The Next Generation's Champion of Chimps

Overheard at National Geographic

National Geographic

Science, Society & Culture

4.5 • 10.1K Ratings

🗓️ 15 June 2021

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How do you calculate the number of chimpanzees living in the forests of Nigeria? If you’re National Geographic Explorer Rachel Ashegbofe, you listen carefully. After discovering that Nigerian chimpanzees are a genetically distinct population, Rachel began searching for their nests to study them more closely. Now she’s teaching her community how to be good neighbors to humans’ closest genetic relative—and potentially save them from extinction. For more information on this episode, visit nationalgeographic.com/overheard. Want more? Did you know that chimpanzees hunt tortoises? Catch up on all there is to know about Pan Troglodytes through National Geographic’s chimpanzee fact sheet. Chimpanzee moms form strong bonds with their children. Take a look at some of the latest research on the social lives of chimpanzee mothers. And for subscribers: Travel back in time to Jane Goodall’s original 1963 article for National Geographic, just three years after she started her field research at Gombe Stream National Park. Or take a look at the entire National Geographic Magazine Archive. Also explore: Learn more about Rachel Ashegbofe’s work through the website for the South West/Niger Delta Forest Project. Jane Goodall continues to be a conservation icon and she even has a podcast of her own called The Jane Goodall Hopecast. You can listen to the first episode here. For Disney+ subscribers, you can also watch National Geographic’s 2017 documentary film Jane, which features rare footage of her chimpanzee work, and 2020 film The Hope, which focuses on her career as an environmental activist. If you like what you hear and want to support more content like this, please consider a National Geographic subscription. Go to natgeo.com/exploremore to subscribe today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	So it's just two of us and then there was the my one-up growers who had like automatic
0:15.9	weapons with them and we stung them upon them in the forest and they saw us too.
0:23.1	This is the hot humid forest of southwestern Nigeria.
0:26.0	It's a tropical jungle teaming with life.
0:28.1	There are these 50-foot trees stretching for sunlight and scaly pangolins.
0:32.2	Sort of imagine a possum trying very hard to be a pine cone.
0:35.9	And elusive chimpanzees.
0:38.6	Rachel Ashaboffa, a Nigerian chimpanzee researcher, was out with a team member looking for
0:43.1	signs of chimpanzees when she found herself face-to-face with a drug cartel.
0:47.4	They were like, who are you? Where are you coming from?
0:49.7	Where are you going to?
0:51.0	And they had their guns slashing in front of us.
0:53.8	Rachel was in trouble.
0:55.5	marijuana is illegal in Nigeria and so is farming in protected forests.
1:00.1	Rachel is the project director for a forest conservation group and sometimes comes to
1:04.0	uproot farms like this one.
1:05.7	But usually she's prepared with motorcycles, guns and lots of backup.
1:09.9	But if these men knew who she really was, they might not let her and her colleague leave.
1:15.0	They were armed and we are not. We couldn't challenge them.
1:18.2	So I used the other weapon which is natural to me or to any woman.
1:27.9	So I played in that female card like, oh,
1:30.9	there's a woman with such a student who is going into the forest looking for monkeys.
	...

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