Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE, with Guy Kawasaki | Dr. Jane Goodall & Guy Kawasaki | TEDxPaloAltoSalon

this does anybody ever begin one of these conversations with you by not saying it's an honor to be here with you know very few sir please don't say it okay and who are our friends here well I'm going to introduce them at the point in our conversation when it's relevant but this is cow this is mr. H and this is Rati okay and the appropriate points as we talk I hope there'll be an opportunity to tell you why they're sitting here okay and also me guy Eugene tossin I've read the books I've watched the film jeans and one thing that struck me was that apparently dr. leekie didn't want a so-called trained biologists so when you first met him and began this saga what were your qualifications zero except that I was born loving animals when I was a child I just watched animals and there weren't so many where I grew up in England you know there were worms and snails there were all kinds of birds and occasionally there was our Fox and I watched them as much as I could and I did well at school and we didn't have money for university so I had to do a secretarial I got a job in London and how that ended up for me studying chimps maybe that comes later all right you know at the time that you began studying the chimps scientists were not supposed to name them not supposed to attribute human qualities to them attribute tool making capabilities attribute empathy and yet you did all these things so what's the lesson there about defying wisdom defiant vention define what's right well I think to answer that question I sort of have to go back a bit and say that when I eventually saved up money to get to Africa to follow my childhood dream which actually began when I read Tarzan of the Apes that's why I said Tarzan and fell in love with him and was very jealous because he married the wrong Jane and that's where my dream began I will go to Africa we'll live with animals write books about them and everybody laughed at me but I was incredibly lucky in having an incredibly supportive mother who said if you really want this thing you're going to have to work really hard take advantage of all opportunities and never give up so left school no one every University did a boring awful secretarial course opportunity when a school friend invited me to Africa and to get the money I had to leave my job in London where you couldn't save go home to Bournemouth and work as a waitress which is very hard work by the way have you ever been a waiter no no no if you had you would know it's really hard work anyway I eventually got the fare go to Africa heard about Louis Leakey and he offered me this opportunity to go and study the chimps and now we can get on to your question at first the chimps ran away from me they'd never seen a white ape before you are an ape emerge of you're white I'm a white ape there's some people out here who have different colored skin but we're all the fifth grade ape that's what we biologically aha but they'd never seen a white one and so they ran away and eventually they got used to me and I was able to observe them and I observed this chimpanzee reaching out picking stems of grass using them to fish termites from their nests picked them off and I observed him picking a leafy twig and stripping off the leaves in other words he was using tools he was making tools and at that time it was supposed to be according to science only humans that use their made tools so Louis Leakey my sponsor was extremely excited that enabled him to ask the National Geographic to step in to fund the future research and they not only agreed to do that but they sent her photographer and filmmaker hugo van Loic to record what I was observing about the chimps so I was learning more and more about the chimps as they became used to me and then Louis Leakey said you have to get a degree you can't get money when I'm dead if you don't have a degree but he said we haven't got time to mess with the BA I find you I find you a way of going to Cambridge University in England to do a PhD in ethology and I didn't know what a fellow g-man but you you skipped the bachelor's and master's and went straight yes yes yes it was nothing to do with me guide nothing to do with me it was Leakey and it was a huge responsibility for me and so I'd been 2 years with the chimps and I got to Cambridge and imagine how I felt when I was told by these erudite professors you've done everything wrong you shouldn't have given the chimps names it's not scientific they should have had numbers you can't talk about their personalities or their minds capable of thought or their emotions I was scared of those professors but fortunately when I was a child I had an amazing teacher who taught me that wise though these professors may have been in learning in this respect they were wrong you know what that teacher was my dog your doggie you I'm sure out there in the audience do you understand we can't share our lives with a dog a cat a rat rabbit a horse a pig a bird whatever and not know the professors were wrong of course we are not the only beings with personalities minds and emotions and so I stuck to my conviction and eventually the professor's came around and I truly believe I honestly believe that we have to thank the chimps a lot because it now turns out they're so like us biologically so that we differ from them in the composition of DNA by only just over 1% and the similarities in the immune system the composition of the blood the anatomy of the brain that combined with Hugo's film of their postures and gestures of communication kissing embracing holding hands patting one another swaggering shaking their fists throwing rocks using tools they had to believe that we are not the only beings with personalities minds and emotions so that's how it happened ok I was to my dog I you're killing me Jane um why am i killing you you're killing me because yesterday my daughter brings home a puppy and I said we are not keeping that dog and now she's grinning ear-to-ear right here I can anticipate this conversation well dr. Goodall said you can learn so much from a dog we should would you would you like to share custody with well I could provide some parental support so you're a dog biscuit okay thank you I appreciate your concern there are many young people in the audience and who are watching this so in today's setting where everybody you know believes they have to get this undergraduate education then you have to go and get a PhD and all that what's your take on the necessity of formal education today for a young person it depends on what the young person wants to do and what what upsets me is that does this you know if you don't get a degree of some sort in some kind of college or university or useless and that's rubbish I mean you you can think thank you it it really depends on what the young person wants to do the problem is in science that it's very difficult to get a job if you don't have a degree so that you know even Louis Leakey told me I would have to eventually get a degree so I would urge young people who want to want to become scientists I didn't want to become a scientist because when I was growing up was that awful long time ago women didn't become scientists now they do so women now who want to become scientists will probably need to get a degree if they just want to work with animals and help animals they don't need a degree and the main thing is for a young person to know exactly what they want to do to be really determined in what they want to do and then my mother used to say to me when I have this crazy dream if you really want this you have to work extremely hard take advantage of all opportunities but don't give up so that's my advice to young