In the Shadow of Man

“I remember feeling neither excitement nor trepidation but only a curious sense of detachment. What had I, the girl standing on the government launch in her jeans, to do with the girl who in a few days would be searching those very mountains for wild chimpanzees? Yet by the time I went to sleep that night the transformation had taken place.”

Goodall describes seeing Gombe National Park for the first time. By referring to herself as a “girl” and acknowledging her lack of experience as a researcher, Goodall emphasizes her youth and inexperience. However, she juxtaposes this reality with her stoic demeanor. Goodall’s “transformation” hints at how, despite her inexperience, she rose to the challenge and paints her in a sympathetic light, as a kind of underdog figure with a challenging mission.

“As soon as I was sure of knowing a chimpanzee if I saw it again, I named it. Some scientists feel that animals should be labeled by numbers—that to name them is anthropomorphic—but I have always been interested in the differences between individuals, and a name is not only more individual than a number, but also far easier to remember.”

Goodall defends her scientific approach of naming individual animals, noting that names are easier to remember than numbers and are therefore a more pragmatic choice for the researcher. This quotation emphasizes Goodall’s unique approach to her work, which didn’t always follow typical scientific standards but was imbued with her own opinions and instincts. Like the previous quotation, this revelation hints at Goodall’s lack of formal training and her position as an outsider in the world of academia.

“Of course I was not sure, then, that David Greybeard had caught the pig for himself, but even so, it was tremendously exciting to know that these chimpanzees actually ate meat. Previously scientists had believed that although these apes might occasionally supplement their diet with a few insects or small rodents and the like, they were primarily vegetarians and fruit eaters.”

Goodall describes her first unexpected observation of the chimps at Gombe—David Greybeard eating a wild bush piglet and sharing its meat with other chimps. This passage presents the first instance in which Goodall’s work helped change the scientific understanding of chimp behavior.

“He was squatting beside the red earth mound of a termite nest, and as I watched I saw him carefully push a long grass stem down into a hole in the mound. After a moment he withdrew it and picked something from the end with his mouth. I was too far away to make out what he was eating, but it was obvious that he was actually using a grass stem as a tool.”

Goodall’s discovery of chimps’ tool use confirmed that humans aren’t the only species to make and use tools, a radical notion at the time. Goodall’s vivid description of the chimps’ behavior brings to life their fashioning grass stem tools and using them to hunt for termites.

“For I had found in Hugo a companion with whom I could share not only the joys and frustrations of my work but also my love of the chimpanzees, of the forests and mountains, of life in the wilderness […] Together we had roasted in the sun and shivered under plastic covering in the rain. In Hugo I knew I had found a kindred spirit—one who had a deep appreciation and understanding of animals. Small wonder that I missed him when he was gone.”

Goodall reflects on her growing bond with Hugo van Lawick, the National Geographic photographer who lived at Gombe for several months to document her work. This quotation is significant as a rare glimpse into Goodall’s private life beyond the focus of her work. In addition, it emphasizes how much Goodall valued the chimps and the role of her work in establishing a romantic relationship with van Lawick.

“I should of course have gone down to say hello, but I had become so attuned to William that I almost felt myself the chimps’ instinctive distrust of strangers. Together we watched the visitors […] I wondered what they would have thought if they had known I was sitting there with William, peering at them as though they had been alien creatures from an unknown world.”

This passage captures Goodall’s empathetic relationship with the chimps, which deepened as she spent more time at Gombe. By sharing how she became so “attuned” to the chimps and “almost felt” their feelings, Goodall provides a window into her own perspective after a couple years of living among the chimps. She demonstrates how living a relatively isolated life in the forest, with the chimps for company much of the time, changed her view of the world.

“By this time Hugo and myself were very much in love. But was this, we asked ourselves, simply the outcome of being thrown together in the wilds, far from other European society? Would our feelings change, perhaps, when we found ourselves back in civilization again?”

The author recalls how she and her boyfriend, Hugo van Lawick, had lived together only at her camp in Gombe. While they decided to “test” their relationship in England, van Lawick quickly proposed, and they married in London the following year. This quotation emphasizes how Goodall’s life centered on Gombe and she rarely spent time in “civilization” since she was absorbed in her study.

“Chimps are very quick to notice and interpret the eye movements of their fellows, and Goliath would possibly, therefore, have seen the fruit himself. And so Figan had not only refrained from instantly gratifying his desire, but had also gone away so he could not ‘give the game away’ by looking at the banana.”

