From Gombe to the Okavango

Looking Back Fifty Years

I began my scientific career in 1974 as an undergraduate student helping Jane Goodall at Gombe National Park. Over the next twelve years, I studied wild chimpanzees and baboons as well as captive mangabeys and macaques — then left science for the computer industry. After growing disillusioned with university politics, I accepted a position with a Fortune 100 company. The decision was easy.

Now, fifty years later and long retired, I find myself looking back on those years with a mixture of pride, gratitude, and disbelief. There were real hardships: a shoestring income and the relentless “publish or perish” culture of academia. But there were also moments of camaraderie and adventure that made it all worthwhile.

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Findings That Stayed With Me

1. Infant-carrying by male chacma baboons

By 1977, researchers across East Africa had observed adult male baboons occasionally carrying infants during tense interactions with rival males. My interpretation, at least for chacma baboons, was that these males were protecting their likely offspring from newly immigrated, high-ranking males who posed a threat to the infants’ lives. The findings were significant enough to merit a cover article in the journal Science.

2. Tail-raising by baboon mothers toward immigrant males

At several field sites in East Africa, researchers had found that mothers with young infants often associated closely with males who were likely to be the infants’ fathers. We found, in addition, that mothers consistently showed alarm in the presence of nearby high-ranking immigrant males who could not have been the fathers, raising their tails, avoiding the males, and sometimes screaming in distress.

3. Hunting and lack of sharing by lone chimpanzees

By 1974, chimpanzees were well known for cooperative hunting of red colobus monkeys and for sharing meat after a kill. We found that some male chimpanzees are skillful enough to make kills all alone. And when this happens, do they recruit others and share, or keep the meat for themselves? In the few cases we observed, the lone hunter consumed the entire kill without attempting to attract other chimpanzees.

4. Lions and leopards hunting baboons

By 1977, there were many accounts of lions and leopards preying on baboons across East and Southern Africa. Our observations confirmed that lions sometimes ambush baboons opportunistically during the day, while leopards primarily hunt at night near baboon sleeping sites.

One of our more surprising findings was that leopards did not always rely on surprise. On multiple occasions, we watched a leopard remain in the baboon sleeping trees for more than two hours before finally making a kill.

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Accomplishments I Still Value

1. The Figan Follow

For fifty consecutive days at Gombe, David Riss and I alternated four-day blocks following Figan from dawn to dusk. Tracking chimpanzees through steep, forested terrain for days at a time was physically demanding. It remains one of the longest continuous observations of any wild primate.

One graduate student criticized the project, arguing that such sustained focus on a single animal was unscientific and an unnecessary burden on Jane’s staff. Fortunately, Jane disagreed. She later devoted seven pages of her book Through a Window to the Figan Follow.

2. Baboon Camp

Under the direction of Professor William J. Hamilton III, and with enormous support from our neighbors P. J. and Joyce Bestelink, Steve Smith, Barbara Kus, and I established a new camp in a remote region of the Okavango Delta. In a relatively short time, we habituated two troops of chacma baboons — roughly 70 animals each — learned to recognize individuals, and worked out their dominance hierarchies.

3. Sleeping at the baboon roost

During my time in the Okavango, I spent roughly fifty nights sleeping at the primary baboon roost on White Island, almost always alone. Most nights were peaceful. But leopards appeared multiple times to hunt baboons, and on one evening three lions arrived at dusk and pinned me up a tree for twenty minutes.

Looking back on those nights now, I feel equal parts disbelief and gratitude.

4. Wildlife photography

When I arrived at Gombe, many of the students had cameras that were too bulky to carry while tracking chimpanzees through dense forest and rugged terrain — so most photos from that era were taken in and around the feeding station.

My father sent me a small, pocket-sized camera I could carry in the field, which allowed me to document chimpanzees in situations rarely captured on film at the time. Some of the first photographs of chimpanzees displaying at a waterfall, or patrolling their territory, came from that little camera. Jane later used several of those images in her books and in a National Geographic article. Fifty years later, they’re still coming in handy, including on this website.

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What Science Taught Me

1. Maximize your time in the field

What you learn from fieldwork is directly proportional to how much time you spend observing your animals. When I arrived at Gombe, the data sheets were cumbersome and time-consuming. We streamlined them so we could spend far more time watching chimpanzees and far less time transcribing notes.

My personal goal became logging at least one hundred hours per month with the animals. I learned this lesson early at Gombe, and I owe much of it to David Riss, whose friendly competition grew into a major collaborative project and a lifelong friendship.

2. Public relations matter

You can make important discoveries, but if you don’t promote your work, no one else will do it for you. Papers may receive little attention and quietly disappear into the literature. Conversely, even modest findings can gain significant visibility when backed by effective networking.

Scientific conferences matter: attend them, meet people, build relationships. Ask questions and spend more time listening to what others are saying than talking about yourself.

3. Breaking into a mature field

By the time we began our work in the Okavango, baboons had already been studied for more than a decade at multiple East African sites. Entering a well-established field with new ideas and observations is difficult — especially when strong personalities and professional rivalries are involved. As I said above: public relations matter.

I remain especially grateful to Ray Rhine at Mikumi for his encouragement, and to Anthony Collins at Gombe for his friendship and collaboration, which led to our joint publication with Jane.

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I have countless great memories from my years in Africa.

I remember standing in a torrential downpour at Gombe when Figan suddenly charged from behind, knocked me off my feet, and dragged me ten yards down a muddy hillside by the ankle.

I remember sleeping alone at the baboon roost in the Okavango and being visited almost every night around 2:00 a.m. by a curious porcupine.

I remember Steve and me taking our small boat out onto the Boro River after dark, and — as part of a game department survey — catching small crocodiles with our bare hands.

At the time, these moments simply felt like part of everyday life in the field. Looking back now, they seem extraordinary.

What I value most are the friendships that grew out of those shared experiences. Remarkably, some of those friendships remain as strong today as they were fifty years ago.