stared at me as they passed.
The males scarcely glanced in my direction. To be accepted
thus by a group of wild chimpanzees is the result
of months of patients in England. Before I commenced my

(03:41):
field study, I met one or two people who had
seen champion chimpanzees in the wild. Quote. You'll never get
close to chimps, not unless you're very well hidden, they
told me. At first it seemed they were right, but
gradually I was able to move nearer the chimpanzees, until
at last I sat among them, enjoying a degree of

(04:03):
acceptance that I had hardly deemed possible. At this intimate range,
I observed details of their lives never recorded before. I
saw chimpanzees in the wild hunt and kill for meat,
though this had been suspected. Nobody dreamed that a chimpanzee
would attack an animal as large as a bushbuck until

(04:25):
I saw an ape with his kill. Most astonishing of all,
I saw chimpanzees fashion and use crude implements, the beginnings
of tool use. This discovery could prove helpful to those
studying man's rise to dominance over other primates. I cannot
remember a time when I did not want to go
to Africa to study animals. Therefore, after leaving school, I

(04:49):
saved up the fair and went to Nairobi, Kenya. There
I was fortunate in meeting and working for doctor Lewis S. B. Leaky,
then curator of the Corindan Museum. After a year, doctor
Leaky asked me if I would undertake a field study
of chimpanzees. Although the chimpanzee has been known to science
for nearly three centuries and although because of its striking

(05:13):
resemblance to man, it has been used extensively as an
experimental animal in medical and other fields, no attempts had
been made to study this ape in its natural habitat
until doctor Henry Nissen made his pioneer study in French Guinea.
I found his nineteen thirty one report invaluable as I
prepared my own program. The primary aim of my field

(05:36):
study was to discover as much as possible about the
way of life of the chimpanzee before it is too late,
before encroachments of civilization crowd out forever all non human competitors. Secondly,
there is the hope that results of this study may
help man in his search toward understanding himself. Laboratory tests

(05:59):
have revealed a surprising amount of quote insight in the chimpanzee.
The rudiments of reasoned thinking, knowledge of social traditions and
culture of such an animal studying under natural conditions could
throw new light on the growth and spread of early
human cultures. Nineteen months after doctor Leaky suggested the field study,

(06:23):
I had received funds for a preliminary investigation from the
Wilkie Foundation to Plains, Illinois, which supports studies of man
and other primates. I was ready to set out for
a three month visit to Lake Tanganika region. The authorities
were unwilling to allow a single European girl to go
off into the bush by herself, so my mother accompanied

(06:45):
me from Nairobi. It took us more than five days
to reach the Gombey Stream Game Reserve in Tanganika, a
sixty square mile protected area set aside by the British
where I would do my research. The land rover was
overloaded and most of the eight hundred and forty miles
of earth roads were in terrible condition. Eventually, after innumerable delays,

(07:08):
we reached Kegoma, a small European settlement overlooking Lake Tenganyika.
There I hired the government launch to take us on
the last stage of the journey, the sixteen miles up
the lake to the Gombey Chimpanzee Reserve. Game ranger David
Anste had arranged one of his semi annual visits to

(07:32):
the reserve to coincide with our arrival. As we traveled
up the crystal clear lake, I studied the terrain where
I was to work. The mountains rise steeply from the
narrow beach and are broken by innumerable valleys and gorges.
The valleys are thickly forested, but the upper slopes become
open woodland, and many of the peaks and ridges are treeless.

