Today, The Morgans and The Grandma have visited London Zoo.
It has been a very special visit because they have had the amazing of two English celebrities: Jane Goodall, the English primatologist and anthropologist, and David Attenborough, the English broadcaster, natural historian and writer, who have been their guides and informants during this unforgettable visit.
Before the visit, the family has been reviewing English grammar with the Present Simple and Comparatives of Equality Adjectives.
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London Zoo, previously known as ZSL London Zoo or London Zoological Gardens and sometimes called Regent's Park Zoo, is the world's oldest scientific zoo. It was opened in London on 27 April 1828, and was originally intended to be used as a collection for scientific study.
In 1831 or 1832, the animals of the Tower of London menagerie were transferred to the zoo's collection. It was opened to the public in 1847.
As of December 2022, it houses a collection of 14,926 individuals,
making it one of the largest collections in the United Kingdom.
It is managed under the aegis of the Zoological Society of London (established in 1826), and is situated at the northern edge of Regent's Park, on the boundary line between the City of Westminster and the borough of Camden (the Regent's Canal runs through it).
The
Society also has a more spacious site at Whipsnade Zoo in Bedfordshire
to which the larger animals such as elephants and rhinos have been moved. As well as being the first scientific zoo, London Zoo
also opened the first reptile house (1849), the first public aquarium
(1853), first insect house (1881) and the first children's zoo (1938).
ZSL
receives no state funding and relies on 'Fellows' and 'Friends'
memberships, entrance fees, venue hire, and sponsorship to generate
income.
The Zoological Society of London (ZSL) was established by Sir Stamford Raffles and Sir Humphry Davy in 1826,
who obtained the land for the zoo and saw the plans before Raffles died
of apoplexy (a stroke) later that year on 5 July, his birthday. After
his death, Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne took over
the project and supervised the building of the first animal houses. The zoo opened in April 1828 to fellows of the Society, providing access to species such as Arabian oryx, greater kudus, orangutan and the now extinct quagga and thylacine. The Society was granted a royal charter in 1829 by King George IV, and in 1847 the zoo opened to the public to aid funding.
More information: London Zoo
Dame Jane Morris Goodall, 3 April 1934, formerly Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall, is an English primatologist and anthropologist. Considered to be the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, Goodall is best known for her over 55-year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees since she first went to Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania in 1960.
She is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and the Roots & Shoots programme, and she has worked extensively on conservation and animal welfare issues. She has served on the board of the Nonhuman Rights Project since its founding in 1996. In April 2002, she was named a UN Messenger of Peace.
Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall was born in 1934 in Hampstead,
to Mortimer Herbert Morris-Goodall, a businessman, and Margaret Myfanwe
Joseph, a novelist who wrote under the name Vanne Morris-Goodall.
As a child, as an alternative to a teddy bear her father gave Goodall a stuffed chimpanzee named Jubilee, and she has said her fondness for this figure started her early love of animals, commenting that My mother's friends were horrified by this toy, thinking it would frighten me and give me nightmares. Today, Jubilee still sits on Goodall's dresser in London.
Goodall had always been passionate about animals and Africa, which brought her to the farm of a friend in the Kenya highlands in 1957. From there, she obtained work as a secretary, and acting on her friend's advice, she telephoned Louis Leakey, the notable Kenyan archaeologist and palaeontologist, with no other thought than to make an appointment to discuss animals.
Leakey,
believing that the study of existing great apes could provide
indications of the behaviour of early hominids, was looking for a
chimpanzee researcher, though he kept the idea to himself. Instead, he
proposed that Goodall work for him as a secretary. After obtaining approval from his wife Mary Leakey, Louis sent Goodall to Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, where he laid out his plans.
In 1958, Leakey sent Goodall to London to study primate behaviour with Osman Hill and primate anatomy with John Napier. Leakey raised funds, and on 14 July 1960, Goodall went to Gombe Stream National Park, becoming the first of what would come to be called The Trimates. She was accompanied by her mother, whose presence was necessary to satisfy the requirements of David Anstey, chief warden, who was concerned for their safety; Tanzania was Tanganyika at that time and a British protectorate.
Leakey arranged funding and in 1962, he sent Goodall, who had no degree, to Cambridge University. She went to Newnham College, and obtained a PhD degree in ethology.
She became
the eighth person to be allowed to study for a PhD there without first
having obtained a BA or BSc. Her thesis was completed in 1965 under the
tutorship of Robert Hinde, titled Behaviour of free-living chimpanzees, detailing her first five years of study at the Gombe Reserve.
Goodall is best known for her study of chimpanzee social and family life. She began studying the Kasakela chimpanzee community in Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania, in 1960. Without collegiate training directing her research, Goodall
observed things that strict scientific doctrines may have overlooked.
Instead of numbering the chimpanzees she observed, she gave them names
such as Fifi and David Greybeard, and observed them to have unique and individual personalities, an unconventional idea at the time.
She found that, it isn't only human beings who have personality, who are capable of rational thought and emotions like joy and sorrow. She also observed behaviours such as hugs, kisses, pats on the back, and even tickling, what we consider human actions.
Goodall insists that these gestures are evidence of the
close, supportive, affectionate bonds that develop between family
members and other individuals within a community, which can persist
throughout a life span of more than 50 years.
These
findings suggest that similarities between humans and chimpanzees exist
in more than genes alone, but can be seen in emotion, intelligence, and
family and social relationships.
Goodall's research at Gombe Stream
is best known to the scientific community for challenging two
long-standing beliefs of the day: that only humans could construct and
use tools, and that chimpanzees were vegetarians.
While
observing one chimpanzee feeding at a termite mound, she watched him
repeatedly place stalks of grass into termite holes, then remove them
from the hole covered with clinging termites, effectively fishing
for termites. The chimps would also take twigs from trees and strip off
the leaves to make the twig more effective, a form of object
modification which is the rudimentary beginnings of toolmaking. Humans
had long distinguished ourselves from the rest of the animal kingdom as Man the Toolmaker.
In response to Goodall's revolutionary findings, Louis Leakey wrote, We must now redefine man, redefine tool, or accept chimpanzees as human!
In 1977, Goodall established the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI), which supports the Gombe research, and she is a global leader in the effort to protect chimpanzees and their habitats.
With nineteen offices around the world, the JGI is widely recognised for community-centred conservation and development programs in Africa. Its global youth program, Roots & Shoots began in 1991 when a group of 16 local teenagers met with Goodall on her back porch in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
They were eager to discuss a range of problems they knew about from
first-hand experience that caused them deep concern. The organisation
now has over 10,000 groups in over 100 countries.
Goodall credits the 1986 Understanding Chimpanzees conference, hosted by the Chicago Academy of Sciences,
with shifting her focus from observation of chimpanzees to a broader
and more intense concern with animal-human conservation. She is the
former president of Advocates for Animals, an organisation based in Edinburgh, Scotland, that campaigns against the use of animals in medical research, zoos, farming and sport.
Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans
have been living for hundreds of thousands of years
in their forest, living fantastic lives,
never overpopulating, never destroying the forest.
I would say that they have been
in a way more successful than us
as far as being in harmony with the environment.
Jane Goodall
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