![]() Don’t Tell the Kids-Sugar Builds Big BrainsĪs their canine teeth show, chimpanzees are equipped for hunting. Now, let’s learn about some fascinating things researchers have discovered about chimps in the past six decades. How can you hope to understand the behaviors and social dynamics of a species that can live for 30 years or more through just a six-month or one-year study? Sixty years of continuous study at Gombe earned Goodall a wealth of insights into chimpanzee behavior, such as the fact that chimps hunt, the ritual sharing of meat, the presence of warfare between chimp communities and, of course, tool use. Perhaps most significantly, Goodall kept doing her research way longer than anyone else. We wouldn’t understand chimpanzee behavior and intelligence in the way we do today if Jane Goodall hadn’t paved the way. This was unheard of at the time, but today, few people think of chimpanzees as mechanical clusters of instincts. She saw chimpanzees as individuals with personalities and gave them names rather than numbers. This initially led traditional scientists to disregard her results. Second, Goodall did her research differently than anyone else. In Goodall’s own words, “When I was a little girl, I used to dream as a man, because I wanted to do things that women didn’t do back then such as traveling to Africa, living with wild animals and writing books.” Fortunately for all of us, she saw her gender as an asset rather than an obstacle in the male-dominated field of scientific research. She was a trailblazer in a field that didn’t want her in the 1960s. But even this expert had to fight to be taken seriously, and for two main reasons:įirst, she had the audacity to do field research as a woman. Today, she is universally regarded as a giant in the world of science and conservation. Jane Goodall wasn’t the first to study chimpanzees when she set up her camp in Gombe on Lake Tanganyika at the request of the famed paleontologist Louis Leakey, but she changed the way field biology is done. And if you know a little about the complexities of chimpanzee behavior, an encounter with these great apes becomes truly fascinating.īefore diving into some interesting facts about chimps, however, it’s important to acknowledge that World Chimpanzee Day-and much of what we have learned about chimpanzee behavior over the last 60 years-would probably not exist without one diminutive woman who has had an outsized impact on science. Instead, you are fully immersed, walking through the forest with all your senses awakened. Unlike a traditional African safari, you’re not separated from the environment by the shell of a Land Cruiser. ![]() You can’t help but feel your heart race when you hear the first far-off calls echoing through the equatorial rain forest on a primate safari. This is one of the most thrilling sounds in nature. The video captures the calls of an extended community of chimps gathering in a large fig tree to feed and nest for the night. I want to open this post by taking you into Kibale National Park in Uganda to experience the sounds you might encounter while chimpanzee trekking on a Great Uganda Gorilla Safari. ![]() Celebrate World Chimpanzee Day on July 14 with Nat Hab!
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