![]() 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. The motor launch went back to Kigoma, with orders to return for David a few days later. The ape, intent on feeding, only then saw the African, 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.Īt about 2 o’clock on the afternoon of July 14, 1960, we arrived at Kasekela, a campsite midway along the 10-mile coastline of the reserve. 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. He told me of an African who decided to climb an oil-palm tree to cut down some nuts for cooking oil. Our talk as we sailed the lake was about chimpanzees, and one of Ranger Anstey’s stories persuaded me that they can be dangerous when cornered. The Land-Rover was heavily overloaded, and most of the 840 miles of earth roads were in terrible condition. ( Read how Jane Goodall overcame gender barriers in her field.) Bumps and dust for 840 milesįrom Nairobi it took us more than five days to reach the Gombe Stream Game Reserve in Tanganyika, a 60-square-mile protected area set aside by the British where I would do my research. The authorities were unwilling to allow a single European girl to go off into the bush by herself, and so my mother accompanied me. I was ready to set out for a three-month visit to Lake Tanganyika region. Leakey suggested the field study, I had received funds for a preliminary investigation from the Wilkie Foundation, Des Plaines, Illinois, which supports studies of man and other primates. Knowledge of social traditions and culture of such an animal, studied under natural conditions, could throw new light on the growth and spread of early human cultures. Laboratory tests have revealed a surprising amount of “insight” in the chimpanzee-the rudiments of reasoned thinking. Second, there is the hope that results of this research may help man in his search toward understanding himself. The primary aim of my field 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 nonhuman competitors. I found his 1931 report invaluable as I prepared my own program. Nissen made his pioneer study in French Guinea. Leakey asked me if I would undertake a field study of chimpanzees.Īlthough the chimpanzee has been known to science for nearly three centuries, and although, because of its striking 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 Dr. Leaky, then curator of the Coryndon Museum. There I was fortunate in meeting and working for Dr. Therefore, after leaving school, I saved up the fare and went to Nairobi, Kenya. I cannot remember a time when I did not want to go to Africa to study animals. This discovery could prove helpful to those studying man’s rise to dominance over other primates. Most astonishing of all, I saw chimpanzees fashion and use crude implements-the beginnings of tool use. Though this had been suspected, nobody dreamed that a chimpanzee would attack an animal as large as a bushbuck, until I saw an ape with his kill. I saw chimpanzees in the wild hunt and kill for meat. “You’ll never get close to chimps-not unless you’re very well hidden,” they told me.Īt 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 acceptance that I had hardly dreamed possible.Īt this intimate range, I observed details of their lives never recorded before. In England, before I commenced my field study, I met one or two people who had seen chimpanzees in the wild. To be accepted thus by a group of wild chimpanzees is the result of months of patience. The males scarcely glanced in my direction. The females and youngsters stared at me as they passed. One by one the others followed, the infants riding astride their mothers’ backs like diminutive jockeys. Then one of the males stood up, scratched thoughtfully, and moved off down the valley. ![]() ![]() ![]() ( Discover how a captive orangutan learned a "human way of life.")įor about an hour I sat with the group. The chimpanzee imprisoned behind bars is bad tempered in maturity, morose, moody, and frequently rather obscene in his freedom he is majestic even when excited and, for the most part, dignified and good natured. 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.
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