Jane Goodall: Thank you,

and I think, you know, we couldn't have a complete interview

unless people know Mr. H is with me,

because everybody knows Mr. H.

CA: Hello, Mr. H.

In your TED Talk 17 years ago,

you warned us about the dangers of humans crowding out the natural world.

Is there any sense in which you feel

that the current pandemic is kind of, nature striking back?

JG: It's very, very clear that these zoonotic diseases,

like the corona and HIV/AIDS

and all sorts of other diseases that we catch from animals,

that's partly to do with destruction of the environment,

which, as animals lose habitat, they get crowded together

and sometimes that means that a virus from a reservoir species,

where it's lived harmoniously for maybe hundreds of years,

jumps into a new species,

then you also get animals being pushed into closer contact with humans.

And sometimes one of these animals that has caught a virus can --

you know, provides the opportunity for that virus to jump into people

and create a new disease, like COVID-19.

And in addition to that,

we are so disrespecting animals.

We hunt them,

we kill them, we eat them,

we traffic them,

we send them off to the wild-animal markets

in Asia,

where they're in terrible, cramped conditions, in tiny cages,

with people being contaminated with blood and urine and feces,

ideal conditions for a virus to spill from an animal to an animal,

or an animal to a person.

CA: I'd love to just dip backwards in time for a bit,

because your story is so extraordinary.

I mean, despite the arguably even more sexist attitudes of the 1960s,

somehow you were able to break through

and become one of the world's leading scientists,

discovering this astonishing series of facts about chimpanzees,

such as their tool use and so much more.

What was it about you, do you think,

that allowed you to make such a breakthrough?

JG: Well, the thing is, I was born loving animals,

and the most important thing was, I had a very supportive mother.

She didn't get mad when she found earthworms in my bed,

she just said they better be in the garden.

And she didn't get mad when I disappeared for four hours

and she called the police, and I was sitting in a hen house,

because nobody would tell me where the hole was where the egg came out.

I had no dream of being a scientist,

because women didn't do that sort of thing.

In fact, there weren't any man doing it back then, either.

And everybody laughed at me except Mom,

who said, "If you really want this, you're going to have to work awfully hard,

take advantage of every opportunity,

if you don't give up, maybe you'll find a way."

CA: And somehow, you were able to kind of, earn the trust of chimpanzees

in the way that no one else had.

Looking back, what were the most exciting moments that you discovered

or what is it that people still don't get about chimpanzees?

JG: Well, the thing is, you say, "See things nobody else had,

get their trust."

Nobody else had tried.

Quite honestly.

So, basically, I used the same techniques

that I had to study the animals around my home when I was a child.

Just sitting, patiently,

not trying to get too close too quickly,

but it was awful, because the money was only for six months.

I mean, you can imagine how difficult to get money

for a young girl with no degree,

to go and do something as bizarre as sitting in a forest.

And you know, finally,

we got money for six months from an American philanthropist,

and I knew with time I'd get the chimps' trust,

but did I have time?

And weeks became months and then finally, after about four months,

one chimpanzee began to lose his fear,

and it was he that on one occasion I saw --

I still wasn't really close, but I had my binoculars --

and I saw him using and making tools to fish for termites.

And although I wasn't terribly surprised,

because I've read about things captive chimps could do --

but I knew that science believed

that humans, and only humans, used and made tools.

And I knew how excited [Dr. Louis] Leakey would be.

And it was that observation

that enabled him to go to the National Geographic,

and they said, "OK, we'll continue to support the research,"

and they sent Hugo van Lawick, the photographer-filmmaker,

to record what I was seeing.

So a lot of scientists didn't want to believe the tool-using.

In fact, one of them said I must have taught the chimps.

(Laughter)

Since I couldn't get near them, it would have been a miracle.

But anyway, once they saw Hugo's film

and that with all my descriptions of their behavior,

the scientists had to start changing their minds.

CA: And since then, numerous other discoveries

that placed chimpanzees much closer to humans than people cared to believe.

I think I saw you say at one point that they have a sense of humor.

How have you seen that expressed?

JG: Well, you see it when they're playing games,

and there's a bigger one playing with a little one,

and he's trailing a vine around a tree.

And every time the little one is about to catch it,

the bigger one pulls it away,

and the little one starts crying

and the big one starts laughing.

So, you know.

CA: And then, Jane, you observed something much more troubling,

which was these instances of chimpanzee gangs,

tribes, groups, being brutally violent to each other.

