The Chimpanzees of Gombe by Jane Goodall

First published: 1986

Type of work: Diary

Time of work: July, 1960, to 1986

Locale: Gombe, Tanzania

Principal Personages:

• Jane Goodall, a sociologist, behaviorist, and animal lover who has devoted her life to the study of chimpanzees in the wild
• David Greybeard, the first chimpanzee to visit Goodall’s camp
• Evered, an outcast chimpanzee in competition with Figan
• Flo, a chimpanzee who is the mother of Faben, Figan, Fifi, and Flint
• Faben, Flo’s son, crippled by polio
• Figan, a leader of the chimpanzees
• Fifi, the sister of Faben and Figan and the attentive daughter of Flo
• Flint, a son of Flo, who dies from grief after her death
• Goblin, Figan’s successor
• Humphrey, a big, brutal alpha male who takes control from Mike
• Mike, a benign alpha male
• Passion, and
• Pom, mother and daughter chimpanzees who steal, kill, and cannibalize young chimps

Form and Content

This study is divided into nineteen sections, each organizing information from notes by Jane Goodall and her students, colleagues, and Tanzanian associates, supported and broadened by references to other studies. The initial sections provide a history of human-chimpanzee contact, a study of the chimpanzee mind, and a justification of study in the wild with limited human interference. A description of the Gombe habitat, the field methods employed there, and the basic chimp-observer relationships follows, then a who’s who of chimpanzees from the one chimpanzee community observed close-up and a detailed report of behavior studied. This report is divided into sections on demographic changes, communications, the nature of chimpanzee society, relationships, ranging patterns, feeding, hunting, aggression, friendly behavior, grooming, dominance, sexual behavior, territoriality, object manipulation, and social awareness. These sections include accounts of the particular behavior of individual chimpanzees, sociograms of interactions based on age, gender, and community, and numerous charts and lists to qualify and quantify observations.

The introduction credits Louis Leakey, paleontologist-cum-anthropologist, for helping Goodall begin her studies of Gombe chimpanzees and for providing the intellectual basis for the study: the belief that the uncanny similarities between human and chimpanzee brain and social behavior suggest divergence from a common evolutionary stock, and therefore that a knowledge of chimpanzee life and behavior amid the animal’s natural habitat could provide clues to the behavior of early humankind, whose milieu was far closer to that of wild chimpanzees. Goodall discusses the importance of the extended length of the study, especially given the contrast between her early conclusions about a benign community and her later observations of warlike behavior. In particular, she notes the value of such studies for comprehending human aggression in the evolutionary context: a hostile physical environment, competition, and the need for genetic survival.

Almost every chapter emphasizes the complexity of the “fusion-fission” society in which the chimpanzee lives and provides examples of how chimpanzees cope with an ever-changing social scene, the sociological interactions by age and gender, the demands on chimp cognition in nature, and how they rise to those demands. The term “fusion-fission” conveys the idea of a flexible pattern of regular group separation followed by the group’s reforming itself, dividing into other social units, and breaking up again; the result is opportunities for individual and personal activities and explorations followed by a sharing of experiences, discoveries, or changes.

The conclusion sums up the implications of the descriptive chapters: Though undoubtedly overwhelmingly lower down the evolutionary ladder than humans, chimpanzees possess a number of qualities previously considered the sole property of human beings. Such qualities include the chimpanzees’ “sophisticated mechanisms for displacement in space and time”; their extensive mental map, with a spatial memory rich in detail about particular locations; their decision-making patterns based on cognitive assessment of assorted interacting factors; their ability to plan for the immediate future; their accurate and rapid “premathematical” assessments of quantity; their classification by category; their use of tools; their interpretations of stimuli; their ability to learn from others and from experience, to innovate, and to pass on new patterns; and their nascent concept of self. Goodall’s study describes some chimpanzees as “masters of reasoned thinking and skillful tactical and social manipulation,” imaginatively playing out possible future behavior before such behavior is called for, gaining desired goals by “skillful and devious means,” planning moves, manipulating subordinates, sustaining supportive relationships, and following sexual patterns that allow intelligence to “win out over high rank and aggressiveness.”

The final appendices provide methodology, association matrixes, supportive data, and a comprehensive, annotated bibliography of primate research to date. Ultimately, the study speaks for itself: day-by-day observation of a chimpanzee community over a quarter of a century. To those who dismiss chimps as lesser beings, Goodall offers the family and community relationship of a group of chimpanzees who, through her report, become as individualized and as unique as anyone’s human neighbors and friends and whose interactions and exchanges seem all too familiar. Her study makes clear why she is impressed by the chimpanzees’ “plasticity,” “inventiveness,” “social awareness,” and “communicative skills”—qualities that make them, in her opinion, “the most fascinating of all primates to study” other than human beings.

