-I´m honored that you´re here.
Welcome to the show. -Well, thanks very much.
And thanks for inviting me. -Oh, please.
You can come on whenever. You are the subject of
this documentary, "Jane," just premiered
at the Toronto Film Festival. Is it -- Is it weird for you
to see a documentary about your life? -Well, you know,
there have been many. And when it was first proposed,
I thought, "What, another documentary about
the chimps back in the ´60s?" [ Light laughter ] I couldn´t imagine that there
could be anything new. But when I watched that, more than any other documentary
I´ve seen, it took me absolutely back
into those days. And there´s footage
that kind of disappeared and there´s footage that hasn´t
been seen before, taken by my then-husband,
Hugo van Lawick, and it´s really --
I mean, there I am, a young girl with these
extraordinary chimpanzees, whom I got to know so well. -Yeah. I mean, do -- do you
remember, like, what -- When you were first --
when you first were there and you go,
"This is what I want to do." I know you had that
since you were a little girl. But you´re there,
you´re in Tanzania, and I got to spend some time at
your research center. -Yes. -And it is -- it is -- I mean, I was frightened
when I met the chimps. Because I don´t know --
I went up and they smell -- They have like a perfume-y smell
to them, don´t you think? -Well, it´s a -- to me, it´s a
forest-y smell. Unlike the gorillas, who kind of
stink like a sweaty person. [ Laughter ] -The chimpanzees
aren´t like that. -It´s perfume-y or something.
It´s pungent. It´s something. I remember going --
really hiking up this trail and we were hiking up
a long hike, and I almost couldn´t even
do the hike. And by the time
I got to the top, I´m -- I smell these chimpanzees
and I see two of them and one of them starts
going like... [ Mimicking chimpanzee ] Screaming and I go... -[ Mimicking chimpanzee ] -Oh, yes, that´s exactly
what they did. [ Laughter ] And I was like, "He didn´t --
He´s not a fan of my movies." That´s what
I immediately thought. But the ground
was kind of rumbling. If anyone lives in the city,
it´s like the subway rumbling. Anyone who lives in the jungle,
it´s like a chimpanzee -- Is it yelling?
What do you call that? -Pant-hoot.
-Pant-hoot. -Yeah.
-What are they doing there? Just saying
that they´re the alpha? -They´re just saying hello. Well, there´s different kinds of
pant-hoots, and probably the one you heard was two males greeting
each other or -- It could be --
I don´t know. I wasn´t there. [ Laughter ] -What would have -- What should
I have done, if anything, if they saw me or --
I didn´t make eye contact. First of all, I was eating
an apple before I went up. And the guy
that was working there, the scientist that was there
said, "Don´t bring your apple." Because I was
just going to toss it because, you know,
it´s just an apple core. [ Light laughter ] But he´s like, what if --
like, what are you doing? What if a chimpanzee
picks up an apple or maybe the apple
becomes a tree? I´m like Johnny Appleseed. [ Laughter ] I´m bringing apple trees
to Tanzania. Never happened. -You know, chimpanzees will not
eat anything they don´t know. So if an infant --
they´re the curious ones -- I think they start new cultures. If an infant had gone up to
sniff and try your apple core, the mother would almost
certainly have hit it away. "That´s not food." -And I would have been
passed out. I mean, laying on the ground
going -- I was so scared. But it was
the most beautiful thing. And if any of you --
I want to bring -- I have two little girls now.
This is since I´d been there. They´re 4 and 2. But I don´t if -- I think
they´re too young to go there. -They´re too young.
-Yeah. But what would you tell them if you could give them
one word of advice? What do you tell
the future generations? -Well, that´s why I started
this program, Roots & Shoots, which is encouraging --
it´s inspiring young people. They get to choose projects
to help people, to help animals, to help the environment.
-Yep. -We don´t tell them what to do. So they can, you know, whatever
they´re passionate about. Someone to help dogs,
someone to help street children. It´s amazing how young people
have different passions. -Roots & Shoots.
-Roots & Shoots. -Yeah, we worked with
those guys. -Rootsandshoots.org.
And it´s in 100 countries. -And we have members from
preschool through university. And it´s changing the world. These young people, when they
understand the problems and you empower them
to take action, then they are
changing the world. And, my goodness, don´t we need
to change the world? -Yes. Yes, we do. [ Cheers and applause ]
