I met Jane Goodall at a conference once. I was quite impressed with her as both a person and as an academic. Now I was looking at Wikipedia and I come to find that many of her findings are being dismissed because scientists are saying that the presence of feeding stations altered the behavior of her chimpanzee subjects to an unnatural degree.

Another interesting thing is that her Wikipedia entry is locked. This makes me think that a group of people thought it was funny to edit the content in an unprofessional way.

Thinking about the issue of animals having vastly altered behavior because of a human related food source reminded me of two experiences. In Canada when I was growing up we had Dump Bears. Black bears that had decided that the local dump was a good source of food. This was bad, it caused them to become habituated to the presence of humans and it gave them a taste for store bought foods.

The other story is more innocuous. I once met a starling that had learned to beg for french fries from the cars at the McDonald’s drive-thru. It would wait until your car stopped where everybody stops to check their order and it would land on the driver’s side mirror and peck at the window. This restaurant was about a block from a network television newsroom. I always expected to see the bird as the last story on a slow day.

photo credit: NPS