- We all want to be part of the greeting, but I was going to do it in chimpanzee, but I was afraid if I did it wrong I might be saying something offensive since I don't know the language very well. I don't know if you would like to tell us how it's properly done, would you? - I will, don't go away. I will tell you that
there are two ways for a chimpanzee to greet, and one way is if he sees or hears a friend on the other side of a valley like we might be standing here, and we'd somebody right
down at the bottom, and that is a greeting that has to carry. It has to reach from here to there. That's what I'll do first, and that's the one you wanted to learn. I've got another one,
though, so don't go away. That one, if you listen carefully, we call it a "Pant Hoot." because you know when a dog is tired, thirsty, he goes (panting) so it's all one breath. So it goes like this, listen. (panting) And that means this is me, this is Jane. So can we all do that, right, come on? (panting) Right, perfect, now
there's another greeting. Close up, it would be very rude to greet somebody that way close up. I mean, I guess opera singers do, but apart from that. So now here I am a female chimp, and I'm greeting a male chimp. So you're a male chimp right now, and I'm respectful of you because you're stronger than me, but we actually like each other. So I come up to you slightly, I'm on all fours, of course, so I'm slightly like bowing, and this is the sound I'm making. (panting) You're completely quiet. I make the sound, so I come up and I'm making this sound. (soft panting) And you like me so you reach out, and pat my head. Okay, so that's how a female chimpanzee greets a male, and if we were two males, and we were kind of squaring up to see whose dominant we might be a little bit more aggressive, and we might kind of be like this, you know, up like this. Okay, fine, he learned pretty well don't you think? When I was growing up I lived in England, and we did not have very much money at all. There was a war and my father was away fighting in the Army. I loved books. Can any of you imagine a world with no TV? They hadn't invented
TV when I was your age. There was no TV. There was obviously no Internet, no email, no Facebook, no Tweets, no Twitters, none of that stuff, so because I loved animals the only way I could learn about animals was through books. Do any of you know Dr. Doolittle? Yes, well, I loved Dr. Doolittle. Do you remember that Dr. Doolittle was taught animal language by his parrot Polynesia. I wanted to learn animal language from a parrot, and, of course, we couldn't have a parrot. Anyway, it's a bad thing to have a parrot, but, anyway, I pretended to all my friends that I understood what
the squirrels were saying, what the birds were singing about, and my friends believed me. Then when I was 10 years old I always saved up my little
bits of pocket money, and I would spend time in the second hand bookshop. I found a little book about this size, and I just had enough money to buy it. It was called "Tarzan of the Apes." You all know Tarzan, right? You know Tarzan from
the movies, and the TV, but this was from the book. Anyhow, it was when I read that book when I was 10 years old that I decided I know what I want to do when I grow up. I'm going to go to Africa. I'm going to live with animals, and I'm going to write books about them. That was my dream, and everybody laughed at me. How would I get to Africa? There was a war raging. We didn't have any money. There were no planes going back and forth, and I was just a girl. Back then in England girls didn't have those opportunities, so everybody laughed at me and said: "Jane, why don't you get real. "Why don't you dream about "something you can achieve. "Forget this nonsense about Africa," except my mother, and she said to me: "Jane, if you really want something, "you're going to have to work very hard. "You're going to have to take "advantage of opportunity, "and never give up." So that's the way I was brought up, and you know something? That's what I'm going to say to you. Maybe some of you have dreams. If you have a dream of
something you want to do when you grow up, and people laugh at you don't listen to them, but remember if you really
want to do something you're going to probably
have to work very hard, and take advantage of opportunities, and never give up. So did I go straight from school out to Africa to study chimps? No, no, I couldn't go to university because we didn't have enough money, but I got a job in London as a secretary, and saved up my money, and saved up my money, and then I got a letter
from a school friend inviting me to Kenya. I still didn't have nearly enough money so I went home where I
didn't have to pay rent, and I worked as a waitress. It was jolly hard work
for about four months serving people's breakfast,
lunch, and dinner. Eventually, I had enough money saved up for a return fare to Africa by boat, and then I got there,
