Goodall: Spellbinding Advocate for Animals

In a week marked by gory photos of mutilated animals and shrill protests on behalf of “World Laboratory Animal Liberation Week,” she offers a cool, clear voice of reason.

London-born primatologist Jane Goodall brings with her no pictures of armless monkeys, no clever signs such as “Imagine having your body left to science while you’re still in it.”

Instead, 55-year-old Goodall, who began studying the wild chimps of Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania nearly 30 years ago, quietly seduces her audiences.

Weapon of choice for the woman who paved the way for Dian Fossey and other ape researchers? A spellbinding, awe-inducing slide show on one of her favorite chimp families in Gombe.

Here Tuesday, for instance, Goodall unquestionably has the crowd at Santa Monica College’s gymnasium in the palm of her fine-boned hand. Then she moves on to the hot issues of day. If chimpanzees are to survive--she says they’re an endangered species, down from millions to perhaps 150,000 in the wild--Goodall insists certain practices must stop. Among them:

--Private ownership of chimpanzees as pets, celebrity owners such as Michael Jackson notwithstanding.

--Cruel capturing, selling and using chimps and other animals for medical research (“It’s arrogant of us as humans in the first place just to think we have the right to do medical research on animals,” she claims, acknowledging, however, that because “animal research is built right into almost everything that medical research does” an immediate cutoff would create chaos and increase human suffering. She believes more alternative research methods should be found and rewarded with scientific prizes. In the meantime, she wants more money and concern invested into seeing that research animals receive the best possible treatment).

--Abusive treatment of chimpanzees used for entertainment purposes in circuses, stage performances and films.

“It’s very sad. Even films that have had a very good message nevertheless resulted in the death of some of the chimps,” she says. “I think the motivating thing that keeps me going on this particular course is the more you know about animals, the more horrified you are by cruelty--to animals and towards human beings. A lot of it is due to ignorance.”

Annual Lecture Tour

Slim and elegant with her graying hair pulled back in a simple ponytail and only the slightest touch of makeup coloring her face, Goodall is on her annual lecture tour. Having arrived from Seattle at 2 a.m. after taping a segment for Ted Koppel’s “Nightline” there, she’s had little sleep, arrives slightly late for a fast press conference at the college, then heads to the gym for her speech, where it’s standing room only.

At its conclusion, she receives a standing ovation, with students and faculty members instantly descending on her in a frenzied swarm after she leaves the lectern.

A bit taken aback by the crowd pressing in on her so tightly, she reveals it’s a new, if momentarily unsettling experience. Then, quickly seeing its public relations value, she asks a photographer if he’s captured the mob scene on film and requests copies of the photographs.

Goodall sees much of the contribution of her later years as raising consciousness about animals and what humans can learn from them. About a third of her year is now spent lecturing (her fee is $15,000 per speech) and fund-raising for the Tucson-based Jane Goodall Institute, which supports a staff of six and assorted research and education projects.

A Life of Thirds

Another third of her year is spent in Gombe, where Tanzania natives now accomplish most of her field research with video cameras. And the final third of the year is invested at her home in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where she is a visiting professor in zoology at the University of Dar es Salaam.

According to U.S. animal psychologists, Goodall’s work is internationally respected, both by scientists and lay observers alike. And it’s considered seminal, particularly her findings that chimpanzees are capable of making and using tools--behavior previously thought to be the exclusive territory of humans.

“Her work is almost comparable to that of Einstein’s,” said Roger Fouts, a professor of psychology at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Wash., who has conducted language experiments with laboratory chimpanzees for more than 20 years.

“What Einstein is to physics, Jane Goodall is to the behavioral sciences. She’s had a tremendous philosophical effect as well. . . . She showed us there was a mentality there (in chimps). . . . Most science comes up with theory and then we go out and try to force the animals to do what the theory says. Jane’s is a humble science. She asks the animals to tell her about themselves.”

Off the record, some animal psychologists and primatologists will say that there is virtually no comparison between the work of Goodall, the pioneer in the field, and the late Dian Fossey, who may currently be better known than Goodall because of her mysterious death and the popularity of the film “Gorillas in the Mist.” Indeed, some researchers note that whereas Goodall has been a careful, reliable observer, Fossey was considered a problem-plagued flake.

‘Most Recognizable’

Fouts affirms that, by and large, such perceptions are commonplace within the scientific community. “Dian had some personal problems that interfered with her work,” he said. “Dian really didn’t have the training that Jane brought to it. And Jane published much more. Jane was the first (to study apes extensively in the wild) and her study is the longest-running. I read one poll that listed Jane Goodall as the most recognizable living scientist in the world.”

In Southern California this day, Goodall is treated like a star, asked repeatedly to sign autographs and spend time with bigwigs from the college. She’s also scheduled to appear at a USC symposium on Friday, speaking on “The Independent and Interdependent Occupations of Chimpanzee Infants and Mothers.”

It’s a topic dear to her and she works it in briefly at Santa Monica College when a student asks her if there’s any way that aggressive, sometimes violent chimp behavior can help us to understand human violence.

After having watched several generations of the Gombe chimps be born and eventually become mothers themselves, Goodall points out what she qualifies as “my own bias.” It’s that there are distinct effects of different types of mothering and early experience. In short, she’s observed that if a mother chimp is “on the cold, harsh, asocial side” with her offspring, that youngster will be “less able to create meaningful, close relationships” with adults as he or she grows up.

A Necessary Aloofness

Then asked if she herself is considered a “dominant female” by the chimps she’s watched over the years, Goodall replies that she has gone to great lengths not to become part of the chimps’ social group: “It would interfere with their behavior.”

She also finds the idea extremely dangerous. “I’ve been attacked by adolescent males (chimps),” she said. “They’ll attack basically anything that’s moving and that includes wretched human observers.”

Goodall’s questioners offer her no attacks, only respectful inquiries showing their appreciation of her work. As the day wears on and she faces smaller audiences of students, faculty members and patrons of the college, she remains animated as she answers questions she has addressed hundreds, perhaps thousands of times.

She clearly knows the value of spreading the word. And that the antidote is not far off.

“Going around on a tour like this, six weeks of constantly meeting people, lecturing, press interviews, it’s very draining,” she allows later, in a brief telephone conversation the next morning. “It leaves you feeling sort of empty, you know. When I go back to Dar es Salaam, there is a desk piled with letters and books to write and things that are overdue.

“But when I get to Gombe, it’s utterly peaceful. It’s what I consider to be the real world. It hasn’t changed for thousands of years. There’s nothing to give to . . . so you receive.”