Grabbing roots and vines to keep from sliding, Jane Goodall eases down the steep slope on all fours. It is just before dawn in Tanzania's Gombe National Park, and the 61-year-old primatologist is in a hurry. She wants to find the wild chimpanzees before they waken and climb down from their nests. Stopping beside a sprawling fig tree, whose branches are black fingers against the plum-colored sky, she points to a nest where dark shapes are stirring.
A small face pops up--two bright eyes surrounded by oversize milk-chocolate ears. It's Ferdinand, the three-year-old son of Fifi, the last survivor of the chimpanzees Jane first studied at Gombe 35 years ago. The daughter of ragged-eared, bulbous-nosed Flo, who died in 1972, Fifi has six offspring of her own, including 24-year-old Freud, the dominant, or alpha, male, and Frodo, a 19-year-old bully.
Fifi sits up and stares at Jane, who is wearing her graying hair in her familiar, youthful ponytail. It has been more than six months since Jane's last visit to Gombe. Her days as a field researcher ended a decade ago. She still longs for time with the chimps, but her globe-spanning crusade to promote conservation, create sanctuaries for chimp orphans, and improve conditions for captive chimps keeps her away.
Above us on the ridge, Freud climbs down from his nest. He has decided to wake everybody up. Hooting and screaming at the top of his lungs, he charges down the hillside, tossing up leaves and pounding on the ground in a display of authority. Startled chimps peer down from every tree. Most leave their nests and wander off into the forest.
Most, but not all. Frodo steps out of the shadows. A hundred twenty pounds of bulging shoulders and arms, Frodo stares at Jane belligerently. Chewing on his upper lip as he does before misbehaving, he advances ominously toward us.
"Here he comes," Jane warns, as Frodo rushes ahead. Slap! He hits Michael Neugebauer, an Austrian publisher, on the head. Bang! He pushes Michio Hoshino, a Japanese photographer, over onto Jane. Leaping over Bill Wallauer, the Gombe videographer, Frodo grabs a small tree with both hands, plants his feet on my back, and kicks me down the hill. Then he circles around for Jane. Seizing her ankle in a viselike grip, he pulls her down the slope for ten feet, then releases her to grab Katrina Fox, another researcher, to drag her against a tree.
And then he is gone.
We are shaken but uninjured. Frodo didn't mean to hurt us. He was only showing off.
"He makes me so angry," Jane says. "I almost wish I knew a lot of swear words."
A spoiled brat at heart, the muscular teenager has jumped Jane before, stamping on her head so hard he nearly broke her neck. Unlike most Gombe chimps, who accept her presence peacefully, he seems to want to dominate Jane, showing that chimps, like people, may be kind or cruel, caring or cold, thoughtful or stupid.
"When I first started at Gombe, I thought the chimps were nicer than we are," Jane recalls wistfully. "But time has revealed that they are not. They can be just as awful."
Frequently tender and compassionate, humanity's closest living relatives are also capable of scheming, deceiving, and waging war. It came as a shock to Jane in 1974 when patrols of chimpanzees from the Kasakela community--one of four groups in the 20-square-mile park--began attacking chimps from the Kahama community to the south. She was stunned by reports of stealthy warriors moving through the forest in single file, hair bristling from fear and excitement, stepping from stone to stone to avoid making noise in what came to be known as the Four Year War.
By the end of the conflict, the Kahama community--seven males and three adult females and their young--had been annihilated. Researchers witnessed five of the attacks, in which Kasakela chimps tore at their victims' flesh with their teeth as if they were common prey.
Fortunately, nothing so horrible has darkened the forest recently. To catch up on the latest news, what has been called the "continuing soap opera" at Gombe, Jane climbs the trail to the feeding station with Bill Wallauer and me. We sit outside the small metal building, bathed in the fragrance of the ripe bananas inside, to gossip about the chimps whose life stories represent the world's longest continuous study of animals in the wild.
"It's so sad looking down this list," Jane says, scanning the names of chimps who have come and gone at Gombe: David Greybeard, the confident male who first accepted her presence; Mike, the diminutive fighter who bluffed his way to the top position by banging empty kerosene cans; the aging Goliath, who was murdered by former chimpanzee friends; "Auntie" Gigi, the mannish old maid who surprised everyone by adopting three orphans; and Flint, the eight-year-old mama's boy who died of grief when old Flo passed away. Each gave Jane a glimpse into the chimpanzee mind.
I ask about Passion and her daughter, Pom, who were seen to kill and eat three Kasakela infants and almost certainly killed seven newborns over a period of four years--a horrible time when Jane agonized over ways to stop them. She considered moving the pair to another valley, she says, or even temporarily crippling them. But the killings came to an end when Passion herself gave birth again in 1977. Four years later she was dead, victim of a painful, unidentified disease. And Pom, facing the hostility--and long memories--of Kasakela females, was forced to migrate to the Mitumba community to the north.
As we sit in the sunshine, a pair of olive baboons chase each other across the thatched roof of the feeding station. The forest all around buzzes with the music of cicadas.
"Chimpanzees are so inventive," Jane says. "They do lots of things they don't need to for survival." In different parts of Africa, chimps have been observed cracking open nuts with rocks, using twigs for "sandals" to protect their feet from thorns, consuming bitter plants apparently as medicine for stomachaches, and hunting in organized groups.
They are also very political, she says. Male chimps at Gombe, like neighborhood bosses, engage in much handshaking, backslapping, and hugging as they form shifting alliances
"Has Frodo challenged Freud lately?" she asks Wallauer.
"No, but he's becoming more confident," he replies. "Frodo never pant-grunts submissively to Freud anymore. The most he will do is climb out of his way."
Wallauer, dressed in camouflage pants, soccer shoes, and a sleeveless black T-shirt, is one of the team continuing the work Jane began here. Following the chimps up and down Gombe's steep trails to videotape their behavior, the 30-year-old Oregonian melts into the underbrush as effortlessly as his subjects. He identifies with them so closely he sometimes refers to the Kasakela chimps as "we."
"The key to the political situation now is Goblin," Wallauer says, referring to a shrewd former alpha. "If Goblin sides with Frodo, Frodo will easily defeat Freud to become the new alpha. But Goblin keeps going back and forth between them."
"So they both need him," Jane says.
"Exactly. Goblin sides with whoever looks most powerful. So no matter who wins, he can't lose. Meanwhile he has access to any female he wants, right in front of everyone. Neither Freud nor Frodo will stop him, or they might lose his support. So smart."
"Testosterone does such magic for men," Jane says, a twinkle in her eye.
Copyright 1995 National Geographic Society. All rights reserved.