(07:55):
Most of the wild chimpanzees in Africa inhabit the dense
rainforests of the Congo and West coast. The more open
country of the Gombe Stream Reserve is ideal for field study,
though behavior of apes living there might not be the
same as that of apes in the dense forests. Our
talk as we sailed the lake was about chimpanzees, and

(08:17):
one of ranger Anstey's stories persuaded me that they can
be dangerous when cornered. He told me of an African
who decided to climb an oil palm tree to cut
down some nuts for cooking oil. A chimpanzee was high
in the tree feeding on the nuts, but the African
failed to notice the animal until he had climbed well
up the trunk. The ape, intent on feeding, only then

(08:40):
saw the Africans started rapidly down and as he passed,
the man hit out at him, slashing away half his
cheek and one eye as he did so. At about
two o'clock on the afternoon of July fourteenth, nineteen sixty,
we arrived at Casikella, a campsite mid way along the

(09:00):
ten mile coastline of the reserve. The motor launch went
back to Kigoma with orders to return for David. A
few days later. We found ourselves on the beach, surrounded
by untidy looking crates and bundles, together with the small
boat and its outboard motor, which would be our only
link with civilization. Our permanent party numbered four, myself, my mother, Dominic,

(09:26):
our African cook, and Dominic's wife. As we set up
camp that first day, we found the heat almost intolerable,
but the big tent was soon pitched and everything bundled inside.
I shall always remember David's expression when he found that
our only tableware consisted of a couple tin plates, a
cup without a handle, and a thermostop. Indeed, we were

(09:48):
equipped with only the barest essentials, and I think even
Dominic was secretly shocked. During the first two months of
my field studies, I often despaired. Each dawn I set
out alone, following the little streams as I explored the
valleys one by one, forcing my way through the dense undergrowth,
or scrambling up the steep slopes. Sometimes I saw a

(10:09):
group of chimpanzees feeding in a tree, but seldom managed
to get close enough before the shy apes moved away.
Frequently I heard their noisy calling, but usually they had
moved off before I could catch up with them. Disheartened,
I trudged wearily back to camp each dusk. But those

(10:29):
early days, however frustrating, initiated me into the ways of
mountain life. The forests no longer seemed hostile after I
learned to creep along the pig trails instead of forcing
my way through the undergroup. The slopes were no longer
a nightmare when I had discovered the baboon trails, or
I could pull myself up the steepest parts by roots

(10:50):
worn smooth by constant use. I became acquainted with other animals,
troops of vervett and redtail monkeys, the beautiful red columbus monkey,
the shy bushbuck, the fat ginger bush pig. One morning,
while walking along the lake shore, I was approached by
an excited fisherman who showed me a tree into which

(11:11):
a bull buffalo had chased him before. Who you kalisana.
The man said, he's a bad one, this fellow. Indeed,
the tree was scored by innumerable gashes from the buffalo's horns. Mostly, however,
the small herds are wary and hard to approach. Once
I did have to climb a tree when I met

(11:32):
two crotchety old bulls along a narrow track. My climb
to safety was speeded by memory of Doctor Leaky's opinion
of them quote, I'd rather meet a rhinoceros or a
lion any day. I am more frightened of the buffalo
than of any other creature in Africa. Often I saw
tracks of leopard, or recognized its powerful feline smell, and

(11:54):
sometimes I heard the soft rasping of its hunting call.
Many months later I saw one. He passed only a
few yards away in the long grass, and I felt
slightly apprehensive, But when he winded me, he turned silently away.
I never attempted to hide, and gradually the animals became
used to the strange, pale skin primate that had invaded

(12:16):
their territory. After about six months, most of the chimpanzees
would sit and look at me calmly at distances of
a hundred yards at first they fled if they saw me.
Within five hundred yards three quarters of an hour's climb
from camp, I discovered a peak overlooking two valleys and
many open grassy ridges and slopes, an ideal place for

(12:38):
long distance observation. From the peak, I could locate a
group and then try to get closer. I had a
tin trunk carried up there with blanket, electric torch, a
couple of tins of baked beans, coffee, and a kettle.
When the chimps slept close by, I stayed up in
the mountains near them. So gradually I began to learn

(13:00):
in the basic behavior patterns of the chimpanzees, and after
six months I was able to pick out and name
some individuals. When I saw Mike lazing in the sun,
for example, or count Dracula ambling past, it was like
meeting a friend. People often ask me how I choose
such names for individual chimpanzees. My answer is that some names,

(13:21):
such as Missus Maggs Spray and mister McGregor simply come
to mind. Strange as it may sound, some chimpanzees remind
me of friends or acquaintances in some gesture or manner,
and are named accordingly, one chimpanzee had a pale, flesh
colored face instead of the dark color common in adults.

