That was very taboo in the scientific community, where you were supposed to maintain this veneer of objective distance from research subjects. So it was actually helpful for you to be going into Gombe without having scientific training or an academic degree, because that enabled you to just see what you were seeing without those blinders having been put on you? Jane GoodallĪnd contrary to the scientific practice of the day, you gave the chimps human names, like David Graybeard or Fifi. He wrote this book and immediately all the other scientists pounced on him and said: “Well, these are captive chimpanzees, they’re only intelligent because our humanity has rubbed off on them!” I mean, how arrogant can you get? Sigal Samuel There was one wonderful book called The Mentality of Apes written by an Austrian psychologist about a colony of captive chimpanzees. The only research being done on chimpanzees at that time was in captivity. So I went knowing that of course the chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, would have emotions, would have personalities, and would be highly intelligent. I had absolutely no idea that scientists have this reductionist feeling about animals. What you have to realize is that when I went to Gombe, I hadn’t been to college. You cannot share your life in a meaningful way with a dog, a cat, a rabbit, a rat, a bird, a horse, a pig, I don’t care, and not know that they have emotions similar to ours and that they have minds that can sometimes solve problems. Well, actually, I learned it long before I got to Gombe to study chimpanzees, because when I was a child I had a wonderful teacher and that was my dog, Rusty. What was your first clue that chimps are reasoning, feeling creatures like us? Jane Goodall But you quickly discovered that’s just not true. And yet they were very sure that a scientist should not talk about a chimp having a mind, personality, emotions - only humans had those. When you first started studying wild chimps in 1960, scientists knew almost nothing about their behavior. Subscribe to Vox Conversations on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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