Pronounced Differences Between the Habitats in Which Book Report

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pronounced differences between the habitats in which the scientists that wrote, respectively, In the Shadow of Man and the Wolves of Isle Royale: A Broken Balance, studied. The author of the former, Jane Goodall, was located relatively close to the equator in the Tanzanian jungles of Africa. Her counterpart, Rolf Peterson, was in the midlands of the United States near the Great Lakes in Michigan. Whereas Goodal was fairly close to the equator, Peterson was much more close to the North Pole. As a result, one of the immense points of variation in the habitats in which these researchers studied was in the climate. Peterson experienced immense temperature extremes in his work, whereas for the most part, the temperature remained fairly consistent where Goodall was -- meaning it was regularly hot. This difference in climate, as well as the degree in which human intervention was found in both of these habitats, produced both opportunities and challenges for each scientist.

As previously indicated, the extremes in temperatures in the habitat in which Peterson studied were highly distinct from the regularity of the temperature in which Goodall did. The cold temperatures in particular engendered some pronounced differences in the research performed. On the one hand, the fierce cold was a challenge for Peterson to study both wolves and moose because they resulted in greater rates of deaths for these animals. Moose, for instance, are primarily vegetarian and require foliage for sustenance. Such foliage becomes increasingly scarce with the heavy snowfalls that are endemic to this part of the U.S. Therefore, the Peterson would have fewer animals to study during the winter.

However, this potential limitation also presented itself as an opportunity to the wily scientist, who spent nearly 40 years in this habitat while writing his manuscript. Specifically, the deaths of the animals in the wintertime enabled Peterson to collect and study the bones of these animals. In doing so he was able to detect the influence of humans in regards to the burning of fossil fuels which can be found in the bones of dead moose. Dead moose have also allowed scientists to realize that moose have arthritis, a fact which has presented them an opportunity to study this disease and draw conclusions that may have implications for humans.

Goodall, however, encountered some beneficial opportunities due to the fact that the climate in which she was studying chimpanzees was extremely consistent. The Chimpanzees did not have any drastic changes in their habitat to account for. As such, there was no instance of hibernation or substantial variations in their patterns of behavior that would prevent Goodall from studying them. Therefore, Goodall was able to follow the same groups of chimpanzees for several years. She was readily accepted by them relatively early on in her research, and was able to totally immerse herself into their culture and way of life. She named many of the chimpanzees that she was around for a lengthy period of time. The fact that the habitat she studied them in provided a regular environment aided her in tracking the behavior of the same chimpanzees, whereas Peterson largely studied different wolves.

Additionally, it is worth noting that Goodall studied chimpanzees in a habitat that was well isolated from other humans. Peterson cannot make this claim. Due to the location of the habitat he studied wolves and moose in, human contact was fairly frequent. The wolves, therefore, adapted their behavior to account for humans within their environment. Human interaction means there is less opportunity for a researcher to study animal behavior in their native environments.

2. There are some fundamental differences in the research approaches of Jane Goodall in the Shadow of Man and Roger Fouts in Next of Kin: My Conversation with Chimpanzees. The principle one is that Goodall was able to study chimpanzees in their native environment, in Africa. Fouts, for the most part, studied chimpanzees intimately within laboratories and formal scientific environments that were not native to the animals. This is a key difference because it alludes to the fact that Goodall's research was concentrated on understanding characteristics of chimpanzees as they naturally are. In contrast, there was nothing natural about Fouts' approach to researching chimpanzees, which was responsible for strengths and weaknesses of the work he performed on them.

The principle strength of Goodall's research methodology is that it was largely founded on observation. She went through a lot of difficulty to incur the favor the chimpanzees she studied, and to get into a situation where she could routinely study their interactions with themselves and with other beings in their habitat.

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There are many ideal aspects about using observation as an approach to research. One can get firsthand information about a species or a subject without necessarily interfering with them. This strength of Goodall's research was not found in Fouts' work. Since he was studying chimpanzees in laboratories and foreign environments, one of the primary components of his research approach (and those of other scientists like him) was through experimentation. The author himself actually laments some of the brusque experimentation that was performed on chimpanzees, such as when scientists would inject them with known maladies (HIV, for instance) to see how they would react. Although Fouts would significantly temper his personal research experiments with genuine affection and perhaps a distorted sense of camaraderie, he still was conducting experiments in a non-native setting. To Fouts' credit, he did a fair amount of observation while conducting his experiments, but he still did not find out very much information about the innate behavior of chimpanzees.

The strength of this approach of Fouts is that he was able to gauge and some of the limits of chimpanzees that may not necessarily have been evinced while studying them via observation in a native environment. His ability to teach these creatures American Sign Language, for instance, was largely revered for expanding the notion of the intellectual capacity of these creatures. From a purely scientific perspective then, such an achievement vastly exceeded any revelations that Goodall uncovered while performing her research. This fact is through no fault of Goodall's, but rather is just a testament to the difference in research methodology that the authors used. A potential weakness of the work that Goodall did in Tanzania, however, is related to her own human interaction with the chimpanzees. In order to gain their trust and to be accepted within their presence to be able to observe them in such an unfettered way that she was able to do, she had to regularly interact with them via methods such as feeding them. There is no telling how that sort of interaction, while permitting her access to observation, altered the natural behavior in the natural habitat in which she was studying these chimps. As a result, her findings and observations may have been tainted.

Lastly, it is important to note that another weakness of Fouts' study is the fact that a lot of the chimpanzees that he researched, such as Washoe, were treated and raised more like humans than they were animals. Washoe was pampered with diapers and a playroom, much like an infant. Whatever insight that was gained from studying her was not the same as studying an animal -- it was from studying a domesticated, humanized animal which could have affected the results as well.

4. There are myriad reasons as to why Professor William Lemmon is such a troubling figure in Fouts' book Next of Kin. Lemmon is the very antithesis of Fouts, a scientist who is only concerned with empirical evidence and the objectification his subjects, chimpanzees. Fouts, meanwhile, is a scientist who becomes so attached to these same chimpanzees and the ethical principles involved in their treatment that he eventually campaigns for ending the animal testing in general. Therefore, from the time that Fouts first moves to the University of Oklahoma (which he only does because he has become so attached to the chimpanzee Washoe that he follows her there) to the time he flees nearly 10 years later with Washoe and a few other chimpanzees in tow, Lemmon functions as the exact opposite benevolent influence in the life of the chimpanzees that Fouts portrays himself as.

Lemmon's troubling presence within this book is both indirect and direct. From an indirect perspective, it is fairly clear that he only views chimpanzees as subhuman subjects who are there to reinforce the notion of human superiority. As such, his treatment of them is decidedly less than ideal. The professor would routinely raise his voice at the smaller, weaker animals, bullying them into submission in a fashion that was indicative of human superiority. After Fouts eventually left the Oklahoma facility to pursue his own research with some of the chimpanzees stationed at Lemmons' lab, Lemmons went out of his way to attempt to prevent Fouts from being able to procure funding as well as to continue working with the chimpanzees. Additionally, largely under his direction the chimpanzees were quartered in unfriendly cages….....

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