The Gombe Stream Research Center was founded in 1965 to advance Jane Goodall’s revolutionary findings about chimpanzee tool-making and other behaviors.

It also is a living laboratory, home to the world’s most studied group of wild chimpanzees. The Center’s mission is to operate a world-class research station in which the best available methods are used to continue and further develop the long-term primate research projects begun by Dr. Jane Goodall, and to advance basic science, support conservation, and train Tanzanian scientists.

Thanks to National Geographic and other television specials about Jane, Jane’s books about the Gombe chimps, and countless writings about her life and work, Gombe’s chimpanzees are known the world over. The most familiar to the public are the “F” family chimpanzees, a family line headed by the old matriarch Flo, who upon her death was the subject of an obituary in the London Times.

In more recent years the world has come to know a pair who may be unique in the natural world – the chimpanzee twins Golden and Glitter. Twin chimpanzees generally don’t survive in the wild, but Golden and Glitter had the advantage of a doting older sister, Gaia, who helped her mother Gremlin raise the two girls.

The twins and Gombe’s other chimpanzees are followed daily by JGI’s staff of Tanzanian researchers. The longitudinal study they continue furthers our understanding of chimpanzee diet, range use, intergroup aggression, health, and other areas of interest. These areas in turn inform chimpanzee conservation strategies.

The Center also hosts a regular stream of visiting researchers who conduct both basic and applied research, exploring areas such as relationships between fathers and offspring or female social status and range use. One of the critical studies currently underway is led by Dr. Beatrice Hahn of the University of Alabama. Dr. Hahn seeks to understand the natural history of HIV by looking at the factors causing transmission of the closely related simian immunodeficiency virus.

Keeping Tabs on the Data.
As data collection at Gombe progressed in the 1970s and beyond, it became obvious that the mass of handwritten field notes, photos and other data overflowing the open shelves of Jane Goodall’s home in Dar es Salaam needed a permanent home. In 1995, The Jane Goodall Institute’s Center for Primate Studies at the University of Minnesota was established under the direction of Dr. Anne Pusey – a member of the field research team in 1970. Dr. Pusey now oversees the archiving, digitizing, analysis and publishing of nearly five decades of field data. This online database allows researchers to leverage the data collected by others. It is a primatology resource of rare depth and breadth.

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Life of a Tracker

What is it like to follow chimps all day? Exciting and frustrating, peaceful and thrilling. Researchers go to the nest site before dawn and wait for the group to wake up. After that, they just have to keep up. The chimps might sit and feed in one small area all day. Or they might travel across three valleys, through two-foot tunnels in thorny vines, up and down precipices, through savage army ants and rainstorms. Trackers come home in the evening scratched, bruised and tired. But they can cool off in the lake and swap chimp stories over dinner. Exhilarated and exhausted, they know there are still data to record and observations to add to the accumulating insights into chimp behavior.

JGI’s Tchimpounga Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Center works primarily to rehabilitate orphaned chimpanzees. But the sanctuary also offers researchers the unique opportunity to study our closest relative – chimpanzees – in a controlled environment but more natural setting than a laboratory. Orphans at the sanctuary live in groups much as they would in the wild. This setting allows for organic social development and learning, and can provide researchers insights into a young wild chimpanzee’s growth. In addition, researchers are able to observe the chimpanzees without impacting the subjects.

Past research performed at Tchimpounga has also included genetic studies. DNA collected from fecal samples was analyzed to perform paternity tests and to determine the sub-species structure of chimpanzee across Africa . Conservationists wondered if the genetic difference between sub-species was great enough to warrant separate conservation plans; so far, no data has shown that the sub-species are significantly different.

 While Jane Goodall began her field work with little more than binoculars, a pencil and a notebook, times have changed. Today’s researchers use sophisticated technological tools:

• Global Positioning System handsets and Geographic Information Systems software enables accurate mapping of chimp ranges and natural resources.
  
• Satellite imagery allows tracking of habitat types and changes over time.
  
• Non-invasive sampling of urine and dung can measure hormones, SIVcpz (a virus similar to HIV) and signs of infections. Fecal samples can provide enough DNA to confirm paternity and other genetic relationships.
  
• Google Earth and high resolution satellite images allow folks with access to the Internet to take a virtual flight over Gombe – while they read blog entries from Gombe scientists in the field. Tune into JGI’s blog at: http://www.janegoodall.org/gombe-chimp-blog