stayed with my friend, heard about Louis Leakey, and as many of you know it was Louis Leakey who gave me the opportunity to go and learn about not just any animals, but chimpanzees, the animals most like us. When I began studying
the chimpanzees in 1960 nobody knew anything
about chimps in the wild. I was so lucky because
nobody knew anything. The big problem, of
course, at the beginning was the chimps had never seen a white person before, and they took one look, and they would run off
into the vegetation. I was desperate because I knew that if I didn't see something exciting the money would run out. We had money for just six months, and that would be the
end of the whole dream. Then one chimpanzee, and I bet some of you know his name it was David Greybeard, right. You've done your homework. It was David Greybeard
who began losing his fear, and it was David Greybeard who one special day showed me that chimpanzees can use objects as tools. I saw his hand reach out, break off a piece of grass, a stem, push it down into a termite mound, leave it for a moment, carefully pull it out, and all the soldier termites were biting on with their jaws, with their mandibles, and he picked them off with his lips, and crunched them up. I watched him doing this for a while. I couldn't see really clearly because he still wouldn't let me close, but I had my binoculars, and then I saw him reach out, and pick a twig with leaves on it, so he couldn't use that as a tool until he very carefully
removed the leaves, and made a tool. If you were to see an
animal doing that today it wouldn't be exciting at all, but back then it was exciting because at that time
the scientists believed only human beings could
use and make tools. When I saw David Greybeard, and then all his friends
using and making tools it was a very exciting time. The National Geographic Society sent money so that I could carry on with the study after the first six months. Now we have been observing these chimpanzees for 55 years. Does anybody know how long a chimpanzee can live? Shout out something. At Gombe they can live to be around 60. We're still not sure because, remember, we've only been there 55 years. The oldest chimp in captivity is 74. She lives in Florida. It's kind of interesting
because that's where lots of old people go to retire, so there is little mama in Florida. I went to see her this spring. They have a very long life, and you know how your friends are all different, aren't they? They're not behaving in all the same way. Chimpanzees are exactly the same. They have their own personalities. They behave differently. Some are nice, some are nasty. There are good mothers and bad mothers in chimp society just as in human society. We know that chimpanzees can be gentle and loving and compassionate. We also know they can be violent, aggressive, even have a kind of war, so they're just like us, aren't they? We know today that in their biology they're more like us than
any other living creature. Do you know what DNA is? Yes, well, the DNA of humans and chimps is almost the same. There's just over 1% difference, and if you're interested in biology then the way our blood is structured, the way our immune system works we and the chimps almost identical. If you look at a chimpanzee
and a human brain the structure, the anatomy, the way it's made is the same, it's just that ours is bigger. So we're so like them. Now I'm gonna tell you a story, and it's a very good story for this place because here we are in the middle of this beautiful redwood grove of these young redwoods, but now let's imagine we're not in this grove here, but we're in Africa. We're in an African forest, and we're walking along, and it's a bit like this. There's branches overhead, little specs of sunlight on the ground like you see here, and we're following a narrow trail through the forest, and we're following a nine-year-old female whom I called Pom, and her little kid
brother, he's just three. He's still a bit unsteady on his feet. He ought to be riding
on his mother's back, but he's decided he wants
to follow his sister, and behave like he's grown up, and the mother is behind us. Suddenly, as we go along this trail, Pom, the nine-year-old who's leading us she stops, her hair starts to stand on end which means she's excited or frightened, and she gives a little
sound (soft panting) and rushes up a tree. Little brother, maybe he
didn't hear the sound, maybe he doesn't know what it means he carries on along the trail. The closer he gets to this place where she's still staring the more worried she becomes. Every hair bristles with fright. She gets this huge grin
of fear on her face, and, finally, she can't
bear it any longer, and she rushes down the tree. She picks up her little brother, and she climbs back into the tree, and down there coiled up beside the trail is a very big poisonous snake. So there are many stories like that of chimpanzees helping each other, and the bonds between family members are very, very strong, and they can last all through life, so we even have a 50-year-old female running in to help her grown-up son when he gets into problems, and he's being attacked
