Jane Goodall Remembers the Chimpanzees - - - Had a Question -

[Ghost_Tracker]

Originally Posted by GypsyBlueEyes

I definitely see your point...there is a certain order to things in the wild like that. I don't necessarily think she overstepped her bounds by saving the chimp though. The battle had already been won...the was a clear winner and a clear loser. Had this same thing happened and neither of the chimps were critically injured, the chimp that lost would most likely have naturally accepted the other chimps dominance. In this case, once she had nursed the injured chimp back to health, he most likely still would have taken the role within the tribe he was meant to have. In other words, she didn't intercede in any way to affect the outcome of the fight for dominance. She only intervened in saving the injured chimp's life afterwards. ...

I should have mentioned - She was "talking to" the chimp while she was nursing him, and according to the things she said, it was clear that she expected that when he was well - after he survived because of her intervention - there was a good chance he would go back and fight again to become the leader. This was apparently based on her experience and prior observations.

By the way, I looked over the Wikipedia article about her; some of the other Primatologists have been critical of her research; they accuse her of "being too emotionally attached to be objective" and of "anthropomorphism" (attaching "human" qualities to them without having conclusive data to justify doing that.) Apparently though, the major criticism is that she has "feeding stations" which attract the chimps to the places where she wants to do her research (perhaps so that they will be reasonably close to her camp or something like that). It's felt that these stations cause the chimps to behave more aggressively than they normally would and that therefore when she's studying them they're not actually "behaving naturally." She's responded by acknowledging that they do make them behave more aggressively; but she feels that it's not enough of a change to make a significant difference.
Anyway I just find the whole thing very interesting!