Goodall explains how Figan, an unusually intelligent and strategic chimp, could get away with stealing from the dominant male Goliath through his subtle approach to taking bananas. Additionally, Figan figured out how to distract the adults and thereby claim many bananas for himself. By including these stories, Goodall demonstrates chimps’ ability to plan and think ahead—and their awareness of what other chimps do and don’t know.

“Fifi continually wanted to touch her young brother. Ultimately Flo allowed her to carry Flint.”

Goodall explains Fifi’s consistent interest in her younger sibling, Flint, and their mother’s reaction. This analysis helps convey chimp family dynamics and how chimp mothers keep infants safe, as well as highlighting the mother-led nuclear family dynamic in chimp groups.

“Mike’s rise to the number one or top-ranking position in the chimpanzee community was both interesting and spectacular. In 1963 Mike had ranked almost bottom in the adult male dominance hierarchy. He had been last to gain access to bananas, and had been threatened and attacked by almost every other male.”

Goodall’s discussion of Mike’s unlikely rise to dominance provides interesting details about the fluidity of status in chimp groups. In addition, her analysis of the journeys of individual chimps also helps convey the different personalities and kinds of intelligence in the Gombe group, a special interest of Goodall’s because she was keen to explore the differences between individual animals.

“The adult male chimpanzee is at least three times stronger than man; if Figan grew up and realized how much weaker humans really were, he would become dangerous. Moreover, repeated contact with a wild animal is bound to affect its behavior.”

While Goodall and van Lawick were initially excited to make physical contact with chimps such as the youngster Flint, they soon realized the danger that familiar chimps could pose to them and other researchers at Gombe. This quotation explains why it became important to ban researchers from coming into close contact with chimps. In addition, it highlights Goodall’s ability to acknowledge mistakes and change her study’s trajectory—and reveals how wild chimps can become accustomed to people and build trust with them over a fairly brief period.

“Hugo and I returned to the Gombe in 1966, after I had completed my terms at Cambridge, and were shocked by the change we saw in the chimps’ behavior. Not only was there a great deal more fighting than before, but many of the chimps were hanging around camp for hours and hours every day. This was entirely due to Fifi and Figan, and, to a lesser extent, Evered. These three youngsters had discovered that in order to open the banana box all they had to do was to pull out the simple pin serving to keep the lever closed.”

Goodall reveals the frustration she experienced at Gombe, which her having to leave the camp to study at Cambridge for nearly a year only exacerbated. The revelation that young chimps Fifi and Figan had learned how to open the banana box highlights the intelligence and ingenuity of the chimps and shows how their regular visits to camp quickly familiarized them with human presence and technology. This quotation adds realism and nuance to Goodall’s account of her study and helps illustrate the unpredictability of studying animals in the wild.

“The birth of a baby is something of an event in many animal and human societies. In the chimpanzee community, where mothers have infants only once every four and a half to six years, births are relatively few—not more than one or two a year in our group of thirty to forty individuals.”

Goodall explains that chimps have quite low birth rates, making the addition of newborn chimps to the group a novelty for both the chimps and the researchers. This passage helps Goodall emphasize the intense and curious reactions to births and newborns in chimp groups, which she then discusses in detail. In addition, she draws another comparison between animal and human behavior.

“Flo was more tolerant of her juvenile daughter than Olly was of hers, and far more so than old Marina of her daughter Miff […] I never saw any friendly interaction between Miff and her mother except for their sessions of social grooming. Miff, in fact, was afraid of her mother.”

This quotation is an important part of Goodall’s discussion on parenthood and infancy in chimp groups. While she makes some generalizations about chimp norms, she mostly focuses on differences between individual chimps and their varying relationships with their offspring. This highlights that not all chimps raise their young in the same manner, which partly explains the behavioral differences that chimps display as they age.

“One of the most stabilizing factors for the adolescent male may be his relationship with his mother. Old Flo, affectionate and tolerant with all her offspring, was frequently accompanied by Faben and Figan during their adolescence […] For the most part these adolescent males, even when they were ten or eleven years old, continued to show respect for their old mothers.”

In this passage, Goodall emphasizes the importance of the mother-child bond in chimp groups, one of the main themes of her work. Goodall’s analysis of chimp adolescence reveals that this close relationship usually continues long after the vulnerable stage of infancy and that mothers and offspring provide ongoing mutual support and protection.