(13:41):
It gave me a slightly eerie feeling when I first
saw him close by, and ever since that he was
Count Dracula. When the three preliminary months came to an end,
the National Geographic Society took over sponsorship of my research
and financed a further twenty months. My mother had to
return to England, but by then I was accepted by

(14:03):
the authorities and so was allowed to stay on at
the reserve. At this time I was joined by Hassan
of the Cucamega tribe, an African who had worked for
doctor Leaky for fifteen years. A most responsible and reliable helper,
he took over the little boat and the monthly trip
to Kigoma for stores and mail. The trial period was

(14:24):
over and I could settle down to building a closer
contact with the apes. Chimpanzees are nomadic within their territory,
and they follow no fixed circuit. They have no regular
sleeping trees. Most chimpanzees in the reserve, probably between sixty
and eighty individuals, range at various times of the year

(14:44):
over the whole sixty square miles and sometimes beyond the boundaries.
The distance and direction of their wanderings, they may travel
as much as eight or ten miles in a day,
depend on the seasonal availability of the fruits, leaves, and
blossoms that form the bulk of their diet. The chimpanzees
during much of the year move about in small groups

(15:05):
of three to six animals. Such a group I discovered
from observation may consist of adult males and females, of
females and juveniles, of males only, or a mixture of
sexes and ages. During the day, two or three small
groups may join and move about together for a few
hours or a few days. In certain seasons, mainly when

(15:26):
some kind of favored fruit is plentiful, I've often seen
as many as twenty five chimpanzees together. What makes the
social patterns so complicated is that the small groups are
not stable. When two groups which have joined temporarily separate again,
there has frequently been an exchange of individuals. Males often
leave the group they are with to move about alone,

(15:49):
subsequently joining another group or another lone male. This casual,
free and easy grouping makes it harder to recognize individuals.
Yet it is essential to do so before one can
even begin to understand the social pattern. From my mountaintop perch,
I observed how chimpanzees go to bed every night. Each

(16:10):
one makes its own sleeping platform or nest, except for
the small infants, which sleep with their mothers until they
are about three years old. The construction of a nest
I found is simple and takes only a couple of minutes.
After choosing a suitable foundation, such as a horizontal fork
with several branches growing out, the chimpanzee stands on this

(16:32):
and bends down a number of branches from each side
so that the leafy ends rest across the foundation. He
then holds them in place with his feet. Finally, he
bends in all of the little leafy twigs that project
around the nest, and the bed is ready. But the
chimpanzee likes his comfort, and often, after lying down for

(16:52):
a moment, he sits up and reaches out for a
handful of leafy twigs, which he props under his head
or some other part of his body. Then he settles
down again with no obvious or with obvious satisfaction. One evening,
I sat quietly below a group of five chimpanzees that
were feeding in a tree. There was Missus Maggs with

(17:14):
her two offspring, Little Joe about two years old, and Spray,
then about five. There was another mature female, Matilda, and
a young male Que. Just before sunset, there was excited
calling as another male joined the Spray climbed down from
the tree and ran up the slope to greet him.
As they climbed the tree together, I saw that the

(17:35):
newcomer was mister McGregor, an old male who had lost
the hair from his shoulders and was almost completely bald headed,
a rarity in chimpanzees. The group fed quietly until the
sun had almost vanished behind the mountains acrossed the lake,
and then Missus Maggs began looking for a place to
make her nest. She tested the branches exactly the way

(17:56):
a person tests the springs of a hotel bed. One
by one, the other rapes began to make their nests.
When the sun finally sank out of sight, Missus Maggs
was lying on her back in her completed nest as
the chill of night crept into the air. Little Joe
ran to her mother, who put out her arm and
drew the young one close to the warmth of her body.

