by Bob Randall
Guest Blogger
(Editor's Note: Not many scientific researchers have a wide following among the general public, but Jane Goodall, who spent much of her ninety-one years on Earth living among chimpanzees in the wild and studying their behaviors, certainly did. Today Bob Randall, a retired ranger with the US National Park Service and a friend of this blogger for more decades than either of us are keen to count, discusses the life and achievements of Ms. Goodall who sadly passed away this week. Many thanks, Ranger Bob, for this very informative tribute to Jane Goodall and her research. - Pa Rock)
Ethology is the study of animal behavior. It is a branch of biology. When I think of animal behavior, three things immediately come to mind. During my graduate level Ethology class, my professor told the story of an old dog that was lying on a front porch beside a busy residential street. A young puppy was playing in the street in front of the house. The old dog jumped down, made his way to the street, picked the pup up by the scruff of the neck and brought it back to the safety of the yard just before a car zipped past. I had always been told that animals didn’t think. The same professor, while on a field trip: we saw an owl’s nest with a couple of owl chicks patiently waiting for a parent to return with food.I commented that it must be boring to just sit in the nest. The prof said, “It helps when you don’t think.” My third thought is my association with my dog, Buddy. He experienced emotions very similar to ours. There’s no doubt in my mind of that.
I’ve heard that some mammals have the cognition of a three-year-old human child. I don’t know of the science that shows that but intuitively, I suspect that it is correct. Koko, the “talking” gorilla was a star in interspecies conversation but unfortunately, Penny Patterson, Koko’s person, was not a scientist as such and her work was not well respected in the scientific world. I suspect that I could find other studies to show this idea, but also realize that more study needs to be done before a firm determination is made. That’s not the topic here.
Jane Goodall made great progress toward showing just how close chimpanzees are to humans in emotional/mental capacities. Not content to sit in a lab, she watched chimpanzees at home. The chimps’ home. She made field observations which, at the time she began her studies, was not approved by the scientific community. Furthermore, she did not have her doctorate, so she was beneath the gaze of established biologists whose noses got in the way of their vision, looking down as it were. She succeeded and became a leading figure in primate ethology. We could go on all day about Dr. Goodall.
Let me wrap this up. She made a comment about Donald Trump’s behaviors saying that they “remind me of male chimpanzees and their dominance rituals.” (*Two references follow at the end of this article.) Besides speaking to Donald Trump’s behavior, I think that speaks to human behavior. Much of our behavior and even cognition has been hewn by evolution. We think more with our emotions than with logic. Our cognitive biases had some survival value and were selected naturally. If you must put it into a quick slogan, our biases are nature and our logic is nurture.
So back to DJT, the only reason he doesn’t beat on his chest isbecause that is a gorilla behavior, not so much a chimpanzee behavior. However, I can imagine that in private, he has stood shirtless in front of a mirror, beat his chest, and tried to imitate Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan yell. This seems more of an insult to chimpanzees than to people.
RIP Jane Goodall.
* https://www.msn.com/en-us/news
https://economictimes.indiatim
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