A huge undertaking is going on at Duke University to digitize 50 years worth of notes taken by anthropologist, primatologist, ethologist and all around awesome lady Dame Jane Goodall. The final product will be the Jane Goodall Institute Research Center and will include “all of Goodall’s notes, including her very first observation, along with narratives in English and Swahili, check-sheets, hand-drawn maps, video, and photographs.” Leading this effort is Anne Pusey (seen in the video above), who worked with Goodall in Africa beginning in 1970.
“The Gombe archive is priceless for several reasons. First and foremost, it is only by watching a long-lived species for entire lifetimes that we can see the larger patterns created by social bonds and family relationships,” says Duke biologist Susan Alberts, who has been studying baboons in Kenya for nearly 30 years.
And while each day of tracking data by itself may not add up to much, there are rare events and subtle patterns in the day-to-day events that can only be discerned by taking the long view, Pusey says.
Goodall, armed only with her own knack for keen observation and meticulous note-taking skills, first arrived at Gombe Stream in July 1960 to observe the behaviors of chimpanzees, and wound up spinning the scientific world into a frenzy over her discoveries that chimpanzees both use tools and are not completely vegetarians. And all that from someone who didn’t have a degree and insisted on naming the animals she observed instead of cooly numbering them. And now, her handwritten notes, audio recordings, and typed transcriptions will be available to provide invaluable insight on primate behavior.
(Futurity)