(18:17):
Darkness fell swiftly, and I climbed to my mountaintop lookout post,
opened a tin of beams, and boiled my kettle over
a little fire. The moon was nearly full, and the
mountains were beautiful and rather ghostly. When I returned to
the chimpanzees, I disturbed them as I settled down with
my blanket about fifty yards away, and they began to call
out loudly, alerting a troop of baboons sleeping in the

(18:41):
valley below. The chimpanzees soon quieted down, but the baboons
went on barking for a long time. The chimpanzees slept
soundly for the rest of the night, but I was
perched halfway down a steep slope with only a small
tree to keep me from slithering into the ravine below.
I was glad for the first glimmering of dawn. As

(19:02):
it grew lighter, I gradually made out the dark shape
of Missus Maggs, with Joe curled up beside her. Soon
Joe sat up, yawned, and gazed about. Missus Maggs rolled
over onto her back, flung out an arm and also yawned.
Joe jumped onto her chest, leaned forward and pressed her
face against her mother's flinging her arms around her neck.

(19:26):
The other apes began to move. I could see Matilda
sitting up in her nest and spray feeding in a
tree close by. Joe became restless. She climbed to a
branch above the nest and hung down, kicking and twisting
from side to side. Her mother reached up and patted her,
pushing her to and fro until Joe, delighted, tumbled down

(19:48):
on top of her. Missus Maggs, her legs in the air,
bounced Joe up and down with her feet, and then
suddenly bent her knees so that Joe collapsed in a
heap of waving arms and legs. The game went on
for about ten minutes than Missus Maggs suddenly sat up
and peered through the branches. Matilda had left her nest,

(20:10):
and sounds below indicated that the others are moving away.
Missus Maggs touched Joe, who jumped to her at once,
clinging under her belly as the mother swung down from
the tree. When a chimpanzee is born, it is almost
as helpless as a human baby, save that it rapidly
develops great strength in hands and feet, enabling it to

(20:31):
cling to its mother's long hair as she travels from
place to place. For the first four months, the infant
never leaves its mother, But after this it begins to venture,
first a few feet and then a few yards away.
It is still very unsure of itself, and the mother
is always ready to reach out should it lose its balance.
By the time the infant is about a year old,
it has more confidence and spends hours playing gently, hanging

(20:55):
from a branch and patting at its toes, or doing
careful gymnastics on a branch. If two infants play together,
they pat out at each other or have a tug
of war with a twig. Always the games are slow
and gentle. By the time they are about two years old,
the little apes are very active, and their playing is
far more adventurous. Whether they are swinging and leaping around

(21:16):
in a tree or rolling over and over on the ground,
they never seem to be still for a minute. Their elders,
particularly the adolescents and the younger males, are amazingly good
natured with them. I once watched little Fifi tormenting an
adolescent male figan. He was resting peacefully when Fifi hurled
herself onto him, pulling his hair, pushing her fingers into

(21:38):
his face, biting his ears. She swung above him, kicking
out while he indulgently pushed her to and fro with
one hand. Finally, exhausted for the moment, she flung herself
down beside him. From the ages of about three years,
the young chimpanzee becomes more and more independent. Often it
still moves around with its mother until it is five

(22:00):
or six, but it no longer rides on her back
or sleeps in the nest with her at night. Games
become rougher and wilder, wrestling and chasing being the favorite sports.
Occasionally a small infant tries to join in, and then
the older ones treat it with great consideration. I saw
one youngster swinging an infant gently by one arm, and then,
after peering down, she dropped the little one to a

(22:22):
leafy platform a few feet below. When the infant had
difficulty in climbing up again, she gave a helping hand.
At about eight years, the chimpanzee child attains puberty. During
the next three or four years of adolescence, it gradually
takes its place in society. How long it might live
no one can say, pending further study, but a good

(22:43):
guess for average lifespan in the wild would be forty
to fifty years. In this society, relationships among the adult
apes are more harmonious than had been assumed from observations
of chimpanzees in captivity. Of course, if you judged from
sound alone, you would imagine that wild chimpanzees were always
fighting and quarreling. When two groups meet, there is sometimes

