I’m pretty sure there are still many York students who are unaware of the existence of the image and sound library website, as I only found out about it through my professor Dawn Bazely in my final year of study, so I hope that more students will use this blog to go to the site and learn more about the films they are interested in.
To be precise, the image and sound library is not a single video site, but rather a collection of video sites that the university has licensed to students. Among the various science fiction films, documentaries, radio, and music on these sites, I was surprised to find a documentary about Jane Goodall, named after her, “Jane”, which chronicles Dr. Jane’s interesting research on chimpanzees in Gombe. Trying to get close to wild animals is not easy, but Dr. Jane’s patience has paid off for her. From observing chimpanzees with binoculars from a distance to trying to sneak up on them and gradually having her approach lowered by the growing number of individuals in a family, to brazenly walking into her tent and taking bananas, Dr. Jane was eventually able to observe chimpanzees at very close range and scrutinize a range of behavioral details such as foraging, mating, territory grabbing, and child-rearing, and contrasted the commonalities and differences between chimpanzee and human behavior. As close relatives of humans, chimpanzees are also highly intelligent and emotionally rich, making and using simple tools, helping and cooperating with each other, and grieving the loss of loved ones. What I find very meaningful about this film is that Dr. Jane mentions that the biggest difference between humans and chimpanzees is that humans are the first species in evolutionary history to be able to pass on their past successes and failures to the next generation, and to think about the meaning of their existence with high intelligence, so humans have the ability and responsibility to protect other species on Earth, which is what I ultimately learned from this film.
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 