by two other males. His ancient mother with
teeth worn to the gums comes to help him, and that's a good
supportive mother for you. Now we're actually able to observe the grandchildren, and even two great grandchildren of the females I knew
so well back in 1960. I'm not there at Gombe anymore. Does that mean that we finished studying these champanzees? No, we have a research team there, and I get there twice
a year for a few days, but I'm not doing the research anymore. The reason I left Gombe is because in 1986, I found that chimpanzee numbers were dropping all across Africa, and they were dropping because they were losing their forests. They were being cut down because human populations were growing, and moving into chimp habitat because Chimpanzee
mothers were being shot, so that their babies
could be stolen and sold, and because it was the beginning of what we call the "bushmeat" trade, and that is the commercial hunting of wild animals for food, so I had to try and help the chimps. That's when I began
traveling around the world talking about all these
different problems, all the things we do to harm the world. One of the worst of them, for me, is cutting down the forests. I mean, don't you think it would be sad if these beautiful
trees were all cut down, and it would be especially sad if you were living here. Suppose you lived here, and suddenly all your home is gone. That's what's happening all over Africa, all over Asia, all over Latin America, all over North America forests are disappearing. I have a special feeling for redwoods because with a man called Mike Fay for a National Geographic article I spent two days with him walking through the redwoods, and he walked through the redwood belt all the way along the coast of California, and up into Canada, and I spent two of these days camping in a tiny little tent. He was telling me all about the redwoods, and all about the fact that their wood never rots. I felt the magic of the forest. If you have a chance to be very quiet when you're perhaps here with your family just sit very quietly
under these amazing trees. It's almost as though
they're talking to you. It's almost as though
they're sharing their secrets if you bother to try and listen to what they're saying, and it will have to be your imagination, but your imagination can work really well. I love trees. I loved being in the rainforest with the chimpanzees. I loved learning about the chimps, yes, but I also loved this feeling of being in the rainforest where everything is interconnected, and where everything
relies on something else to keep alive. You know we all need plants. Even animals that eat other animals eat other animals who eat plants. If the plants disappear
there's nothing left. We can't live. If poison that we spray on our agricultural fields, and other places if we continue to do that we're destroying the bees, and the bees pollinate the plants. If the plants don't get pollinated they will go away, so we have to stop poisoning. We have to stop poisoning the plants, and the land. We have to stop cutting down the forest. We have to stop polluting the rivers, and the ocean to make this a better world. When I started Roots and Shoots, which is about 25 years ago, it was because I met a lot of young people a bit older than you, mostly high school or university, but I found that many of them they didn't seem to have
much hope for the future. They were not seeming to care much about anything, or they were depressed,
or they were angry. When I began talking to them, and this is all over the world, they all said: "You grown-up people. "You've harmed our future, "and there's nothing we can do about it." Do any of you ever think about what's happening in the world, and how we are harming nature so much? Does anybody think about that? A lot of people feel there's nothing we can do about it, but I don't believe that's true. There are scientists who will tell you: "It's too late, we can't change anything. "We've got climate change. "The surface of the globe is warming up. "It's too late to do anything about it." I don't think it's too late. I think there's a window of time that we can start to change things around, that's what I'm fighting for, but if young people don't grow up to look after what we're saving better than we have, then what's the point of my bothering with anything? What's the point of creating a garden, a beautiful, botanical garden like this, one of the best in the world, if people are going to come along, and chop it down, but you see what we hope is that if you spend time here, if you come back with your family, if you learn about the plants, and then the relationship of the plants with the animals do you want people to come, and cut these trees down? It doesn't sound very definite. Would you be angry if people came, and cut these trees down? That's better, because I'd be angry, and when you join Roots and Shoots then you can do something about it. Today you have a better chance of doing something about it then I would have had at your age because supposing you
