Welcome to Northern Latitudes. I'm Bill Alt.
Today my guest is Carrie -Anne McGoughan, a primatologist
and author of Sisters of the Jungle, the trailblazing
women who shaped the study of wild primates.
Carrie -Anne's book weaves together the stories
of seven extraordinary scientists including Jane
Goodall, Diane Fossey, and Barute Galdikas, women
who transformed our understanding of primates
and in the process, redefined what it means to
be a woman in science. Welcome to Northern Latitudes,
Carrie Anne. Thank you so much for having me.
To begin, I'd like to focus a little bit on Jane
Goodall, who recently passed away. And it was
an inspiration to many of these primatologists,
including yourself, I'm sure. In Sisters of the
Jungle, you place her at the centre of the sisterhood.
Does her recent passing change the way you think
about her work or how you portrayed her in the
book? I think the answer is yes, in the sense
that it almost makes the whole... like writing
a chapter about her even more powerful than before.
So she had always been an influence for me like
since the very start. Like I remember going to
see her speak as an undergraduate in Calgary
with my mom with me. And we kind of like wide
eyed watching this amazing force. And I've since
seen her speak many times after that, but. It
wasn't until I wrote this book that I really
delved into her life and fully understood exactly
what she accomplished, which is incredible. Just
learning that she didn't just fly to Africa,
she took a steamer ship. 14 ,000 kilometers from
her home in the UK to Africa as a 22 -year -old.
And she talks about really relishing her time
on that ship when most of the other passengers
were probably seasick and not really enjoying
the excursion. But she traveled this distance.
to live out her dream and she'd had this like
passion for animals like she had several stories
kind of cropped up where she you know found some
some worms in the garden and produced them proudly
to hide them under her pillow. And her mother
discovered them. And her mother, instead of kind
of shutting her down and saying, you gross, you
found some disgusting worms from the garden,
she like took them back out into the wild and
used it as like a learning opportunity and a
shared love of nature. She spent hours in her
family's chicken coop just so she could watch
what It was like to see a hen lay an egg. So
she spent that time doing that and then ultimately
went to Africa, had the gumption there to introduce
herself to this famous archaeologist named Louis
Leakey, who of course we know is who ended up
sponsoring her to go and study the chimpanzees
in Gombe. But again, she was 22 years old. I
don't think I would have had the guts to do that
when I was 22. So it was just incredible to read
about all of her experiences. and really just
made me admire her even more. So when she passed,
I felt kind of lucky in a way that I was able
to do all of that research and knew all of that.
When she did pass, it made it much more powerful.
Do you think there's anything misunderstood or
underappreciated about her work? I think... Just
I think it maybe is you kind of forget now that
in terms of like just how amazing the discoveries
that she made were Because she was really the
first to go to the wild To study the chimpanzees
in the long term like there had been a few researchers
before her, but nobody, you know spent as much
time and as like close up time and got to know
these primates on an individual basis as well.
And then the stuff that she found out during
her field seasons in Gombe, like she was the
first to see that chimpanzees made and used tools,
which is an incredibly powerful discovery because
before that, it was thought that humans were
the only primate capable of that. So she really
just shattered an entire perception, I guess,
of the animal kingdom. And then not only that,
then she navigated multiple discoveries, but
she ultimately switched and pivoted to... conservation
and primate conservation for chimpanzees specifically
but then broadened it you know basically globally
and has inspired you know like millions of adults
and children with her Roots and Chutes program
and has made a huge conservation impact just
even beyond just her work with the chimpanzees
in Gombe and so it's really incredible like she's
just one you know unassuming woman, but she's
made some incredible waves, not just for primatologists,
but just also for the entire planet. And that
can be said about almost every woman that you
portray in this book. I mean, some amazing stories,
like just incredible stuff. And I was wondering,
because you've done fieldwork yourself in Belize
and Madagascar with Howlers and lemurs, right?
Yeah, you never know what the bills research
Did you when you were writing the book did you
see yourself in some of these experiences because
I mean, I'm sure some of them kind of cross Yeah,
I think Absolutely. It was hard not to kind of
picture Jane or some of the others as I was sitting
there in the wilds of either Belize or Madagascar
kind of navigating. I remember, I guess, one
kind of interesting parallel. When I first was
studying howler monkeys in Belize, I would, you
know, you had to find the monkeys. That was one
of the main jobs is you had to go out every day,
find the groups, you know, mark their locations
with a GPS. And then if you're taking any behavioral
samples, do that. And that was one of the hardest
parts of kind of getting my feet wet as a primatologist
was learning how to find the monkeys or the lemurs,
because they're not always easy to find. The
species I was studying was black. It was pretty
small black howler monkeys and they could be
up in the tree and you'd walk right past them
and we wouldn't even know it. There were times
when we were studying them and they were up there
and we knew they were up there but we couldn't
see them well enough to take any behavioral samples.
