Gaining the Trust of the Gorillas | Dian Fossey: Secrets in the Mist

less than 1m read

·Nov 11, 2024

KELLY STEWART: Dian Fossey was definitely a pioneer. I do not think that word has been overused. Before that, nobody had done a long-term study of gorillas. Nobody had studied them month after month and year after year.

IAN REDMOND: She wanted to be the scientist who began the first long-term field study of gorilla behavior in their society, and to take that as far as it would go.

NARRATOR: (READING FOSSEY'S JOURNAL) I've been following one guerrilla group round all month, and I'm now able to get within 30 to 60 feet of them. To be perfectly frank, I think they're quite confused as to my species.

IAN REDMOND: In order to study them and learn about the behavior, Dian had to get them used to her. And that process is called habituation, winning the trust. The habituation process is not nice, because you're upsetting this family of gorillas day after day after day. Dian's methods played on the gorillas' curiosity. So she would behave in ways that would elicit a curious rather than anger response. Like when she was climbing a tree to get a better look, she would deliberately ham it up. And she found that that got their attention.

NARRATOR: (READING FOSSEY'S JOURNAL) I've gotten them accustomed to me by aping them, and they are fascinated by my facial grimaces and other actions that I wouldn't be caught dead doing in front of anyone. I feel like a complete fool, but this technique seems to be working.

How to Eliminate Single-Use Plastics on Vacation | National Geographic

I’m an IDIOT for getting a credit card...

View All

Current market conditions in corporate aviation.

[Music] I was going to hit that peak next year. Do you expect the demand to remain? If you got that report just the other day, maybe it was delivered to you by horse, because that information is old and it’s not true. The industry probably hit its peak, …

Le Chatelier's principle: Worked example | Chemical equilibrium | Chemistry | Khan Academy

In this video, we’re going to go through an example reaction that uses Le Chatelier’s principle. So, what we’re going to do is we’re going to apply Le Chatelier’s principle to look at various changes to this reaction when we perturb our reaction from equi…

Millennium Falcon or Starship Enterprise? - Fan Question | StarTalk

[Music] Oh, that’s easy. Oh my gosh, no, the Enterprise! There’s no question. No question! The Enterprise has the benefit of being real, in the sense that there are real scientists and real engineers on staff on the ship monitoring its engines, its warp …

Why Blue Whales Don't Get Cancer - Peto's Paradox

Cancer is a creepy and mysterious thing. In the process of trying to understand it, to get better at killing it, we discovered a biological paradox that remains unsolved to this day: Large animals seem to be immune to cancer, which doesn’t make any sense.…

Government supervision and regulation of banking institutions | Financial Literacy | Khan Academy

So whenever you’re dealing with banking, there’s a whole series of government agencies and quasi pseudo-government organizations. I’ll talk a little bit about why it’s quasi-government. That influence what’s happening with banks, and it’s useful to know w…

Which Sales Strategy Is Best For Your Startup?

Hi, my name is Pete. I’m a visiting group partner at Y Combinator and formerly co-founder and CTO at Optimizely. Today we’re going to talk about two different ways to sell your products to large organizations: Bottoms Up and Top Down. This is versus selli…

Gaining the Trust of the Gorillas | Dian Fossey: Secrets in the Mist

More Articles