hear from your parents, or from the people here: "Well, the government wants to come. "They need this place, "and they're going to
cut down all the trees," and you feel angry. Well, in the old days
you couldn't have done that much about it, but now you can because we've got all our little, electronic gadgets, so you can send out a message. You can Tweet or Twitter, or use Facebook, or something like that, and tell all your friends: "Will you help me to stop "the trees being cut down? "Will you help me write letters? "Will you help me come
and do a demonstration?" And they can send Tweets and Twitters out to all their friends, and they can send Tweets and Twitters out to all their friends, and you all know what
it means going viral. So your little message starting here can eventually go out right across the United States, and even other places. You can get enough people to stand up to whoever wants to cut the trees down to stop them doing it because that will be
the will of the people. That means that your voice is so powerful today, so that's one of my reasons for hope. Roots and Shoots is about you choosing projects that you want to do, so if you join Roots and Shoots the main message you've already heard is that each single one of you makes a difference every single day. We all have some role to play, and we may feel: "Well, there's not much that I can do. "I'm just one person," but if you're part of Roots and Shoots there are millions of people just like you all doing the same thing. If you collectively all save water think how much water you can save. If you collectively all
turn electric lights off, wow, you can save a huge
amount of electricity, and you can also influence your parents to recycle, and stuff like that. Roots and Shoots will choose a project to help people. They'll choose a project
to help other animals, and they'll choose a project to help the environment, and you get to choose what you want to do. So you come here, you learn about the
plants, and the animals, you go back to school, and you say: "Let's do a Roots and Shoots group, "and what should we do?" Well you're certainly
going to want to learn more about what goes on here, and you probably want to learn more about whatever animal you've been given. I can see all kinds of
different animals here. Roots and Shoots is also about having fun. If you don't have fun
the program will die. Roots and Shoots is about hope, and there is hope. You're the hope, you're my hope. Everywhere I go in the world I find young people like you wanting to tell Dr. Jane about what they've been doing. So if I come back here in a year you'll be able to tell
me what you've been doing to make this a better world, and it will be different
from your three schools. You'll be doing different things, but you'll be doing
something you care about, and you're passionate about because, otherwise, you
won't bother to do it at all, and you won't be helping
to save the world. My reasons for hope are all of you. My reason for hope is this amazing brain that we've got. Think of the inventions
that people are making that will allow us to live in peace with the natural world, and with each other. My reason for hope is
the resilience of nature. A place can be destroyed, and we give it some time and some help, and it can once again become beautiful, and then there's what I call the indomitable human spirit. People who try to do something, and everybody says: "You can't do that." And yet there are people who say. Where's Susana? Can I have Mr. H? Mr. H is my symbol for the indomitable human spirit. Mr. H was given to me 29 years ago by a man who went blind. He was in the US Marines, very brave. He was with the helicopters, and he went completely blind. For some peculiar reason he decided he wanted to become a magician. Imagine a blind man being a magician. Everybody said: "Well, Gary." His name is Gary Horne. "Gary, you can't be a good magician "if you're blind," and he said: "Well I can try." And if he was standing here you would not know he's blind. I can guarantee, I've watched him. He is amazing, and when he's finished his show he would say to you: "Something might go wrong in your life "because we never know, "but if it does don't give up, "there's always some way forward." He does scuba diving. He does cross-country skiing. He does skydiving. Can you imagine jumping out of an airplane into pitch blackness. He thought he was giving me a stuffed chimpanzee for my birthday. Why isn't this a chimpanzee? Yes, because he's got a tail, so I made Gary hold the tail, and he said: "Well never mind, take him where you go, "and you know my spirit is with you." So he's been with me to 65 countries, and he's been touched by about four million people because I say the inspiration rubs off. So afterwards if you want
to come and be inspired you can come and touch him, actually, yes. So I think that there are some questions that you want to ask, and I will try my best to answer them. - Other than sticks, do chimpanzees use other tools and how? - Very good question. Yes, they use twigs,
