Jane Goodall A Giant Among Great Apes

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Since her passing on Oct 1, much has been written, retold and recounted about Jane Goodall and her groundbreaking work among chimpanzees, one of five species of “great apes”.
These include the orangutan, gorilla, chimpanzee, bongo and us, modern humans. Her work over the past seven decades deserves every inch of praise and more.
Like the other great woman scientist before her, Marie Curie, who studied radioactivity with rare passion and zeal, she dedicated her life to studying our closest relatives, the chimpanzees.
Until then, the chimpanzees had been reduced to a circus animal with an extraordinary ability to perform various tricks for the amusement of both adults and children.
ADSTruly, man’s cruelty to his fellow great apes knows no bounds!
Jane Goodall passed away on Oct 1Then along came Goodall to the African forests, and she wasn't looking for Tarzan. The rest is not history.
It was science, pure and simple - insatiable curiosity, openness of mind, relentless patience, incredible powers of observation, unstinting dedication and volumes of field notes, all of which pointed in one direction: these chimpanzees, too, were individuals, and each had an inner life like us humans.
And so, unlike the scientists before her, she assigned names to the chimps she was studying instead of giving them numbers.
Her first meaningful contact at a primate-to-primate level was with David Greybeard, a silvery-chinned chimp from among a troop in the wild. It was no more than a gentle squeeze of the fingers, but it was enough to tell her she had gained their trust and acceptance.
She went to study many others - Goliath, the original alpha male; Mike his cunning and sometimes ruthless successor; Flo the mother of several notable chimps, Figan, Faben, Freud and Fifi. Then there was Humphrey the bully; Gigi, a kind and motherly elder and Mr McGregor, a belligerent male.
And if you are thinking of what I’m thinking, go ahead and give them Malaysian names after our politicians.
Brilliant primatologist
But before all that, came a moment of revelation on a rainy morning on Nov 4, 1960, when she witnessed Greybeard and others take twigs from a tree, pluck their leaves clean and use them as sticks to dig into a termite mound and eat the insects that came along with much relish, like the way we are gratified licking jam or butter off a spoon.
She wrote to her mentor, Louis Leakey, of this singular observation, and his response was equally singular: “We must now redefine man, redefine tools or accept chimpanzees as humans.”
And that was not all she observed: successful chimp leaders were gentle, caring and familial, whilst males who tried to rule by asserting their dominance through violence, tyranny and threat, did not last. Hear! Hear!
And then there were the bouts of violence and savagery among them, disease outbreaks like a crippling polio epidemic and a descent into unspeakable madness and mayhem. She once owned up that chimps are not her favourite animals. She loved dogs more.
ADSPerhaps chimps reminded her of the humans she left behind when studying chimps in the wild, i.e they were too close for comfort.
A brilliant primatologist, she was also a leading light of conservationism when it was still a fledgling science. More than anyone else, she helped us humans understand our place in the world.
Until her work, we humans saw ourselves as a “special creation” gifted with Planet Earth to be used and abused to the exclusion of all other flora and fauna. We now know where that arrogance has led us.
We have decimated our environment and the other species using our “special creation” status as cover. Goodall exposed our “specialness” for what it is - we are a vile, selfish and greedy lot whose words and yes, gestures never match our deeds.
And for all our clever talk, the wild ape in us is very much alive and unwell, condemning future generations to living on a thoroughly despoiled Earth.
Our orangutan
It has always baffled me why Goodall’s work in primatology has not been emulated in Malaysia. We, too, have vast rainforests and the resources to study the only species of primates in this part of the world, the orangutan.
By now, we should be a world leader in such studies, but we are not. Instead, we have taken the easy route of using the orangutan to promote tourism.
It is in this context that we must give credit to the ancient people of the Nusantara who understood that these great apes were similar enough to us to warrant calling them, orangutan - jungle people.
Yes, the way they cared and cradled their young, the reflective way they looked back at humans, their beards, their grimaces and behaviour towards each other all reminded them that these apes were also orang, people.
By the 1900s, the estimated population of orangutans in Borneo was 300,000. Today, it’s 50,000.
We can’t call it genocide, having reserved that term for the Armenians wiped out by the Ottomans circa 1910, and the Jews and Gypsies who were slaughtered by the millions in Nazi-occupied Europe. Orangicide perhaps? Minoricide?
But whatever, make no mistake, their numbers have declined because of us.
Given this severe decline, one would expect our thriving plantation sector and our universities to have long ago set up a well-funded chair of “orangutan studies”, signalling to the world our commitment to the survival of a fellow great ape and the environment.
Let’s embrace the orangutan the way Goodall embraced the chimp, and we will all be winners! But no, we insist our ladang (plantations) are forests. Good luck.
And to the thousands of potential winners, aka young minds who are sickeningly denied their deserved places every year in our institutions of higher learning, look to Goodall as your inspiration.
She holds the rare distinction of being admitted to a PhD programme at Cambridge University without having a bachelor’s or master’s degree. Or A levels. Or the easy-peasy one-year preparatory programme called “matriculation”.
To excel in one’s chosen field of study or profession is an altogether different thing from merely graduating. Ask Goodall and she will tell you that chimps differ in their ability and aptitude when performing tasks. And they seldom tire of learning new things.
And so, I must let her have the last word on what keeps us going as great apes: “Only if we understand, can we care. Only if we care, will we help. Only if we help, we shall be saved.”
RIP, Jane Goodall. - Mkini
MURALE PILLAI is a former GLC employee. He runs a logistics company.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT

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