Jane Goodall Among the Wild Chimpanzees

Jane Goodall Among the Wild Chimpanzees

Jane Goodall is a woman who has and still does work with chimpanzees in Tanznia, South Africa. The first time she went to Tanzania was in July 14, 1960 when she was just 26 years old.

Because of her research and studies of many different chimpanzees, we as humans will be able to understand ourselves and other primates better.

At first, Jane just sat on a peak at the top of a mountain, so that she could observe the chimps. The chimpanzees would keep a safe distance away so they were able to watch Jane and make sure that she wasn’t going to hurt them in any way. After eighteen months, Jane had finally been accepted into the animals’ group – she was finally considered to be one of them.

Chimpanzees are a lot like humans in their behaviours. They are extremely smart since they are able to make and use tools and weapons. The female mothers are very affectionate and protective over the young and the rest of their family. The young chimps are also very dependant on their mother for necessities such as food, shelter and warmth.

Many people believe that we originated from apes and monkey. We can now possibly learn many things from studying and observing chimpanzees and monkeys.

In the film, Jane set out a pile of bananas so she would be able to observe the chimp’s behaviours. She realized that the stronger, more dominant males were the ones that took most of the bananas, while the smaller, weaker ones, (primarily the females and babies) stayed back. In our society, we may not fight over a pile of bananas, however, we may fight over a pile of money. We would probably not be polite and take only 30 dollars and save some for everyone else. We would be greedy and try to take all the money. This same type of situation applies to the chimpanzees.

Much like humans, chimps have a very good acceptance of death. They may not completely understand or accept another one dying, but they seem to know what is happening. In the video, one chimpanzee’s mother had died, so in turn he became extremely depressed and upset over the loss of his mother and eventually died also. Another example is when a baby died in the film because of a disease that took over the land, the mother still carried her babies body on her back for a while.