and they use big sticks. Also, if there's water in a hole in a hollow in a tree trunk which they can't reach with their lips they crumple up leaves. They chew them and makes them into kind of a sponge, and then they can dip it in, and suck the water out, and dip it in, and suck the water out. They also, I'm afraid,
use rocks as weapons, and throw them, and they've got pretty good aim. We do not like the
chimps that throw rocks. They don't all throw rocks. They also use leaves as napkins, so if I have mud, or blood, or something on my shoulder they wipe
it clean with leaves. If they saw you with mud on you they might wipe you clean with leaves too, so they're very inventive. There's one group of chimpanzees, and they love eating this long weed on the top of a river, but they don't want to
get all wet in the water, so they get this long stick, and they put it in, and they lift it up. It's like spaghetti, and they slurp it in. - Do you remember the sounds you heard, and the feelings you had the first night you slept in the African rainforest? - The first night was so magical. I remember when I arrived climbing a little way up above the camp once we got the tent up, and first of all I heard
the crickets calling, and then there was some baboons barking. They were barking at me because they didn't like me being there, and it's kind of a (panting/barking) It's a bark, barky sound, I heard that, but then during the night I heard the wind moving in the palm fronds very gently. I heard the little sounds of bats. I heard a bushbaby, and that was about what
I heard that first night. I love the sounds of the forest. Birds singing, I forgot about the birds singing in the evening. Very beautiful. - What did you learn from the mother chimpanzees to help you be a mother? - Great question, what I learned is you need a lot of patience because your little children can become a nuisance sometimes, and chimpanzee mothers almost never stop being patient. They're very clever. If the child is doing something that it shouldn't be, like, supposing you're
fishing for termites, look, if you're fishing for termites, and your child, this little infant is trying to grab the tool all the time it's very annoying, but the mother doesn't punish the child. Instead, she'll reach out, and start tickling, and the little child will start laughing, and forget all about
grabbing mommy's tool. I learned about being patient. I learned about distracting. I learned to be supportive of my child because I've got one son. Good question. - [Voiceover] What can we learn from chimpanzees? - We can learn an awful lot, and we certainly can learn how much like them we are, and the fact that we're not so different from the rest of the animals. I was told when I went to university that I couldn't talk about animals having personalities. I couldn't talk about them having minds that can solve problems, and I absolutely couldn't talk about them having emotions like happiness, sadness, fear, and so forth, but I had learned that even though these professors knew so much more about science than I did I had been taught that they were wrong about this by my dog. Rusty, my dog, had taught me, of course, animals have personalities, and minds, and feelings. Eventually, because the
chimps are so like us we won through, and now people understand that we're not the only creatures on the planet with personality, mind, and above all feeling. We now know about the intelligence of many different kinds of animals like elephants. Now we know about the
intelligence of birds, and we even know how amazingly intelligent octopus are. So we learn a new respect for the other amazing animals with whom we share the planet. We also learn, by the way, from the chimps what it is that makes us most different, and what makes us most different, I think, is the fact that our brains have become so big, and out intellect is so amazing, and so it's very weird, isn't it, that with this amazing brain we're destroying our only home only this planet any good to live on. Chimps taught us that too. - [Voiceover] Do you think
chimps are treated fairly in zoos and in Gombe? - At Gombe we don't really treat them. They just live wild. Some zoos are really good. Some zoos provide chimps with a lot of enrichment. That means they give them a lot to do because they get bored. If you were shut in a small cage with one other person for years, you'd be bored if you had nothing to do. You'd be bored stiff. Chimps get bored, and then they get strange behaviors, so a zoo can be a nice, big group with a lot of space,
a lot of things to do, but there are zoos where chimps are in these small cages
with cement floors, and that's horrible, and in medical research it's even worse. They can be in a cage measuring five foot by five foot. That's about between us, or smaller, about like this, and you can be in that for 30 years, a little cage like that. Isn't that horrible? We shouldn't do it, should we? You guys, again, can
stop that sort of thing ever happening again. - [Voiceover] What was