I'm curious how you process that.

And whether it made you, kind of,

I don't know, depressed about us, we're close to them,

did it make you feel that violence is irredeemably

part of all the great apes, somehow?

JG: Well, it obviously is.

And my first encounter with human, what I call evil,

was the end of the war

and the pictures from the Holocaust.

And you know, that really shocked me.

That changed who I was.

I was 10, I think, at the time.

And when the chimpanzees,

when I realized they have this dark, brutal side,

I thought they were like us but nicer.

And then I realized they're even more like us

than I had thought.

And at that time, in the early '70s,

it was very strange,

aggression, there was a big thing

about, is aggression innate or learned.

And it became political.

And it was, I don't know, it was a very strange time,

and I was coming out, saying,

"No, I think aggression is definitely

part of our inherited repertoire of behaviors."

And I asked a very respected scientist what he really thought,

because he was coming out on the clean slate,

aggression is learned,

and he said, "Jane, I'd rather not talk about what I really think."

That was a big shock as far as science was concerned for me.

CA: I was brought up to believe a world of all things bright and beautiful.

You know, numerous beautiful films of butterflies and bees and flowers,

and you know, nature as this gorgeous landscape.

And many environmentalists often seem to take the stance,

"Yes, nature is pure, nature is beautiful, humans are bad,"

but then you have the kind of observations that you see,

when you actually look at any part of nature in more detail,

you see things to be terrified by, honestly.

What do you make of nature, how do you think of it,

how should we think of it?

JG: Nature is, you know,

I mean, you think of the whole spectrum of evolution,

and there's something about going to a pristine place,

and Africa was very pristine when I was young.

And there were animals everywhere.

And I never liked the fact that lions killed,

they have to, I mean, that's what they do,

if they didn't kill animals, they would die.

And the big difference between them and us, I think,

is that they do what they do because that's what they have to do.

And we can plan to do things.

Our plans are very different.

We can plan to cut down a whole forest,

because we want to sell the timber,

or because we want to build another shopping mall,

something like that.

So our destruction of nature and our warfare,

we're capable of evil because we can sit comfortably

and plan the torture of somebody far away.

That's evil.

Chimpanzees have a sort of primitive war,

and they can be very aggressive,

but it's of the moment.

It's how they feel.

It's response to an emotion.

CA: So your observation of the sophistication of chimpanzees

doesn't go as far as what some people would want to say

is the sort of the human superpower,

of being able to really simulate the future in our minds in great detail

and make long-term plans.

And act to encourage each other to achieve those long-term plans.

That that feels, even to someone who spent so much time with chimpanzees,

that feels like a fundamentally different skill set

that we just have to take responsibility for

and use much more wisely than we do.

JG: Yes, and I personally think,

I mean, there's a lot of discussion about this,

but I think it's a fact that we developed the way of communication

that you and I are using.

And because we have words,

I mean, animal communication is way more sophisticated

than we used to think.

And chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans

can learn human sign language of the Deaf.

But we sort of grow up speaking whatever language it is.

So I can tell you about things that you've never heard of.

And a chimpanzee couldn't do that.

And we can teach our children about abstract things.

And chimpanzees couldn't do that.

So yes, chimpanzees can do all sorts of clever things,

and so can elephants and so can crows and so can octopuses,

but we design rockets that go off to another planet

and little robots taking photographs,

and we've designed this extraordinary way of you and me talking

in our different parts of the world.

When I was young, when I grew up,

there was no TV, there were no cell phones,

there was no computers.

It was such a different world,

I had a pencil, pen and notebook, that was it.

CA: So just going back to this question about nature,

because I think about this a lot,

and I struggle with this, honestly.

So much of your work, so much of so many people who I respect,

is about this passion for trying not to screw up the natural world.

So is it possible, is it healthy, is it essential, perhaps,

to simultaneously accept that many aspects of nature

are terrifying,

but also, I don't know, that it's awesome,

and that some of the awesomeness comes from its potential to be terrifying

and that it is also just breathtakingly beautiful,

and that we cannot be ourselves, because we are part of nature,

we cannot be whole

unless we somehow embrace it and are part of it?

Help me with the language, Jane, on how that relationship should be.

JG: Well, I think one of the problems is, you know, as we developed our intellect,

and we became better and better

at modifying the environment for our own use,

and creating fields and growing crops

where it used to be forest or woodland,

and you know, we won't go into that now,

but we have this ability to change nature.