“In chimpanzee communities, of course, family groups comprise only a mother and some or all of her offspring […] This exclusion of the male from familial responsibilities is perhaps one of the major differences between human and chimpanzee societies […]”

Goodall contrasts the female-led nuclear families of chimp groups with human family structures, which (while varied) often include both male and female parents. Because chimp males never know which infant(s) they sire and never assist in parenting, Goodall identifies this facet of their social lives as one of the “major differences” in human and chimp communities.

“All in all, Rodolf kept almost the entire carcass to himself for nine hours that day, although from time to time he spat a wad of meat and leaves into a begging hand, or one of the other males managed to grab a piece from the carcass and make off with it.”

Goodall’s detailed story about Rodolf and other chimps hunting a baboon shows their ability to read each other’s body language and make coordinated moves to corner and kill baboons. In addition, the story adds nuance to her analysis of baboon-chimp interactions, which can range from friendly to lethal. In this passage, Goodall reveals that even lower-ranking chimps won’t always share meat with more dominant males.

“Whatever the underlying reason, we have seen Rodolf as well as others on many occasions guarding their meat from chimpanzees normally their social superiors. At such times the higher-ranking males, frustrated beyond endurance, frequently vent their aggression on lower-ranking individuals. And so, during the early part of a meat-eating session, before the big males have acquired portions for themselves, females and youngsters, as well as males of lower rank, are frequently chased quite violently through the branches, and particularly if they venture too close to the kill.”

The author analyzes the relationship between food-sharing and expressions of dominance, noting that lower-ranked males may defy dominant males for access to a prized possession. This quotation underscores the complex nature of submission and dominance in chimp communities, which isn’t as clear-cut as it first seemed.

“Had we known that Olly’s baby was without a doubt the first victim of the terrible paralytic disease that struck our chimpanzee community, I would never have followed the family—for at this time my own baby was on the way […] Since chimpanzees are susceptible to almost every human infectious disease, and are known to contract polio, it seems almost certain that the epidemic afflicting our chimpanzees actually was polio.”

Goodall recalls the panic and danger of realizing that the Gombe chimps had become vectors of a polio epidemic that was ravaging both human and chimp communities in Tanzania. This passage reveals the continuous risk in studying the chimps as well as the biological similarities between humans and chimps.

“Goliath actually attacked the stricken old male, who, powerless to flee or defend himself in any way, could only cower down, his face split by a hideous grin of terror, while Goliath pounded on his back. When another adult male bore down on McGregor, hair bristling, huge branch flailing on the ground, Hugo and I went to stand in front of the cripple.”

The author reminisces about the painful experience of watching adult male chimp McGregor become paralyzed and socially ostracized because of polio. The other chimps in his group avoided or persecuted McGregor because he moved, smelled, and looked different than usual. In addition, Goodall’s description of McGregor’s desperation reveals her own emotional experience as an observer. This quotation highlights how Goodall’s attachment to the chimps informed her work.

“It seems strange that the orphaned infant should be adopted by an elder sibling rather than by an experienced female with a child of her own who could perhaps provide the motherless infant with milk as well as adequate social protection.”

Goodall examines how orphaned chimps cope with the loss of their mothers, and she puzzles over the prominent role siblings play in the care of orphaned infants. This quotation helps show why lactating orphans will likely die without their mothers: Other adult females won’t step in to care for them.

“They use stems and sticks to capture and eat insects and, if the material picked is not suitable, then it is modified. They use leaves to sop up water they cannot reach with their lips—and first they chew on the leaves and thus increase their absorbency […] they sometimes use sticks as levers to enlarge underground bees’ nests.”

The author details many of the ways that Gombe chimps used tools. She compares this with the slightly more creative uses of tools by captive research chimps, who have access to a greater range of materials. Goodall uses these observations to raise the possibility of chimps evolving bigger brains and learning how to create better and more complex tools for a wider variety of uses.

“This comfort, which humans and chimpanzees alike appear to derive from physical contact with another, probably originates during the years of infancy, when for so long the touch of the mother, or the contact with her body, serves to calm the frights and soothe the anxieties of both ape and human infants.”

Goodall identifies physical affection and comfort as a common connection between chimps and humans that originates in infancy in both species. This quote emphasizes Goodall’s points about the parallels between human and chimp relationships.