your favorite activity when you were younger? - My favorite activity
before I went to Gombe is still one of my favorite activities is going for walks with a dog. People think my favorite animal is a chimpanzee. Actually, chimpanzees are too like people. I don't think of them as animals. My favorite animal is a dog. I love dogs because
they do so much for us. - Our project is Keep
Hegenberger Live Clean, and one of Lighthouse's guiding principles is to respect our environment, and we are currently
not seeing that so well, so we came up with this project. Our project has two parts. First, you want a clean school campus, and surrounding street by regularly maintaining a litter free landscape. Second, we want our K through 12 school community so that whenever they see litter they will be empowered to pick it up and dispose of it properly. They will recognize this
as matter out of place. We are currently in the process of researching trash picking up tools, and cleaning schedule, thank you. - Saving Water Through Rain Catchment. We wish to raise awareness about the precious natural
resource that water is, and teach people how to conserve water. We want our community
to reduce water usage by showing them how to use water drums, to collect water when it rains. We are building a model of our school to show how this works. We then will build an actual water collection system. (applause) - And a question from Lighthouse. This is a question. - Thank you. - We learned that your
favorite animal is a dog. If you can have a second life would you like to be a
chimpanzee, or a dog? - It would depend where the chimpanzee is living, and with whom the dog was living, but I think a dog with a really good owner who's free to run in the
fields, or the garden, and gets his nice food, and has a companion owner who loves him and whom he loves I think a dog would have the wonderfullest time. - [Voiceover] Whatever happened to the chimp who attacked you? Did he ever show affection for you? - Frodo, you're talking
about Frodo, right? Frodo when he attacked I wouldn't really call it attack. It seemed like an attack. He hit me, he occasionally dragged me, and stamped on me, so it looks like an attack. He's actually only trying
to prove he's the boss, and I kept saying: "Frodo, I know you're stronger than me. "I'm absolutely prepared to defer to you," but, nevertheless, every time he saw me when I'd been away and I came back he wanted to prove he was top dog, or top chimp, and the thing is if it
had been a real attack I wouldn't be here now because they're eight
times stronger than me, maybe 10 times stronger than me, and he was the biggest
chimp we've ever had. He could easily have killed me, but he didn't want to kill me. He just wanted to prove he was the boss. He proved it. - [Voiceover] When you were a kid if you had friends what would you do with them in your free time? - In my free time I organized a magazine, and it was a magazine at school. I collected up people's essays, or drawings, pictures, questions, that sort of thing. When it was in the holidays, which, of course, I liked
much better than school than I had something I called the "Alligator Club," and it was all about nature. What I tried to do with my friends was go out into nature with them, and then we'd get back
together afterwards, and write little stories
about what we'd seen, and that sort of thing, but we also had a lot of fun climbing into difficult places, and doing things our parents wouldn't have liked at all if they'd know we were doing it. In other words, we had a lot of fun, but all outdoor fun. - [Voiceover] How exactly
do you communicate with the chimpanzee, and how many different
sounds did you learn? - I never have communicated. You're talking about the sign language. I don't know it. I wasn't involved in that program, but the chimpanzees can learn 400 or more signs. I know the sounds they make in the wild. We don't communicate
with them in the wild. We just understand. When we're looking
after the little orphans whose mothers have been shot we have to know those sounds to make them feel more at home, but because the chimps have learned this sign language in captivity we know an awful lot more about chimps than we wouldn't have known otherwise. For example, some of them love to paint, and the one's who have
learned sign language will sometimes tell you what it is that they've painted even if it doesn't look like that they're telling you what they've painted. The other creature that communicates with us in captivity with words, not signs, but words are parrots. I'm going to tell you
a story about parrots that I think will amaze you. You can go and sit down if you like, or you can stand here I don't mind, whichever you like. This is a woman who always wanted to have a parrot, and she spent a long time going around all the different breeding places. This was not a parrot taken from the wild. It's not a good idea to have a parrot. She gave up her life
when she got that parrot. She is 24 hours a day with the parrot. You can't have a parrot and leave it, so it's not a good idea
