Jane Goodall Thought Tarzan’s Wife Was "A Wimp"| Late Night with Conan O’Brien

[Applause] thanks very much for coming well thanks for inviting me oh no very nice to have you here you know i was uh i was reading this this big article on you today i was familiar with some of your work but i was reading more on you for this interview and the first thing that surprised me is that the way you got into this whole thing uh years ago was not didn't seem like a very conventional route at all it's not like you had a there was a degree in studying chimpanzees that you had and that led to you going to africa it was very unusual why don't you tell us about that yeah it really was it was a back door sort of way but apparently when i was one year old i loved anything to do with animals insects you know and then i began reading books always books about animals and i read about dr doolittle then i read about tarzan you know tarzan has this wife jane and i was so jealous of jane i thought she was a wimp and i thought i'd have been a much better mate for tarzan myself and that was when i decided to go to africa to live with animals and learn about them and write books about them and all my mother's friends said why don't you tell jane to do something to dream about something she can actually do and my mother used to say to me jane if you really want to do something and you really work hard enough and you never give up you take advantage of opportunity you will find a way so i did all kinds of things and got a great job in london with documentary films but um you didn't give much money when i got invited to kenya i threw in my job worked as a waitress till i had enough money saved up went to africa met the famous anthropologist paleontologist louis leakey worked for him because i could answer all his questions about animals he was very impressed and he's the one who gave me the opportunity to go and live with chimpanzees now when he first did it that was very unconventional very right for for especially for a woman to go into the jungle you know trying to live with chimpanzees and uh you had to have a guide at first right they wouldn't let you go in they wouldn't let me go in alone because of the one young english girl alone in the bush so my mother came the same wonderful mother she volunteered that's a great mom oh she's she's oh i'll go with you in the jungle birthday today oh oh happy birthday mom good for her that's very that's fantastic she went with you came with me for two months three months and then they thought well okay that she's crazy but she's okay so then mom could go back and get on with her it's a good kind of crazy it's a good kind of question what i found interesting is that when you first started uh to try and even get near the chimpanzees they wouldn't let you near them they were terrified they were terrified of you and i actually ate with weird bits of hair you know i mean oh horrible uh well it took you how long it took you how long to even get close enough where they would actually interact with you it took well i didn't want to interact with them i just wanted to get close enough to see them see what they were doing you know it took about 18 months before i could actually go up to all of them and know they wouldn't run away but even from from my peak in the 18 months with my binoculars i still began to learn an awful lot about you know their movements and what they ate and how they made nests at night in the trees because i would think 18 months your spirits never never sagged during that time you thought this is just taking too long to be accepted by that no because i still was learning fascinating things even though they were still scared of me and all i was worried about was that the money would run out before i saw some really exciting things and then i'd have to give up and also i'd be letting louis leaky down which would have been horrendous now one of the things that you saw that was really revolutionary is you noticed that the chimpanzees were using tools right is that right right uh which and at the time people had said there's a distinction you know humans we use tools and that's what separates us from chimpanzees yeah in fact when i was at school man the tool maker that was it that was what separated us from all the other non-human animals and then what did you see them do i mean we're not talking they weren't using jackhammers they were using something using well actually you say they weren't using jackhammers but this my chimps use little pieces of grass and poke them into termite mounds pull out the termites and eat them off and they use tools in lots of other ways but there are chimps in west africa where you have actually footage of it that's it there come the termites and you eat them that's so they're so they had to figure out they figured out how to do it and they passed this knowledge on and they the young ones watch and they imitate all across africa you find that chimps that are being studied have different tool using cultures and the ones in west africa not a jackhammer but they use big rocks that can weigh two kilos and an anvil on the forest floor and they crack open these real hard nuts that's it yeah and and did you ever try any of this yourself i tried everything you didn't eat the termites i did i tasted it you ate the termites yes i tasted everything the chimps that's incredible uh dedication i killed it first and they're much better fried they taste fried have you tried to pass that knowledge back to the chimpanzees you really got to fry these things when i first came over to this country you know it was all me j in utas and when i was interviewed and there was this one heading in the paper which said don't exterminate your termites eat them jane goodall does which really must have helped your credibility terrific you've got to do it what do they actually taste like termites and when you fry them they taste like those prawn little crispy things you have with cocktails you know nice they're good would you ever serve it at home ever at a party um i did big flying ones like that i have served them but i don't eat them anymore all right well you were away for a long time you were gone initially you were gone for quite a long time when you came back for the first time to civilization that must have been a huge shock for you because you've been living in the in the jungle so long i know i'm sure there were lots of things that shocked me i think then as now probably the waste shocked me but one thing that was a surprise is when i left england everybody had hair like you and when i got back you know in the early 60s it had grown very long and it was kind of funny i didn't know what sex people were it was confusing some of us are back to this now i'm i have a like sort of a mid 50s thing going here yeah right uh but so but you you got you adjusted to it and uh i i was i was curious because i noticed i watched uh some of uh some of the documentary today and and the thing that struck me is you said you learned so much about the chimps when you were studying them one of the things that really struck you was that and saddened you was that like humans they're similar and that they do attack each other and they do try and they they attack each other and kill each other at times they they are very aggressively territorial they're very hostile to strangers and the males will actually go on patrols around the boundary of their territory and if they see one or perhaps two of the neighboring community they'll chase attack and if and they may leave the victim to die of wounds inflicted it's very brutal it's very different from attacks within a community that's funny because people have this sense that that that chimpanzees wouldn't do that that they're very you know loving and that they would uh you know that they would never be brutal in any way they sh they they differ genetically from us by only just over one percent their brain is more like ours than any other living creature it isn't surprising that in their behavior their emotions their intellect they're like us well i think that's what's what's so funny is that people are so desperate you know throughout the ages to say we're nothing like chimps we're nothing like they have it's like we have this aversion we're anything like them what's so wrong you know really well see people didn't understand chimps for one thing and the one thing i've learned perhaps more than anything else after 35 years is humility we are not as different from the rest of the animals as we used to think we are different we are unique and what's the thing that i think makes us most different we have a spoken language we can have a show like this we can have people listening and that's something that this is man's great claim to fame yup oh my god you've done it the talk show yes chimps have tools too but we can put talk shows on with giant fake ostriches all right well uh i it was very nice uh meeting you i want to make sure i mentioned that national geographic 30th anniversary special is tomorrow at 8 o'clock on nbc and and people should uh check that out it was very nice having on the show thanks for taking the time jane goodall everyone

Channel: Conan O'Brien

Views: 30,090

Keywords: Late Night with Conan O’Brien, late night with conan obrien, late night with, conan classic, best of, late night, original, comedy, sketch, humor, funny, celebrity, interview, first, late late show, late, night, show, special, classic, talk show, talk show hosts, triumph the insult comic dog, andy richter, max weinberg

Id: _ZfCcy_CYUY

Length: 8min 45sec (525 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 10 2022