I know, like after all the research that I did,
that that was a challenge for many of the women
in the book was finding the primates. So Jane
talks about it, like Brute Galdikas writes about
how difficult her field site was in Borneo. You
know, I think even like Jean Altman and the others
all had similar challenges. So that was, that
definitely resonated as I was writing about it
for sure. You open the book with a question,
why is primatology one of the few sciences dominated
by women? If it's not the only one, I'm hard
pressed to think of another one that's dominated
as much as primatology is. The answer in your
book is, well, it's there, I think, but it's
not quite what I think most people would expect.
So what do you think the answer is? Yeah, so
this was perhaps, for the reader, it's not as
cut and dry as, and I think that was what I learned.
So, you know, as I started off, I had listed
a number of different hypotheses, too, that one
of the primatologists I write about, Linda Fedigan,
had kind of come up with from a scientific perspective.
And so she had floated a number of different
hypotheses about why it might be And then as
I started writing, I wanted to see if I could
get the answer through the stories of the women.
So what could I learn about their lives and their
trajectories that would tell me information about
how they kind of got on this path to the primates?
And I think what I learned is that everybody's
path was different, which shouldn't be a surprise.
You know, everybody had like, if you look at
just the vast differences, like Jean Altman,
for instance, she... She studied baboons in Kenya,
and she had gone on to kind of create these methods
that we still use today to study the behavior
of primates, and she had a background in mathematics.
But if you compared her, say, to Jane, so Jean
Altman talks about how her parents are New Yorkers,
and they're, you know, born and bred, and they
were kind of allergic to the outdoors, and she'd
only camped, you know, once or twice when she
was in Girl Scouts. Compare that to Jane, of
course, who was, you know, passionate about nature
and the outdoors, putting worms underneath her
pillow. You couldn't get to more different stories.
And then, of course, I have my own life to kind
of trace, which is sort of a blend, I think,
kind of in between those two, where I did grow
up a little bit in nature camping, but not as
maybe ambitious as Jane was, maybe a bit allergic
to the outdoors when I was younger. So I think
there's shades. within each of the stories. And
so I think what I came to the conclusion, because
I'm a scientist too, so I want to have a conclusion.
So my conclusion was that maybe it wasn't, maybe
I didn't ask the right question. Maybe understanding
why there are so many women in primatology isn't
the question. Maybe it's more how they influenced
this field and how they influenced our understanding
of the primates and of ourselves is perhaps the
more important question. You talk about all these
women and you talk about Louis Leakey in particular
as one of the ones that probably was a huge influence
He called them the trimates right good old Fossey
and Galdikas, did I say that right? Galdikas,
I'll get it Do you think there's somebody else
or do you think it was Part of it was a production
or a produce of the times um as more it became
more and more accessible education higher education
for women was that part of it as well through
the early times yeah i think absolutely it was
accessibility um so gene altman who i just talked
about she um writes about having her experience
as like starting off as an undergrad and kind
of mathematics and how she was one of three other
women in her uh class all of the men had advisors
assigned to them. And none of the women, they
were told they didn't need advisors. So this
was kind of the mindset of the day. And even
like for Jane Goodall and Diane Fossey and Brut
de Galdakas, they were all kind of, it was not.
typical, or really, people didn't really approve
of sending a woman out into the wild to study
primates by themselves. So like Jane, she was
told she had to bring a chaperone. She ended
up bringing her mother. Verde Galdecas brought
her then husband with her. And so there was these
kind of notions that existed. when it came to
science and women's involvement in it. So yeah,
so part of the reason why Jane Barute and Diane
could go and do this was because they had Louis
Leakey in their court kind of being their champion
to also find them funding through National Geographic,
which he did, but also he had to... more than
once, kind of advocate for them to say, look,
this is the person we need to send, and here's
why, and here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna
send her mom with her as the solution, for instance.
And that happened. when you're looking at another
of the women in the book, Sarah Herdy. So she
was famous for studying langurs in India, and
she also made a hypothesis about infanticide
in the monkeys. But she writes about and talks
about kind of a dearth of female role models
when she was at Harvard. She was one of the only
women in her cohort. advisor's first female graduate
student. So she always talked about kind of the
search for a female role model in academia, which
ended up being harder than she had hoped. Yeah,
when your mom found out about chaperones, she
wasn't so impressed because she thought she could
have gone to the jungle with you, correct? Yeah,
absolutely. She figured she could be the cook
there, yeah. These women, they're icons, all
of them. but they're human and they've got some
flaws and some controversies following them.
