My Life with the Chimpanzees

Jane Goodall

4 ideas

1. David Greybeard fishes termites with grass

   In late 1960 at Gombe, Goodall watched an adult male chimpanzee she had named David Greybeard strip leaves from a twig and poke grass stems into a termite mound. He then pulled the stems out and ate the termites clinging to them, which meant he was both making and using a tool. When she reported it, Louis Leakey replied that science must now redefine 'tool', redefine 'man', or accept chimpanzees as human, because toolmaking had been treated as the line separating humans from other animals.

2. Hiding in the henhouse to see

   At about five years old, Goodall wanted to know where on a hen an egg came out, so she crept into a stuffy henhouse and waited motionless for roughly four hours until a hen laid one. Her mother saw her excitement and listened to the whole story instead of punishing her, which rewarded patient firsthand observation rather than suppressing it.

3. Naming animals reveals individual personalities

   Goodall gave the Gombe chimpanzees names like Flo, Fifi and Goliath instead of the numbers scientists expected. Naming them made her track each animal as an individual with its own temperament, relationships and emotions.

4. Habituation through patient, non-threatening presence

   For months the wild chimpanzees fled whenever Goodall came near. Access to natural behavior was earned by making herself unremarkable, not by getting closer.

Save and mark ideas in the app