Some things self finds slightly disturbing: The first time Goodall tries to get close to the chimpanzees, they avoid her. By the time her sister joins her, 18 months later, the chimpanzees are far less skittish. And by the time a professional photographer, Hugo van Lawick, joins Goodall to film a documentary on the chimpanzees, they “took a relatively short time to accept” him. One (who the author named “David Graybeard”) would even “leave his group and come to see whether by any chance we had a banana.” (p. 72)
So by now, self thinks it is safe to say that all the chimpanzees in that area of Tanzania are thoroughly acclimated to interacting with humans, receiving bananas and what-not.
Is that good? Is it really possible to “domesticate” a wild animal like a chimpanzee? What happens when you run out of bananas?
Here are the names of the first set of chimpanzees that Goodall befriends: David, William, and Goliath. They start visiting camp regularly. Goodall “soon discovered that they loved chewing on cloth and cardboard; sweaty garments, presumably because of their salty flavor, were the most sought after.”
What happens eventually is that — as self could have predicted — Goodall and van Lawick begin to form an attachment to one another (Put two young, unmarried people in the same tent in the Tanzanian rain forest, and see what happens!). It was all the doing of Goodall’s patron, Louis B. Leakey who, not content with a) getting the National Geographic Society to fund Goodall’s research; and b) getting her accepted to Cambridge University (“Louis had managed to get me admitted to Cambridge University to work for a Ph.D. in ethology, the study of human behavior.” — p. 63), must also find her a husband. Leakey enthusiastically wrote to a friend of Goodall’s — before Hugo van Lawick and Jane Goodall had even met — that he had “found someone just right as a husband for Jane.”
Oh! So very Hunger Games!
Who knew the renowned archaeologist would take such an interest in Goodall’s private life!
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Kanlaon 