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Chimps eat chimps

           1. It is hard for any naturalist to write about animals he or she has studied in depth without falling into the trap of anthropomorphism. It is so easy to find oneself attributing humanoid characteristics and

emotions to another species that few natu-5 ralists have been able to separate themselves from this habit. This objective observation and avoidance of pitfalls becomes even more difficult when one is dealing with a species that physically resembles man, hat uses vocalizations and facial expressions that seem to reflect our

own and that often exhibits behaviour similar to that of its human relatives. It is for this reason that Jane Goodall is to be highly complimented.

2. It has been 27 years since this Englishwoman, accompanied by her intrepid mother and a cook took

off for the shores of Lake Tanganyika in East Africa and set up her first station for the study of wild chimpanzees. Here, in this compendious volume, Goodall,who earlier gave us her exciting book In the Shadow of Man, now reports at length on the first quarter-century of her work with the wild apes of the Gombe Nature Reserve.

20       3. For the amateur enthusiast there is a wealth of material about feeding, socialization, breeding habits and territorial struggles including aggressive encounters between chimps and social dependencies within the chimpanzee hierarchy. There are detailed lists of food showing what appears to be an order of

preferences and more than 250 photographs, some in colour, showing the variety of features that set one chimp off from another.

4.The 77 chimps known by name and studied are all presented in individual portraits, most of them by

H.Van Lawick. There are also breeding and grooming one another.

5.In her earlier work, Goodall debunked the popular myth that chimpanzees are vegetarians, showing them to be opportunistic omnivores that on occasion even hunt their food. Now, in this later work, the

longest field observation ever undertaken  of any species, she topples other cherished beliefs. Observing the animals of Gombe, Goodall and her co-workers show proof of cannibalism in the chimpanzee tribe as demonstrated by Passion and Pom, a mother and daughter, who systematically prey on the young of other

chimpanzees. While it has been well established that the chimps do steal infant baboons from their mothers and eat them, this is the first documented incident of chimps eating chimps.

6. The sentimentalist's idyll of nature is shattered as Goodall lists in exact detail the injuries, illnesses

and deaths of chimps in the reserve over 25 years and reports just how many of these are the result of

      aggressive actions on the part of other chimps.

       7. For the professional naturalist there are intricate graphs covering hundreds, even thousands of hours

50 of observation showing just how much time chimps in different categories spend with one another and in what circumstances and familiar relationships. She shows that the strongest social bonds are between mother and daughter and between siblings, although other, elective bondings are sometimes almost as strong.

55      8. Another documented observation is the natural fastidiousness of chimps that clean themselves with leaves after becoming soiled. However, just as in our own species, individual differences exist between those who are finicky and those who are slobs. Similar differences were observed in willingness to eat soiled food

60 or copulate with a befouled female. Some males didn't care, some cleaned up the messy lady before copulating and some rejected her advances.

       9. In addition to her own researches, Goodall gives a clear account of what research laboratories and

65 adoptive humans have learned about the chimpanzee. Since the late 1960s, when  it was realized that even if

     chimps could not actually talk they might be able to learn the sign language of the deaf and mute, great

     strides have been made in understanding the mentality of these, our relatives.

   10. Yerkish, the machine language of Yerkes laboratories, has also contributed a vast amount of   information that helps understand chimpanzee thought processes. Young chimps, taught this manner of  communication, are quite adept at expressing their feelings, telling stories of what happened to them and

even forming certain concepts. When first seeing a swan one young chip made the signs for «water» and «bird». Another termed watermelon «candy-drink», while still another called a sharply-flavoured radish «hunt-cry-food».

           11. There is also evidence that the chimpanzee can invent its own signs. Lucy, a hand-raised chimp

80 wanted to be put on  a leash and walked. Not having the word for leash she hooked her index finger into the ring of her collar and went to the door. Another, not knowing the word for bib traced its outline on her chest. It later turned out that this was the official sign for a bib and the one her teacher had shown her was incorrect.

From: Jane Goodall, Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior, 1987.


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