Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Michael Morris
firm Nolands to inspire and develop young South Africans), “Mr H”, as has long been the custom, was with her at the microphone.
“Mr H” was a gift 25 years ago from a man named Gary Haun, who went blind at the age of 21. Haun, undeterred by the doubts of friends, pursued an ambition to become a magician.
“He was told he couldn’t,” Goodall said, “but he said: ‘Well, I can try’. And he succeeded. Kids didn’t even realise he was blind. His message was: never give up.”
It was her own maxim, too, and one informed by her life and the lessons learned from chimpanzees.
“They have been living for hundreds of thousands of years in their forest... never overpopulating, never destroying the forest. I would say that they have been in a way more successful than us as far as being in harmony with the environment.”
But the animals themselves, and the environment, was threatened by their more intelligent cousins. In 1900, there were an estimated one million chimpanzees in the world. Today there are fewer than 300 000.
“Part of my task is to break down that mythical line between us and them, to show how like us chimpanzees are… and to show how the biggest difference between us, our intellect, is being so misused. How bizarre that the most intellectual creature to walk the planet is destroying it!” The biggest challenge lay in engaging people, being prepared to listen to them, and not simply tell them off.
Goodall’s grace was famously displayed some years ago when Far Side cartoonist Gary Larson poked fun at her in a cartoon featuring two chimpanzees engaged in mutual grooming. One finds a blonde human hair and asks: “Conducting a little more ‘research’ with that Jane Goodall tramp?” Goodall was in Africa when it appeared and didn’t see the cartoon before her institute fired off a cross letter objecting to what it considered an outrageous offence.
When the primatologist did finally see the tease, she found it amusing, and went on to write a preface for The Far Side Gallery 5, acknowledging Larson’s role in contrasting and comparing animal and human behaviour.
“He helped to draw attention to our cause, and I have been lucky with plenty of people helping along the way,” she said.
A chastening footnote for Larson was that when he visited the Gombe reserve in 1988, he was attacked by the chimpanzee, Frodo. Tellingly, Goodall is unsentimental about human-chimpanzee empathy, or its absence.
“I have more empathy for my dog than for chimpanzees,” she said. “Some of them are just horrible.” She added with a wry, half-damning, half-tolerating smile: “After all, they are too like us.”