How did you work? I mean, I know how you worked
it in because I've read the book. But how, as
an author, did you look at that? Because there's
well, they almost all of them had some kind of
controversy about what they were doing, whether
it was presenting for the first time and the
information being rebutted by the, you know,
male dominated. conference or whatever, or some
of the other ones where Fossey comes to mind
right away, of course, because she was very adamant,
very militant, I guess, for lack of a better
word about her approach to protecting the animals,
the primates. How did you go about that as a
writer? Yeah, so that was definitely a hard balance
because obviously I admire these women to a great
extent. They're all role models for me personally.
So I felt, and I'm telling their stories, it's
their lives. It's not my life, right? I'm interspersing
some things from my life within, but I'm telling
their stories. So I wanted to be very careful
about how I did that. Um, so I was very, very
much felt the weight of it on my shoulders. And
the truth is like they, none of them are, you
know, one dimensional, right? As you would probably
expect, like all humans have multiple like facets
to them. There's shades of gray. It's not just
black and white. And you learn that pretty quickly.
Um, so you mentioned Diane Fossey, obviously
that one was a very complicated story to tell.
Um, and I'd known some of it, you know, we, you
hear rumblings and not just like she had the
movie gorillas in the mist about her, but then
in the primatology community, you know, we all
kind of knew about her and she had kind of a
bit of an infamous reputation. But as I kind
of read it about her, you know, gathered all
the research, it quickly became apparent that
it wasn't so cut and dry. Like there, you know,
she took... what she called an active conservation,
which, as you mentioned, involves some pretty
questionable ethics, I think, to her studies,
especially with communities that were working
near the gorillas. She is said to have kidnapped
a local child. She would capture poachers that
are suspected poachers and kind of intimidate
them using their cultural values, putting on
Halloween masks and such. So obviously not how
we would approach it today. Um, and she, but
she, it was, as I read about her, I could see
where she was coming from. Um, and that's what
I tried to hopefully bring through, um, in, when
I told these stories is that she, for better
or for worse, you know, She was brought to it
because she was so passionate about these gorillas
who she called, you know, in some instances she
referred to them as her friends. So it was very
clear that she had this deep love for this animal
and essentially nothing would kind of get in
her way to try to protect them. She was also
entering into the, you know, the area at a time
when there was only 260 individual mountain gorillas
left in the whole world. So that was obviously
another piece of it. She probably felt like it
was life or death. and in a way it was. And so
you could kind of understand what would bring
her to do the things. I'm not saying she should
have done any of those things, certainly not.
And like I said, that's not how we would approach
conservation today. We would take a much more
community -centered approach when we work on
primate conservation. But yeah, I tried to kind
of bring all those different layers because I
think that is also another important piece of
the puzzle when you're trying to understand how
each of them went along their path to the primate.
and what they achieved along the way. Many, if
not all, of these scientists have evolved from
scientists to advocates through their career,
and they fight for the animals and the ecosystems
they're studying. And how do you see the balance
between that today, like the objectivity of the
studying and then the activism as well? I think
it's almost, you cannot really avoid it now because
most primates are endangered. There's 500 different
species of primates world over and most of them
are threatened with extinction. Like I studied
lemurs in Madagascar for instance, they're like...
case in point, there's more than a hundred different
species only found in Madagascar and they're
considered the most endangered group of mammals
on the planet. And so when you're a primate researcher,
especially now, you can't really avoid doing
conservation because how can you study something?
that doesn't exist, which is obviously super
tragic. But you also see kind of the role that
they play in the larger ecosystem. And I think
that's what each of these women came to eventually,
right? Like they might have started off going
to just study their behavior, but as they got
there, they're confronted almost immediately
with the realities. Like if you look at Brute
Galdakas going to Borneo to study orangutans,
she had the most training of the three women
that Leakey sponsored. But so she had a scientific
background from the UCLA and she traveled to
Borneo But as soon as she got there, you know,
she discovered that you know orangutan Are often
taken as pets, right? So she almost immediately
found that and then basically She probably felt
she had no choice but to do something about it
and that's where she then started to try to rehabilitate
these past pets and also to protect the areas
where she would be releasing them. So it sort
of happened naturally, I think, for each of them,
but it was almost just, it was inevitable in
a way, just because of the way that we're seeing,
sadly, our primate cousins being threatened.
The Orangutan story is a great part of the book.
It's an amazing part of the book. You mentioned
a little bit about Madagascar, but I think you
should talk a little bit more about that because
you have a project in Madagascar. Tell us a little
bit more about that. Yeah. So along with my husband,
Travis Stephens, so he's also a primatologist.
So he actually founded a charity that we both
work on called Planet Madagascar. And so this
is how I kind of stay in the primate world. So
it's a charity that aims to help uh both people
and wildlife in Madagascar so it's sort of borrows
actually from one of the women in the book, Alison
Jolly, whose her nickname was the Mother of Lemurs.
