Unit1 Women of Achievement-Reading(1)

Reading A Student of African Wildlife

It is 5:45 am and the sun is just rising over Gombe National Park in East Africa. Following Jane's way of studying chimps, our group are all going to visit them in the forest.

Jane has studied these families of chimps for many years and helped people understand how much they behave like humans. Watching a family of chimps wake up is our first activity of the day.

This means going back to the place where we left the family sleeping in a tree the night before. Everybody sits and waits in the shade of the trees while the family begins to wake up and move off.

Then we follow as they wander into the forest. Most of the time, chimps either feed or clean each other as a way of showing love in their family.

Jane warns us that our group is going to be very tired and dirty by the afternoon and she is right. However, the evening makes it all worthwhile.

We watch the mother chimp and her babies play in the tree. Then we see them go to sleep together in their nest for the night.

We realize that the bond between members of a chimp family is as strong as in a human family. Nobody before Jane fully understood chimp behaviour.

She spent years observing and recording their daily activities. Since her childhood she had wanted to work with animals in their own environment.

However, this was not easy.