Encyclopedia of Evolution.pdf - Online Reading Center

Gould, Stephen Jay
animals, and the changes that occurred during the course
of human evolution, it is necessary to thoroughly study the
behavior of other animals, especially chimpanzees, under natural
conditions. This required many years of close observation
and the ability to recognize individual chimpanzees. Goodall’s
close and prolonged observation yielded surprises that other
researchers of animal behavior had not seen.
Goodall was born April 3, 1934. In 1960 Goodall
began observations in the Gombe Preserve in Tanzania.
One persistent problem in the study of animal behavior
(see behavior, evolution of) is that the behavior of the
animals, particularly intelligent ones like chimpanzees, is
altered by the presence of human observers. Months passed
before the chimpanzees allowed Goodall to approach them
closely enough for observation. Once they had accepted
her, she was able to observe their normal lives. In her first
year of observation Goodall made two discoveries. First,
she found that chimpanzees hunt and eat meat. Second,
she found that chimpanzees use tools. She observed chimps
stripping leaves from twigs and using the twigs to fish termites
out of a nest. This observation proved that humans
were not the only animals that made and used tools (see
technology). Goodall earned her Ph.D. in ethology from
Cambridge University in 1965.
Soon thereafter Goodall returned to Tanzania and
established the Gombe Stream Research Center. She continued
to make observations that showed chimpanzees to
be capable of behavior previously associated only with
humans. Particularly striking is the complexity of chimpanzee
social organization and the advance planning that
allows it. She observed a female chimpanzee adopt an unrelated
baby chimpanzee. Chimpanzees were also capable
of actions that remind observers of the bad side of human
behavior. In 1974 a four-year war began between two
bands of chimpanzees, resulting in the annihilation of one.
Goodall also observed one chimpanzee that cannibalized
several infants. Perhaps the most striking observation was
in 1970 when Goodall observed chimpanzees apparently
dancing for joy in front of a waterfall. All of these observations
call into question the vast gulf that most people,
including many scientists, assume to exist between humans
and other animal species, and demonstrate that individual
chimpanzees can differ as much from one another as individual
humans.
Goodall is interested in far more than just understanding
animal behavior. She began and continues efforts to
rescue orphaned chimpanzees and to improve the conditions
of chimpanzees that are used in medical research.
The president of a medical research company who at first
despised Goodall’s interference ended up thanking her
for her work. In 1977 Goodall founded the Jane Goodall
Institute for Wildlife Research, Education, and Conservation,
which encourages local people in Africa and all over
the world to undertake conservation efforts in their own
region. Her work both in the scientific study of behavior
and in conservation have earned her many awards and
worldwide recognition.
Further Reading
Goodall, Jane, and Phillip Berman. Reason for Hope: A Spiritual
Journey. New York: Warner Books, 1999.
Jane Goodall Institute. “The Jane Goodall Institute.” Available online.
URL: http://www.janegoodall.org. Accessed March 28, 2005.
Miller, Peter. “Jane Goodall.” National Geographic, December 1995,
102–129.
Peterson, Dale. Jane Goodall: The Woman Who Redefined Man.
New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006.
Gould, Stephen Jay (1941–2002) American Evolutionary
biologist Stephen Jay Gould was one of the most creative
thinkers in the study of evolution and one of the most famous
and effective popularizers of evolution to the general public. His
first scientific book, Ontogeny and Phylogeny, and his first popular
book, Ever Since Darwin, were both published in 1977.
Born September 10, 1941, Gould became interested in
evolution when he was five years old and saw the Tyrannosaurus
skeleton at the American Museum of Natural History
in New York. He stayed with his youthful decision to become
an evolutionary scientist. After graduating from Antioch College,
Gould earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University. Until
his death he was a professor at Harvard University and a
curator at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology.
One of Gould’s insights into evolution was that evolution
was not entirely a gradual process. Instead, periods of
rapid change, associated with the appearance of a new species
(see speciation), were followed by long periods of stasis.
Together with a colleague at the American Museum of
Natural History (see Eldredge, Niles), Gould presented the
theory of punctuated equilibria in 1972. Gould, Eldredge,
and Yale paleontologist Elisabeth Vrba maintained that evolution
occurs not just on the level of populations (see natural
selection) but on the species level as well. While defending
the proof of evolution and the mechanism of natural selection
that Darwin had presented (see Darwin, Charles;
origin of species [book]), Gould maintained that Darwin
had unnecessarily constrained the operation of evolution by
claiming that it always occurred gradually. Gould summarized
a lifetime of insights into the processes of evolution in
The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Another major insight
was that many features of organisms were not adaptations
but were side effects of adaptations, resulting from structural
constraints. Gould and paleontologist Elisabeth Vrba called
these features exaptations (see adaptation).
A related insight was that chance events have played a
major role in the histories of individual humans, of societies,
of species, and of the entire Earth. Gould’s doctoral research
focused on land snails (genus Cerion) in Bermuda. He closely
studied the individual variations among these snails, the same
way that Darwin focused upon barnacles. Gould found that
many of the variations could be better explained as the products
of chance, or of structural constraint, than of adaptation.
Gould also survived cancer for more than two decades. This
experience contributed to his thinking about the importance
of chance events. Gould’s 1989 book Wonderful Life made
the fossils of the Burgess shale, from a 510-million-year-old