And she was married to an economist named Richard
Jolly. And because she kind of she would say
that she saw both like the people side of things
and the animal side of things. So through her
economist husband, she saw the people and that
they were in Madagascar, many living on less
than $2 a day, kind of suffering day to day with
diseases and a lot of children being malnourished.
And so that was the kind of people side. And
then on the other hand, you see the wildlife
in Madagascar rapidly disappearing. And so she
had come up with this idea of community conservation,
which is what we use. in Planet Madagascar where
you work directly with the communities to design
and conceive of projects, protect. So for instance,
we do a fire management program where we hire
local community members to work for us and they
get a salary from that. So then they see a benefit,
a tangible benefit to, you know, protecting the
forest and protecting the lemurs. Yeah, so we've
been pretty successful with some fire management
programs, forest restoration, and we've also
built some schools. and we have a number of different
community development projects. So it's really
a holistic conservation program. And yeah, like
I said, inspired a lot by Alice and Jolly, who
it's the mother of lemurs. So you spent quite
a bit of time in Madagascar. And before I let
you get out of here, you're going to have to
tell at least one good field story from Madagascar,
because all these people seem to have these crazy
field stories. So what's your Madagascar field
story? Well, it is in the book, but I will tell
it here as well, because it's one of my favorite
moments that I've had. So it was a hot day. So
my job as a primate behavioral ecologist, I was
studying where the lemurs went, what they ate,
what they did all day long. So I had to follow
them for 12 to 14 hours a day, basically from
when they got up in the morning to when they
went to bed at night, which sometimes wasn't
as early as I would have hoped. But we would
follow them through the forest. And there was
one day it was really, really hot. We were about
midday, like 10, 30, 11. And the lemurs had finally
kind of settled down in this big tree, getting
some shade. And usually when the lemurs rested,
that's when the lemur researchers get a little
bit of a breather as well. So I thought I'd take
a bit of a break, get some water, get a snack
out of my backpack. And as I was kind of getting
myself situated, the lemurs suddenly started
kind of coming down lower and lower in the tree.
And I kind of was kind of holding my breath as
they were just like getting closer and closer
to the ground. Eventually they. sat right directly
on the ground and it was about, I don't know,
two meters apart from where I was sitting. And
I had to laugh because I was just, you know,
I was eating my lunch and I felt like I was having
a picnic with the lemur. So it felt like a very,
like I was being treated to a very special moment
after having been there for, you know, I think
at that point it was about seven or eight months.
So that was probably the most special lemur and
memorable lemur moment I've had. Nice. What's
your thoughts about the field sciences for the
next generation of women scientists? You've covered
the past. What do you think the future looks
like? Yeah, so I think that those the women that
I talk about in the book broke down a lot of
barriers. So there's been amazing progress with,
you know, a lot of female PIs and we're able
obviously to get our own funding and, you know,
all of that. I think the next steps are moving
more into the habitat countries where the primates
are living, right? And we work with them a lot
in our charity, but also research the community
members themselves. There's conservationists,
there's women in Madagascar, for instance, who
do primate research and who are facing similar
barriers, I would say, to what maybe these women
in the early days of North American primatology
are facing. So I think empowering and building
capacity within the countries where the primates
are living is sort of where we see some progress
that still needs to be made, but I think it's
slowly happening, which is good. And if there's
one thing you've learned from these women outside
of the science, what do you think it is? I think
it's that you shouldn't sell yourself short,
no matter what it is, right? What it looks like,
whether you never thought you would go camping
like Jean Altman or, you know, you had to navigate
these tough forests like Brute Galdikas, or you
didn't think you could get to Africa like Jane
Goodall. Like these are things that you might...
decide in a way that you can't do but You know,
I think they proved that if you are passionate
enough and care enough and you put in the work
it can happen and so don't This is also my dad's
best advice to me growing up. He said don't set
up Barriers for yourself because enough people
are out there setting up barriers. So make sure
that you you know that you can do it. So yeah,
that would be the biggest lesson I take from
all of these women. Thanks, Carrie Anne. Carrie
Anne McGoogan, author of Sisters of the Jungle,
published by Douglas and McIntyre and available
wherever you buy your books. This episode of
Northern Latitudes is dedicated to the memory
of Dr. Jane Goodall, who passed away earlier
this month at the age of 91. Her work at Gombe
Stream transformed our understanding of the natural
world, and perhaps more importantly, reminded
us of our connection to it. Through compassion,
patience, and courage, she showed that listening
can change everything. Today, we honored her
legacy through one of the women she inspired
as we talked with Carrie Anne Magugin, author
of Sisters of the Jungle. If you enjoyed today's
conversation, please subscribe or leave a review.
It helps others find northern latitudes where
we bring you the people and stories exploring
our changing relationship with nature. Until
next time, I'm Bill Ault. Thanks for listening
and always keep exploring.