Jane Goodall remembered for science, compassion and chimpanzee conservation

By Gwynne Dyer

Jane Goodall died Oct. 1, still on the road at 91 and still advocating for biodiversity in general and the welfare of chimpanzees in particular.

Goodall was a hero to me and millions of others for her courage, her wisdom and her compassion. She was also one of the greatest self-taught scientists in history. As a young woman with no scientific training, she set up camp in Tanzania’s Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve in 1960 and began to live with a band of chimpanzees. Nobody had ever done that before — all studies had been done with chimps in captivity — but she gained their trust and began to study their real character.

It was breathtakingly human. Not only are chimpanzees our closest genetic relatives, but they share the same emotions, have individual personalities, and even think in similar patterns, although a smaller brain and the lack of language restrict the range and complexity of their thought.

After three years in Gombe, she wrote an article for National Geographic that shook the foundations not only of primatology — the study of primate behaviour — but also of anthropology.

She revealed that chimpanzees hunt and eat monkeys. Previously, they were thought to be harmless vegetarians. She reported that they made and used tools — twigs stripped and shaped to fit into holes in termite hills to extract the termites. They were far more like us than anybody had suspected.

In time, this new knowledge transformed the perspectives of scientists who used to view animals as mere biological machines and even questioned whether they were self-aware. It changed popular attitudes toward wild animals too, and may have saved chimpanzee bands from extinction.

But one aspect was deeply troubling: they fight wars. Like us.

Goodall was still spending time with the Gombe chimpanzees in 1974 when the Kasakela group split into two smaller bands — which went to war with each other.

The war lasted four years, until all the adult males of one band had been killed, and the surviving females and their young found shelter with other groups. Many human beings, hearing this very bad news, thought: I’ve already seen this movie, except that the protagonists were human.

It was at this time, around 1983, that Goodall wrote to me about it because I had just done a documentary television series about war. She wanted to discuss the implications of the Gombe war because it shredded the belief that human beings had invented war with the rise of civilization.

Instead, it was an ancient family tradition. We didn’t invent war; we inherited it.

To my lasting regret, I never replied to her. It was a time of great upheaval in my life, and my priorities were elsewhere. But here’s what I would have said to her then — none of which would have surprised her, even so long ago, I expect.

When considering any human social or political behaviour that is problematic, remember where we come from. Any species that starts to build a civilization, which is what we’ve been up to for the past 5,000 years, will be carrying a great deal of cultural baggage from its pre-civilized past.

Evolution isn’t conscious and doesn’t care about the welfare of individuals. If you’re a very bright chimp, you may deplore the recurrent warfare that disfigures chimp society, but you have no words to condemn it.

Anthropologists know that human hunter-gatherers were usually trapped in similar territorial wars between neighbouring bands. That was presumably pro-survival for the group at some point in the distant past despite the cost to many individuals. However, humans have language and bigger brains, and they can reason and talk their way out of their old habits.

We’re in the midst of that process now. We have been in it for the past 100 years, and we’re definitely not home and dry yet. The chimpanzees are trapped in their ugly little wars, but we may be able to escape from ours eventually.