An individual, I suppose the mother, came back,' his words, 'and reached towards the child most tenderly at which point I shot her.' So he goes with his tracker and these were his words as he came close and looked into this tree, he said, 'After a while the chimpanzees noticed me, and with remarkable speed and silence they disappeared from the tree except for one infant who was too small to climb down by itself. Until one day his tracker comes and says that there is a large group of chimpanzees feeding on ripe fruits and they probably can get quite close before the chimpanzees notice, because when chimpanzees do gather in large numbers they are very excited and there's a lot of displaying and vocalisation going on. Well, his time in Africa is coming to an end and he's managed to shoot many of the different animals on his list, but the chimpanzees have proved elusive. Included on his list was 'chimpanzee family, male, female and young one'. I found a piece of writing, an 18th century explorer's journal, and he went exploring in Africa and he was asked by one of the big museums in New York if he would collect specimens of different kinds of animals that they could then mount and set out for public viewing. Let me start off with a couple of stories because one of the things that is fascinating is to think of the changing relationships between humans and non-humans over the years. And as every individual has his or her own unique voice, you would know exactly who was calling, and this is how the individuals of the scattered community maintain contact with each other because they don't travel in a stable group or troupe like baboons and so many monkeys and of course also gorillas. So the greeting you would hear if you came with me to Gombe National Park and climbed up the hills in the morning, wondering if there were any chimpanzees out there, and if you're lucky you hear. But first of all let me give you my traditional greeting and welcome and bring into this room, for the first time I'm sure, the voice of the chimpanzee, this amazing being that I've spent 46 years learning about and whose secrets we still have not even begun really to uncover. As I introduced her she gave me a big kiss and soon broke into fluent chimp. She did that by watching real wild animals where they live, not in zoos or laboratories. Dr Goodall, as you'll hear, transformed the field of animal behaviour. Today we join the renowned Dr Jane Goodall at the University of NSW. With each shell explosion, Gregoire would duck under his sleeping shelf, to the point that his back was scraped raw.Robyn Williams: You're on ABC Radio National, and welcome to another summer Science Show. In 1997, however, the intermittent Congo civil war worsened, leading to fighting just half a mile away from the zoo. She arranged for a caretaker to look after Gregoire and provide him with a healthier diet. His eyes were dull as he reached out with a thin, bony hand for a proffered morsel of food. "His pale, almost hairless skin was stretched tightly over his emaciated body so that every bone could be seen. "I gazed at this strange being, alone in his bleak, cement-floored cage," Goodall later recalled. Conservationist Aliette Jamar noticed the animal's poor condition and contacted Jane Goodall, who was horrified when she first saw the caged chimp. There was such a gentleness about him."įor more than 40 years, Gregoire lived in solitary confinement in a barren cage at the Brazzaville Zoo in the Republic of Congo's capital city. "Particularly for our Congolese staff, he served as a symbol for how we can all overcome adversity. "Gregoire was an incredibly resilient being," Lisa Pharoah, JGI Africa Program manager for West and Central Africa, told Discovery News.
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