Context

Jane Goodall has received numerous conservation awards, including the Order of the Golden Ark of The Netherlands, the Golden Medal of Conservation from the San Diego Zoological Society, the New York Zoological Society Award, and the J. Paul Getty Wildlife Conservation Prize. She has participated in National Geographic television specials and received two Franklin Burr awards from the National Geographic Society and the society’s Centennial Award. She was the eighth person in the history of the University of Cambridge to receive a Ph.D. without first earning a B.A. Goodall’s devotion to her profession, her willingness to make the physical, cultural, and social sacrifices necessary to attain her goals, and the professionalism of her study have inspired others to continue her efforts, as confirmed by the Gombe Stream Research Center, the Jane Goodall Institute for Wildlife Research, Education, and Conservation, and the ChimpanZoo. Each section of The Chimpanzees of Gombe suggests new directions for further research about patterns not confirmed by her observations.

Goodall helped pioneer the discipline of primatology, setting up methodologies to study everything from birth abnormalities to tactile and olfactory communication, from daily, seasonal, and lifetime individual and community travel patterns to piracy and scavenging. Her observations of gender differences and gender-related behavior in chimpanzees suggest that biological factors cannot be ignored in the chimpanzee (or the human) equation. Her study of childhood dependency and the disastrous psychological effects of a disrupted mother-child relationship suggests far deeper mother-infant bonding than had been previously understood—a bond extending, in some cases, through a lifetime. She notes tool use differing by sex, with females using tools to extract termites patiently for extended periods throughout the year but with males using them only during the height of the termite mating season in November. She finds the social framework far more flexible than one would expect, but with male chimpanzees in the main bonding more easily with fellow males for short-term advantages and females bonding less but for long-term advantages. She finds both sexes in need of prolonged physical contact and soothed by grooming sessions. More important, she finds that one superior individual can dramatically change the nature of the community and thereby affect its future cultural evolution.

Bibliography

Gould, Stephen Jay. “Animals and Us.” The New York Review of Books 34 (June 25, 1987): 20-25. In this excellent comparative study of four wildlife studies, Gould calls Goodall an intellectual hero, praising her “sheer gumption” in carrying out noninterfering observation, closely observed for a long period, and with an admittedly high level of emotional involvement. Yet he notes Goodall’s not following females for full-day studies because of preconceptions later disproven by female involvement in hunts, her statements sometimes echoing the chain-of-being tradition, and her scheme of research following human interest. Gould says that the “prison of language” creates perceptual difficulties that blind even the best scientists to the realities of other species.

Jolly, Alison. “A Life Among the Chimpanzees,” Natural History 95, no. 10 (October, 1968): 88-92. Jolly finds Goodall a “delight” of reason, balance, and convincing detail and praises her focus on individual chimpanzees and interaction within a social context. Jolly explores the degree to which Goodall’s study advances human understanding of primates and raises questions about human responsibilities to “creatures capable of foresight and feeling.”

Konner, Melvin. “Jane Goodall’s Masterwork: Life Among the Chimps.” Ms. 15, no. 6 (December, 1986): 14-16. Konner praises Goodall’s book as “a comprehensive masterpiece” of great human relevance and high scientific import that “sets a high standard” for future researchers. He dismisses criticisms of anthropomorphizing, noting that only someone as empathic as Goodall could possibly write an intimate history, a “family album,” of three generations of chimpanzees.

Montgomery, Sy. Walking with the Great Apes. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1991. This study of three women—Jane Goodall with chimpanzees in Tanzania, Dian Fossey with mountain gorillas in Rwanda, and Biruté Galdikas with orangutans in Borneo—recounts their achievements and argues that their professional and personal passions have enriched human knowledge of wild primates.

Power, Margaret. The Egalitarians, Human and Chimpanzee: An Anthropological View of Social Organization. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Power questions Goodall’s assertion that sociological patterns further species survival. She maintains that by initially engineering the food supply, Goodall warped chimpanzee patterns of behavior and social organization and produced unnatural patterns of aggression, cannibalism, and genocide.

Zuckerman, Lord. “Apes R Not Us.” The New York Review of Books 38 (May 30, 1991): 43-49. Zuckerman attacks Goodall for what he calls her lack of formal training, “team” observations, inconsistent accounts, change in perception, anecdotal anthropomorphizing, and limited reference to authority. His comparative study of five works on primates emphasizes his belief in humankind’s superiority to beast.