to have a parrot at all, but she decided: "Well,
everybody gets a parrot, "and they teach the parrot to say a word. "They repeat the word. "If the parrot repeats it, "then they're given a reward," but your mother doesn't do that with you when she was teaching you to talk. She just talked to you. You won't teach your children by sitting them in front
of a dish, and saying: "Dish, dish, dish," and giving them a spoonful when they say dish, you talk to them, and they talk back. This parrot began talking, and this parrot is called N'kisi. I heard about this parrot, and the first time I went to see him he was sitting up on top of his cage, and he'd been shown books about me, and he'd seen a video. You know what he said to me when I walked through the door? He said: "That's Jane, got a chimp?" That's what he said to me. She gave him those toys you give kids it's a sort of board, electronic, and you press a button that says "A," and it says: "A is for
apple, B is for ball," and then little mechanical
toys that run along. You know about those sort of toys. Well this woman also had a pet iguana, and it died, and she was very upset. She had it lying on the ground with a long shaped box. She was going to give it a burial. N'kisi the parrot was looking, and he came over to
see what was happening. He spent a little bit of time looking, and do you know what he said? "Try a new battery." This makes you understand that when you just see a bird, and you think: "Well it's just a bird." They're amazing beings. Chickens, I don't know what you think about chickens, but if you keep chickens you find that everyone has a personality, and they're amazing. Lynn keeps chickens, and Lynn could come and tell you one day in your Roots and Shoots group all about her chickens, and their amazing personalities, and that sort of thing. We also know that octopus are very intelligent, too, and if you don't believe me when you get home Google "Octopus and coconut shell." Just Google that and see what happens. You'll get 1-1/2 minutes. It will make you laugh, and you'll also be amazed. "Octopus and coconut shell." You can remember that. - Do you miss Fifi from Gombe? - Well I often think of Fifi, and I miss the times I spent with her. I miss being with her
and learning so much. She was a very, very
special, special chimp. It was so sad when she died, and her last born child died with her. We don't know what happened, but I miss David Greybeard more than any other. I don't know, did you
read about Mr. McGregor? I miss him, and Goliath. I knew them so well in those days. It's like missing people. - [Voiceover] How did you know if a monkey was laughing? How did you know? How did they speak? - You mean the chimpanzee, right? You know the difference. Monkeys have tails, and apes don't, right? That's chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos, orangutans, and do you know we're apes, too. Humans are apes, did you know that? We are, we're classified, we're in the same sort of family. Anyway, because when they're laughing they sound like this (panting). Sound like laughing? And they do that when
they're being tickled, when they're chasing each other around and around a tree they're laughing. I'll tell you one last story because then there isn't
time for anything else. I'll tell you one last story. People often ask me if the chimps, the apes, have a sense of humor. I know they do, but there's one story, and it comes from the gorilla Koko, which some of you may have read about, and she learned sign language. One day a new young assistant came into the place where Koko lived, and she was told: "Just be with Koko while
we make her dinner." So Koko had just been learning all the different colors, and she learned green, and gray, and yellow, and blue, and all these different colors. The young woman was just talking with her, and she would pick up something. What color is this, and Koko would sign blue. When she picked up something else, and Koko would sign yellow, and then she picked up something else, and Koko would sign beige, or something like that. Then she picked up a
completely white cloth, just very, very white, and she asked Koko what color is it, and Koko signed red. She said: "Koko, you
know that's not right. "What color is this?" And Koko signed red. This young woman thought
Koko was teasing her because she knew Koko knew, and so she said: "Koko,
if you don't tell me "what color this is, "you won't get apple juice for supper." Koko reached out, she took the white cloth, she picked off a tiny piece of red fluff, and she went: "Red, red, red (panting)." That's a good story to end on. (applause) By the way, I loved your Roots and Shoots projects, and clearing up trash is so important, and saving water, especially, you know that here in California is so, so important, and we've wasted water too long. Of course, the trees in the forest play a hugely important role in helping us to keep water on the planet, so that's another reason why the forests are so important, water.