(23:07):
a fantastic cacophony, as the males call loudly, drum on
tree trunks, and shake branches, while the females and youngsters
scream and rush out of the way. But this is
merely excitement and pleasure. With his highly emotional, extrovert temperature temperament,
the chimpanzee likes to express his feelings in action. When

(23:29):
squabbles do arise, often over the merest triviality, they are
usually settled by gestures and loud protests. Once I was
watching a youngster feeding peacefully beside an adult male. By chance,
they both reached for the same fruit. The youngster immediately
withdrew its hand, but screamed loudly and flapped out at

(23:49):
the male. The male screamed and flapped at the youngster.
This went on for a few moments, and then the
quarrel ended, neither ape having touched the other. Relationships between
mature and adolescent males are particularly harmonious. They do not
even fight over females. I once saw seven males in
succession mate with a single female with no sign of

(24:12):
jealousy or antagonism. As to mating in general, chimpanzees in
captivity breed all year round, and it seems likely that
this is the case in the wild, because females appear
receptive toward males during all months of the year. In addition,
I saw small infants in April, June, September, and October.

(24:33):
During September and October, however, when the chimpanzees are frequently
seen moving about in large aggregations, excitement caused by this
social stimulation does appear to have a very marked effect
upon reproductive behavior. I saw the animals mating almost daily
during these two months Spring and Tanganyika. Thus, although it

(24:55):
would appear that a certain amount of mating must take
place throughout the year. There is apparently a very definite
mating season. Mutual grooming plays an important role in the
social life of chimpanzees, and two friends or even a
small group will sit quietly for hours, searching through each
other's long black hair for specks of dirt, grass, seeds,

(25:16):
or chicks. Some students of animal behaviors see in this
grooming activity the first beginnings of true social and altruistic
behavior in the whole animal kingdom. I am often asked
do chimpanzees have a language. They do, not, of course,
have a language that can be compared with our own,
but they do have a tremendous variety of calls, each

(25:38):
one induced by a different emotion. The calls range from
the rather low pitched who of greeting and the series
of low grunts that is heard when a chimpanzee begins
to feed on some desirable food, to the loud, excited
calls and screams which occur when two groups meet. One
call given in defiance of apon predator, or when a

(26:01):
chimpanzee for some reason is angry at the approach of another,
can be described as a loud raw. This is a
single syllable several times repeated, and is one of the
most savage and spine chilling sounds of the African forest.
Another characteristic call is a series of hoots, the breath
drawn inaudibly after each hoot, an ending with three or

(26:23):
four roars. This is the cry of a male chimpanzee
as he crosses a ridge. It seems to be an
announcement to any other chimpanzees that may be in the
valley below here I come. These calls, while they are
not a language in our sense of the word, are
understood by other chimpanzees and certainly form a means of communication.

(26:44):
In addition, chimpanzees communicate by touch or gesture. A mother
touches her young one when she's about to move away,
or taps on the trunk when she wants it to
come down from a tree. When a chimpanzee is anxious
for a share of some delicacy, he begs out his
hand palm up exactly as we do. He may pat
the branch beside him if he wants a companion to

(27:06):
join him there. When two animals are grooming each other
and one feels that it's his turn to be groomed,
he often reaches out and gives his companion a poke. Once,
when three males were grooming one another, I saw a
female going around, poking at each of them in turn.
But she was completely ignored and so sat down sadly
and groomed herself. There are also many gestures of greeting

(27:30):
and friendship. Sometimes, when two friends meet after separation, they
fling their arms around each other in a delightful embrace.
Despite this fairly well developed system of communication, a chimpanzee
suddenly confronted with danger gives no alarm call to warn
his companions, but simply runs off silently. Well, there's quite

(27:53):
a bit more to this article from Doing Good All,
but we'll have to stop because of time. This week's
edition was a little different for a diary of science
and nature, but I hope you enjoyed that, and please
stay tuned for more on RADIOI