Jane Goodall: Chimpanzees Create Tools Like Humans

Jane Goodall, famous for writing “In the Shadow of Man” a book published in 1971 which denotes similarities between humans and chimpanzees, talked to the Chimpanzees on “60 minutes”. Jane Goodall believes that “Chimpanzees create tools like humans”, though such a broad statement is misleading: the monkeys can create “tools” out of twigs to fish out termites or other such things, but we won’t be seeing chimpanzees making hammers or axes any time soon. The act of a chimpanzee pulling off leafs and using a stick to fish out termites won her international renown as she used that event to claim that chimpanzees were “like humans” and can “create tools”. Others disputed it at the time, but either way, a leafless twig was hardly remarkable, but it led other scientists to observe numerous other times where chimpanzees would use parts of nature to assist them in daily tasks, such as drinking water with leaves. Jane was also famous for discovering that chimps will systematically hunt and eat smaller primates such as colobus monkeys, a practice of cannibalism not known to the scientific community. She has also elicited controversy, for example by naming her primates, was accused of anthropomorphism (attributing human characteristics to animals or objects for emotional reasons), and there may be some teeth in the claims: she has spent nearly her whole life forming emotional bonds to the primates.

While many of her critics often have theological reasons as they don’t wish humans compared to animals, Jane Goodall herself firmly believes in the spiritual: “I don’t have any idea of who or what God is. But I do believe in some great spiritual power. I don’t know what to call it. I feel it particularly when I’m out in nature. It’s just something that’s bigger and stronger than what I am or what anybody is. I feel it. And it’s enough for me.”