How Jane Goodall’s chimpanzee research led to the modern animal rights movement
The discovery that more and more animals have amazing intellect should help us to realize that the way we so often treat them is extremely cruel, inhumane and we have to change the way we think.
ABC HACK: ‘It’s now commonplace to wonder about the intelligence of octopuses, or to go vegan to avoid causing animals pain, but when Jane Goodall set out to investigate the behaviour of primates, she was a true pioneer… What she learned over several years of initial field work in the Gombe Stream Game Reserve, Tanzania, would overturn the conventional wisdom on animal consciousness, and shape the modern animal rights and environmental movements… “I observed details of their lives never recorded before… We are not the only beings on this planet that have personalities, minds and above all emotions,” she said…
The above may now sound like platitudes, but in 1960 these sentiments would have been considered radical; animals were different to us. Humans were considered the only species with personalities, who were capable of rational thought, and emotions like joy and sorrow… Today, Jane is considered to be the world’s foremost expert on chimpanzees, and her ideas on animal consciousness have gone mainstream. “Watching the chimpanzees you see all these emotions that at the time scientists ascribed to humans but now thanks to the chimps being also like us biologically, the science has come out of that reductionist thinking,” she told Hack.
“If you’re a student today you can study animal emotions, you can study the personality and you can absolutely study the intellect. “It’s a very exciting time as we discover that more and more animals ‘lower down’ the scale, like octopus, have amazing intellect.” “This should help us to realise that the way we so often treat them is extremely cruel, inhumane and we have to change the way we think”. “We breed pigs to eat, but a lot of pigs are a lot more intelligent than dogs.” Since Jane’s work extended consciousness to chimpanzees, subsequent research has found significant evidence of self-awareness in other animals’. SOURCE…
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