people today it sounds like your mom was the original tiger mom she was utterly amazing and if if I hadn't had that kind of mother I might have not have done what I've done I mean I don't know but girl she supported my dream she didn't get mad when I took earthworms to bed when I was bringing poppies home and no I didn't find puppies but I found mice and injured animals and she never got mad at me okay you said in the movie that you when you were young you had dreams and in those dreams you were a man hmm can you explain that and is that still necessary in today's world no I don't think it is but when I was young you know girls were supposed to well they got the sort of thing in UK is you got married you looked after your children you were a good wife you cooked for your husband and you didn't become a scientist you might become a secretary or a nurse or perhaps you might become a missionary's wife and so those were the expectations for women and I remember that I went to Buckingham Palace and for some bizarre reason I was proposed by somebody to get a DBE a dame of the British Empire and all these women was a palace yes to get this degree okay see yeah well anyway they said to me I I heard them talking and they said to me don't you want to be you know working in Buckingham Palace don't you want to be a maid of honor to the Queen don't you want to be Aldi and I said no I want to go to Africa and live with animals and they looked and they kind of shunned me like they went over there I was left on my own so I was considered to be peculiar but I had a mother who believed in me and supported me look what's happened amen we've already touched a lot about your mother and motherhood I also found it very interesting that when you had your son didn't you essentially pause your career yeah and what are your hindsight's on that was that the right thing to do was it no I believe you know I get I get very upset when women who can some women can't some women have to continue with their careers to bring in the money to survive but some women maybe their husband brings in a lot of money like like you and if they decide they want to take time off and be a mother and people say well that's you know that's like going back to the old days and tying yourself with your apron strings to the kitchen it's incredibly important if you can to spend time with your young child and be there for them and be supportive so it's it's it's it's a job and it's a very hard job but I think it's tremendously important on the other hand there are some women who won't cut out to be good mothers they just don't want to be good mother so then the answer is to try and find it an alternative so I truly believe for a human child it doesn't have to be the biological mother but that child needs needs to feel secure needs to feel wanted needs to feel there is at least one and preferably two or three adults who are there to support that child I've read your theories of the stages of life would you explain those stages and tell people about the stage are currently in my stages of life you mean like Shakespeare five agents of man okay well the stage I'm in now is my last stage I don't suppose there'll be many more stages you know I'm nearly 85 and when you get to 85 you know you're closer to wherever the end is might be here there or there but you're closer than you were when you were born and the stage I'm in now is a stage of of increasing my activity because I will less time to get out a message which is an incredibly important message and so I have to work harder and longer hours and travel 300 days a year which I hate and spread a message of awareness because we're running out of time and what I've learned from the chimpanzees is the way not only the ways we're similar to them but the way that we're different and to me the key difference is the explosive development of our intellect so the chimpanzees are way more intelligent than we used to think but so are so many other animals we're learning that you know we're not so different and yet in this respect we are because we've designed for example well I guess you could talk about Apple computers if you would but I'm going to talk about that rocket that went out to Mars and a little robot crawled off and took photos of the surface of Mars the planet that we once thought maybe he had some kind of life but you look at those photos I'm sure you have you don't want to go and live there do you know so here we are this most intellectual species to ever walk the planet and yet we're destroying our only home how come is it because there's a disconnect between this clever brain and the human heart just love and compassion what do you think well the the lesson that I drew from the movie and the book was when that four-year war took place so it seems like in the DNA there's this inherent tribalism and violence and I think we're seeing that now so I was going to ask you about that so you know I had no idea that that war happened until I you know did the research for this presentation and I always thought it was you know kumbaya among the chimps and such is not the case so can you explain that and the ramifications upon society yeah well the reason Louis Leakey sent me to study the chimps was because you know he was searching for the fossils of early man and from the fossils you can tell a lot about what the creature looked like and what it had from his tooth oops tooth wear and things but you can't tell about the behavior so he knowing that the great apes are our closest living relatives thought well if Jane finds behavior that similar even the same between chimpanzees today and humans today maybe that behavior was in a common ape-like human-like ancestor about 6 million years ago and maybe just maybe that behavior has come with the human line and the ape line and that would help him he said to understand a little bit better or to imagine how early humans might have behaved so I think he was right and I think that we've had a great insight into how our earliest ancestors behaved because of the information about chimps but you know aggression do we have inherent aggressive tendencies I think so that was a political issue in the early 70s and when I talked about the fact that chimps had the equivalent of a primitive warfare that I should suppress that and not talk about it because that might imply that humans had innate aggressive tendencies and it was a whole movement then I don't know if you remember it but that we were human babies were born with a clean slate and all aggression was learned and I couldn't believe that I could not believe that anyway I did talk about it but ok so we do have I think innate aggressive attendance tendencies but we have this superior brain we are capable if we so wish of suppressing those aggressive tendencies but unfortunately aggressive tendencies that become political they're different that is not the primitive chimpanzee aggression where you fight members of a neighboring community over territory this is something different it's all tied in with our materialistic lifestyle today and politics gets so far away from who we really are doesn't it from bottom my heart and I'm sure everyone here it was an honor for us to be here and we have learned so much so we all want to thank you thank you [Applause] thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 28,940

Rating: 4.9468436 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Global Issues, Activism, Africa, Animals, Anthropology, Connection, Conservation, Education, Ethics, Evolution, Global issues, Parenting, Passion, Peace, Primates, Progress, Science, Social Change, Social Interaction, Social Justice, Society, Sociology

Id: toOcs-dCt0U

Length: 21min 0sec (1260 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 09 2018