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Foreword
xi
I
am very pleased to be writing a foreword for this important book, foritdealswithasubject—animalemotions—thatiscrucialtoaproperunderstanding of animals and their relationship to ourselves. Through-out my childhood I was fascinated with animals of all sorts — I watchedthem, learned from them, and loved them. At the age of ten I developeda very special relationship with an extraordinarily intelligent mixed-breed dog, Rusty, who became my constant companion. He, along withthe three successive cats, two guinea pigs, one golden hamster, one ca-nary, and two tortoises with whom we shared our house and our hearts,taught me that animals, at least those with reasonably complex brains,have vivid and distinct personalities, minds capable of some kind of ra-tional thought, and above all, feelings.And then, in

, I had the extraordinary opportunity to learn aboutthechimpanzeesof theGombeNationalParkinTanzania.Knowingnoth-ing of scientific method, I simply recorded everything I saw. It was fortu-nate that I was patient, for during the first few months they fled wheneverthey saw the strange white ape who had appeared so suddenly in theirmidst. The first individual to lose his fear I named David Greybeard. Hewas a strikingly handsome adult male, with large eyes set far apart. With
 
his gentle but determined personality he was, as I ultimately discovered, areal leader. David’s calm acceptance of my presence helped other mem-bers of his community to realize that I was not, after all, such a frighten-ing creature. Then, many of them became aggressive, treating me to thekind of intimidation displays normally directed at leopards or largesnakes. But eventually they relaxed, and as I gradually gained their trust,they allowed me to move into their world — always on their terms. I gottoknowthevariousvividpersonalities:David’sclosecompanionGoliath,who was, as I eventually realized, the alpha male; high-ranking, assertiveFlo and her large family; timid Olly with her far-from-timid daughter,Gilka; irritable JB; Jomeo, the inadvertent clown — and all the rest.After a year Louis Leakey arranged for me to go to Cambridge Uni-versity to work toward a PhD in ethology. There I was criticized for mylack of scientific method, for naming the chimpanzees rather than assign-ing each a number, for “giving” them personalities, and for maintainingthey had minds and emotions. For these, I was told sternly, were attri-butesreservedforthehumananimal.Iwasevenreprimandedforreferringto a male chimpanzee as “he” and a female “she”: Didn’t I know that “it”was the correct way to refer to an animal? Well, a
nonhuman
animal. Andso, for the most part, my observations were written off as merely those of a naive young woman who had had no university education. Yet it hadbeen that very
lack of qualifications
, along with my passion for learningabout animals in the wild, that had appealed to my mentor, the late LouisS. B. Leakey. He wanted an observer whose mind was unbiased by whathe felt was the reductionist thinking of scientists in the early sixties. In-deed, ethologists, along with many philosophers and theologians, arguedthat personality, mind, and emotions were uniquely human attributesand that the behavior of other-than-human animals was for the most partmerely a response to some environmental or social stimulus.ButIcouldnotacceptthis—itabsolutelycontradictedallIhadlearnedduringmyyearswithRustyandmynewexperienceswiththechimpanzees.Fortunately, I had a wise thesis supervisor, Professor Robert Hinde. He
The Emotional Lives of Animals
xii
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