Goodall and co-author Douglas Abrams began working on “The Book of Hope” before the pandemic. But the plus side is that I can reach millions more people, in many more countries.”Īdditionally, she says, “It’s better for the environment if we don’t always travel all the time.” Even so, she worries about the effect that curtailing tourism will have on African national parks, which struggle to pay for the rangers needed to protect wildlife. “Even on Christmas, I had a couple of Zooms. “It’s actually much more exhausting than being on the road, because there’s no gaps now,” she says. With the assistance of a tech consultant and her institute staff, Goodall shifted to online speaking engagements - and found that she could do even more events. But, she came to realize, “that wasn’t going to help anybody.” “I was frustrated and angry,” she concedes. Instead, she found herself sequestered in a Gothic-style house, built in 1872, with her sister Judy, other family members and an aging rescue whippet named Bean. This gives us some insight into how our cultures may have begun millions of years ago.The pandemic forced Goodall to curtail her practice of traveling 300 days a year to give lectures around the world. The difference in tools used by chimpanzees in different locations is significant as it demonstrates the extended impact of social learning and how it can shape populations through their social norms over multiple generations. For example, in Uganda, chimpanzees in the Kibale forest use sticks to extract honey from a log, while chimpanzees from the Budongo forest use chewed leaves as sponges to collect honey from logs. Zinda fishing for termites in Gombe National Park, TanzaniaĮven chimpanzee populations with the same tools at their disposal show different behavioural patterns that stem from multi-generational social learning – lessons that a mother may pass on to her offspring that she learned from her mother. Instead the variation in behaviour was traced to multi-generational social learning and customs - in other words, culture. Researchers ruled out the possibility of the natural environment as influencing such differences. These behaviours include differences in tool use, aimed throwing, nest building, grooming, rain dances, and courtship rituals, and were found to be customary in some communities while absent in others. Jane Goodall’s long-term research on the chimpanzees of Gombe contributed to a comprehensive study that identified almost 40 different behaviour patterns in chimpanzees that are an indication of significant cultural variation. The strongest and most diverse evidence of culture in animals has been found in chimpanzees. Culture is defined as “the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations.” However, scientists have discovered evidence of culture in different animal species. For starters, chimpanzees and people share nearly identical genetic DNA. More recently, another similarity has been discovered: the presence of culture in chimpanzees.Ĭulture has historically been regarded as a distinguishing feature of what makes humans unique. Chimpanzees and humans share a surprising number of similarities.
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