Suvankar

“While many details of their social behavior were hidden from me by the foliage, I did get occasional fascinating glimpses. I saw one female, newly arrived in a group, hurry up to a big male and hold her hand toward him. Almost regally he reached out, clasped her hand in his, drew it toward him, and kissed it with his lips. I saw two adult males embrace each other in greeting.”
― Jane Goodall, In the Shadow of Man

“Louis, however, knew exactly what he was doing. Not only did he feel that a university training was unnecessary, but even that in some ways it might have been disadvantageous. He wanted someone with a mind uncluttered and unbiased by theory who would make the study for no other reason than a real desire for knowledge; and, in addition, someone with a sympathetic understanding of animals.”
― Jane Goodall, In the Shadow of Man

“Since that day I have often wondered exactly what it was I felt as I stared at the wild country that so soon I should be roaming. Vanne admitted afterward to have been secretly horrified by the steepness of the slopes and the impenetrable appearance of the valley forests. And David Anstey told me several months later that he had guessed I would be packed up and gone within six weeks. I remember feeling neither excitement nor trepidation but only a curious sense of detachment. What had I, the girl standing on the government launch in her jeans, to do with the girl who in a few days would be searching those very mountains for wild chimpanzees? Yet by the time I went to sleep that night the transformation had taken place.”
― Jane Goodall, In the Shadow of Man

“All at once in the valley below I heard the calling of a group of chimpanzees. I had heard chimpanzees in the zoo, of course, but out here in the African forest the sound was thrilling beyond words. First one chimp gave a series of low resonant ‘pant-hoots’ – loud hooting calls connected by audible inhalations of breath. These grew louder and louder, until in the end the chimpanzee was almost screaming. Halfway through his calling another joined in, and then another. I had read of chimpanzees drumming on tree trunks when I went through Dr Nissen’s report. Now I heard the strange echoing sound for myself, reverberating throughout the valley, interspersed with the wild chorus of pant-hoots.”
― Jane Goodall, In the Shadow of Man