Primatology.net

Exactly two weeks ago, I was standing in the Luis Munoz Marin International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico reading the latest Discover magazine interview with Jane Goodall. I was thoroughly captivated but it didn’t warrant me to spend the outrageously inflated airport prices for the magazine. I’m glad to share that Discover has put up the interview up on their site.

The interview answers a lot of basic questions about Jane Goodall’s research and life history with the chimpanzee’s of Gombe, with a lot of attention towards violence and behavior, as well as conservation efforts. There are some questions that make me wanna shake my head in embarrassment that a journalist would ask that. But I appreciate the following quote, because as you may have noticed, I’m currently involved in correcting a lot of reductionist misconceptions about non-human primates and their relates to humans:

“What makes us human, I think, is an ability to ask questions, a consequence of our sophisticated spoken language. Chimps have something like the beginning of morality, but once you have language—once you can discuss something and talk about it in the abstract and take lessons from the past and plan for the future—that is what makes the difference.”

For those aspiring female primatologists out there, Jane also gives an insight into her life as a female scientist.

And here is a photo of Jane with Flint as a baby: