MY partner Travis and me There were speed along the front street of Toronto on the way to Meridian Hall. We rushed right from work, fought with the inevitable movement along the 401 highways between our house in Guelf and Toronto and took the fast bowl of the biscuit of lobsters in the market of St. Lawrence.
When we approached the theater, we could see how crowds flow to the entrance. Having received a little from our fast walk, we showed our tickets to Asher and made our way to our places.
“Thus,” I said.
“Really?” Travis asked when we came closer and closer to the front of the theater.
I smiled and nodded. I have good places.
We finally stopped, just five rows from the stage. I took off my coat and turned to hang it on the back of my seat. Like me, I stopped to take part in the theater with 3000 seats, which quickly filled with people of all ages. The woman behind us wore a traditional African dress. Another woman brought her golden -retriver with her. Two men next to us, dressed in costumes, looked like Bay -Schell merchants. I scanned the audience to see if there are familiar faces.
“I do not see anyone whom we know,” I said. Primatology is a small world, and it would not be surprising to notice several colleagues. I turned around and looked at the stage, where the sofa and podium were ready for the honorary speaker. Several animals stuffed were neatly built on the catwalk.
My heart hit in anticipation. A Jane Goodoll will soon go on stage. It was a woman who, as her hobby for animals, traveled around the world to complete the first long -term study of wild chimpanzees in Africa. She made huge discoveries that contributed to our understanding of primates and human evolution. This was one of the first living events of Guddolla after the pandemic, at the end of 2023, and demonstrated her innovative study about chimpanzees and her attention to maintain primates and change the climate.
When we waited for the lecture, the theater was buzzing with excitement, this burning question appeared in my head: Why have so many women attracted to the discipline of primatology? At this moment, one answer seemed obvious: Gudll was a role model for everyone in this theater and for many women who continued to study wild primates, including me.
I built Travis. “Do you think she will tell about the termites?”
TThe hoses are small insects With their winding winged bodies and large red heads, everything turned upside down.
The year was 1960, and Jane Gudoll, twenty -six -year -old British, went to the Mountain National Park Gombe Stream in West Tanzania. Gomba is located on the shores of Lake Tanganyka, the second largest lake in the world in volume. British researchers in 1860 called him “simple lighter and soft blue” and “sprinkled with crispy eastern winds with tiny rings of snow foam.”
On the shores of Lake Tanganyka, with high mountains as a background, this deceptively modest young woman, with her characteristic low content of the blonde, was filled with sandy, determination and passion for the wild. She was devoted to the study and protection of wild chimpanzees.
That morning, Budolla was for several hours, climbing up and down the valley, crawling around his hands and knees through a thick undergrowth in search of chimpanzee. So far nothing.
It was October, and rains went. Her field form of hack-shorta and a shirt on buttons is laid from pushing through moist foliage. This was not the first time that Guddoll appeared empty in search of chimpanzees. These primates were elusive. Sometimes she traveled without attention for hours, not noticing a single chimpanzees, or, if she was lucky, they will see her, call her alarm and run. As a result, many of her observations were at a great distance: she crouched at the top on an open, rocky grief about a thousand feet above the lake – “peak”, as she called her.
Shimpanze, she later wrote, at first did not accept this “strange white monkey who invaded their forest world.”
That day something attracted her attention. A flash of black in long grass is about fifty meters. Then, as if in a dream, the dark form slowly appeared.
Black head. A long hand covered with jet hair.
Now she could see him completely, his dark face with the help of a silver hair on the chin.
David Graibir. Guddol called this chimpanzees after David and Goliath, as well as Greybeard from his silver hair of his chin. David was less afraid of Guddolla than others, and his presence reassured the group. Whelm, Wavid noticed David, she knew that she had a chance to rise from the chimpanzee.
“In those early days,” she wrote later in In the shadow of man“I spent many days alone with David. An hour in an hour I followed him through the forests, sitting and watching him while he fed or rested, trying his best to keep up when he went through a ball of vine. Sometimes I'm sure he was waiting for me. “
Now David was sitting next to the large embankment of the Red Earth on the ground – the termite nest – but what did he do?
Guddolla pushed the homeless hair behind her ear, quietly came closer and raised binoculars to her face. She got up and looked, barely breathing when David carefully poked a long stalk of grass into the nest. Termites covered the stem. The chimpanzees raised it to his mouth and eagerly collapsed insects with his lips, slowly and intentionally chewed every sip.
Guddolla watched and waited, delighted when David caught the termites for an hour. She carefully watched and recorded everything that she saw, and when he finally left, she rushed to the scene, where she examined one of David’s discarded instruments and tried her forces on Termite fishing.
In the coming days, Budoll will observe this behavior several more times and with several other people. In several exciting cases, she watched the chimpanzees prepared branches for use. If a leaf branch was chosen, chimpanzees took off the leaves. If the branch has become curved in the process of fishing, chimpanzees tear off the bent pieces. Chimpanzees modified the twigs in advance and for the goal.
Guddolle knew that a change in a natural object for a specific goal is the very determination of the use of the tool. Before its discovery, scientists considered the ability to create and use tools as unique to human appearance – behavior and cognitive abilities that distinguish us from other primates.
Guddul sent telegrams – text messages of the 1960s – to his mentor Louis Lika, sharing his observations. Liki received the communication of Goodolla with wild enthusiasm. He immediately transmitted the message to the young primatologist: “Now we must reduce the“ instrument ”,“ rethink ”a person” or accept chimpanzees as people. ”
ASA woman And a trained primatologist, I discover that I am deeply thinking about the extraordinary life and heritage of Budolla. She was my first inspiration. She showed me that this was not only possible, but it is also necessary to travel to distant places, study wild primates in their natural environment and violently protect their protection.
Guddoll cut out a completely new path in the area where men once dominated, redrawing what it means to be a scientist, a defender of nature and a woman in science. Her innovative discovery of the use of tools in the chimpanzee has changed our understanding of what it means to be a person.
But her influence did not stop there. From the innovative conservation oriented to the community to the founding of the Global Roots & Shoots program, which continues to expand the capabilities of millions of young people, the influence of Budolla was both deep and stable.
After her death, I feel great gratitude – not only for her scientific contribution, but also for the personal inspiration that she gave me to countless other women to believe in our voice, our vision and our ability to make changes. Guddul was and remains the power of nature. Her legacy lives in each of us, as she inspired to follow in her footsteps and fake our own paths.
Adapted and excerpt with permission, from Jungle sisters: first -class women who have formed the study of wild primates Kerianne McGogan, published by Douglas & Mcintyre, 2025. All rights are protected.
