Re: Jane Goodall notes

On Mar 11, 7:31 pm, "caldervang...@xxxxxxxxx"
<caldervang...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Saw Jane Goodall speak last Saturday night in Washington DC to a group
of educators, mostly about her program called Roots and Shoots.

I find her to be sweet, humble, smart.  A great lady & all women
scientists owe her some gratitude.

Her speech was grand.  Impassioned.  Entertaining.  Touching.
Factual.  It is probably somewhat of a "canned" speech, but so what?
I had not heard it yet....

I took notes.  I only have one line that is a direct quote, but here
goes:

Her mother was with her in the first 4 months of her work in Gombi, in
1960.  Louis Leakey helped get her started, and the both of them were
considered "crazy" at the time to send a woman off into the forest on
her own.

she saw chimps buiding nests in groups and on their own.

Dinosaurs and birds build nests. So this is no great revelation.

She (of
course... all of us in sap know this) saw chimps using tools....

Lots of animals use tools in one respect or another. It's silly to
suggest that chimpanzee tool usage tells us anything about how chimps
evolved in to humans.

even
stripping the leaves off twigs & to use that twig to fish out
termites.  This observation revolutionized our place in nature.... we
were at that time defined as humans at least in part by our ability to
use tools.

chimps have a whole series of gestures, and use them in the same
way(s) that humans do.

Chimps have their first child at about 13 years old, and then another
one every 5 or 6 years.  The bond between the mother and child gets
even stronger after the younger sibling is born.  A long childhood is
important to social learning -- like us -- and a young chimpanzee will
pay careful attention to to the behaviour of an adult IF he is
interested in the behaviour.

"our brain has had an explosion."  .... what caused our explosion?
She thinks it is
"this sophisticated language."

She's largely correct about this. It's our ability to conceptualize
and understand the long-term value of resources so that we can work in
concert to maintain these resources and survive the dry season and its
very dramatic predatory/competitive factors.


and that we
communicate about things that are not present.
learn about things of the past
(now with writing)
plan way ahead
and can have a discussion with 10 people around a table and make sense
of it.

Well stated. Yes. All of these abilities emerged because of communal
selection.


J.G. then talked about when the forests disappear, deserts
appear.....  ice disappearing... (ask any Eskimo)....

Vague. What mattered was the dry season.


in 1986, first Conservation Conference in Chicago (about chimps) ...
Congo basin threatened...

Gombi surrounded by cleared land.... the bush meat COMMERCIAL trade is
very harmful to chimps.

And then she talked a lot about her Roots and Shoots program.

regards
calder

.

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