35 Who Made a Difference: Janis Carter
The primate who taught other primates how to survive in the wild
- By Douglas Foster
- Smithsonian.com, November 01, 2005, Subscribe
Every great cause has its galvanic moment, when the world finally takes notice. Then comes the hard part—sustaining the commitment long enough to make a real difference. The campaign on behalf of the great apes enjoyed this kind of collective epiphany in the early 1970s after researchers discovered, among other things, that chimpanzees fashion crude tools, demolishing a supposedly essential difference between ourselves and our closest genetic kin. Around then, a wave of researchers, many of them women, set off in search of primates to study. Most have long since returned home. Among the exceptions is Janis Carter, who arrived in West Africa in 1977 for what she expected to be a three-week stay. She has been there ever since.
When I reached her by telephone in Banjul, Gambia, she seemed perplexed to be reminded that she has been working with chimpanzees in Africa for nearly 30 years. "I'm 54," she said as if passing on an unlikely news flash. "I still consider myself young even though I don't climb trees anymore, and I'm trying to be more careful."
Carter was on her way to visit the sanctuary for orphaned and captive-born chimpanzees that she helped establish on three islands in the Gambia River. Then she planned a return to the forests of Guinea, where she has been working with hunters, villagers and government officials to protect habitat for endangered wild chimpanzees. "I do have an odd sort of lifestyle," she conceded.
Blame it on serendipity. Carter was a graduate student in psychology at the University of Oklahoma when she accompanied two chimpanzees being released in the wild in Gambia, a coastal West African country. One was Lucy, a captive-born chimpanzee famous for being able to communicate in sign language. Carter was supposed to stick around just long enough to smooth the chimps' transition, but the venture proved far more difficult than she'd expected. After all, Lucy had been raised in a human home and perhaps thought of herself as a human child. In some senses, Lucy and other chimpanzees arriving on the island had to be instructed in how to become more fully themselves.
Carter demonstrated which foods were safe, led foraging expeditions, and communicated through chimp vocalizations. In one of two stories she wrote about her experiences for Smithsonian in the 1980s, she stated: "I knew that if the chimps' return to the wild was to be successful, I too would have to limit my contact with humans." The chimps were let loose on the island. She slept in a cage.
In 1985, Dash, a young male chimpanzee, attacked Carter, dragging her a considerable distance. Her body got caught in a thorn bush, and she escaped by rolling into the water for a swim back to her cage. As she nursed her wounds, it dawned on Carter that she'd just been knocked off her perch as the dominant leader on the island and would have to move.
Shortly after Carter left the island, Lucy died, possibly killed by a poacher. Devastated, Carter considered leaving Africa. But while puzzling over Lucy's death, Carter realized, with a start, how little she knew about the people who occupy dozens of villages along the Gambia River near the refuge. She saw that their support was essential to ensure the chimps' safety. "What Lucy's death did was push me toward human beings and away from the island."
When she reached out to the villagers, she discovered how little they understood her. One told her about a dragon-like creature that villagers believe lives on the island and about villagers’ suspicions that she was in cahoots with it.
Carter began surveying the attitudes of villagers toward chimpanzees and monitoring chimpanzee populations in neighboring Senegal and Guinea. In the Nialama Classified Forest in Guinea, she tapped local hunters' knowledge about where chimps find water and food, marked the corridors that link their feeding areas and mapped their migration patterns. This knowledge helps government officials and community leaders direct farming and logging where they won’t interfere with chimp survival.
Toward the end of our conversation, she mentioned Dash. She'd taught him how to recognize crocodiles and gather food before he drove her from the island. Thirty years old, he remains the swaggering, dominant male in his group, one of four groups in a population of more than 60 chimpanzees. Now, though, he's down to his last tooth. Like the mother of an aging son, Carter seemed startled to have discovered that Dash has grown pudgy. "It just seems unnatural that I’m going to outlive him," she said. "Unnatural somehow."
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Comments (74)
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It pains me to read the previous comment as Ms. Carter IS the redeemer in this story and IS a saint for giving her life to the protection of primates in their native environment. It is such a sad story. I find myself at a loss every time i hear the radio lab episode. The Temerils are the ones at fault, who took the baby lucy at birth, humanized it and threw away their adopted daugter Lucy when they were done with their "experiment." Ms. Carter, I thank you and all of your efforts. Shall yourself, Lucy and all the others you have helped and fought to protect find comfort that there are folks such as myself that deeply appreciate your gifts that have been given to our lives.
Posted by Timothy on March 11,2013 | 03:25 PM
Janis Carter should not be revered, she should be held as an example of a horrible mistake of humans thinking they know best. It is almost evil what she did, raise a human as a chimp, teach them the luxuries of human life and then go dump this human-raised chimp on an island in the wild that she was not familiar with and had never been to, without the comforts she grew up with. I don't know how this woman can live with herself knowing she used the innocence of this chimp and then dumped her out in the wild to be killed. What else did she expect would happen? Lucy, the chimp, was taught to interact and communicate with humans and then she was dumped out in the wild without any humans to communicate with. She probably longed for human connection that she could not attain with her wild chimp community, living a lonely solitary life, until one day humans show up again...one could only imagine the excitement she felt seeing humans again. Thinking that they were there to communicate with her and interact, but these humans were there to kill her. Janis Carter, you should be held responsible for this chimp's death and never allowed to care for animals again, you failed.
Posted by Heath on March 10,2013 | 02:28 PM
In January 1982, Cosmopolitan posted an article, "Chimps Journey to Freedom", my interest was with Janis Carter. At that time I wrote to her about the monkey I raised and tought words to. I often wonder if she received that letter and was please to have found a copy today. Thanks to technology today I was able to read this publication.
Posted by Jo Ann Petti on February 24,2013 | 12:48 PM
Glad I found your website , really like your choice of articles and discussion. Cheers ,Richard
Posted by Richard Watkins on August 24,2012 | 08:06 AM
Just goes to show you most humans can't be trusted!
Posted by patrick dubious-brown on July 9,2012 | 12:35 PM
What a wonderful story. I heard about it first when I was a child years and years ago. I just recently heard it on npr radio lab. Is Janice still in Africa? Can we donate money to help her?
Posted by Irfan on July 8,2012 | 03:17 PM
I went straight to my laptop to find the embrace photo but couldn't find it. Ditto-ing Anthony Sippial! Please show!
Posted by Hazel Kahan on July 7,2012 | 04:09 PM
Dear Ms. Carter, Just listened to the heart warming story about Lucy on our local station WFUM (University of Michigan). What an interesting life you must be living. My animals, adopted since I retired, are much more domesticated - 2 Nigerian goaties, a piggy, a duck, chickens, 2 bunnies, and a psyco-cat - all when we decided no more animals - after our children left home. Nothing as exciting as your line of endeavors altho I have taken my animal babies to schools for show and tell. Does that count? I know some frown on taming the wild however it is wonderful when they can be "put out to pasture" so to speak - in their normal element even when it is as difficult as it was for Lucy. Our best to you for your ability to "stick to it"! Sincerely and Good Luck, Karen F. (Carter, maybe a long lost relative) Slater
Posted by Karen F. (Carter) Slater on July 7,2012 | 03:39 PM
Dear Janis, Its been years since we talked in Guinea and Dakar. I'm delighted to read this up date on your life in Gambia and your continued interest in the chimps in Guinea.
Perhaps one day you'll take that well needed rest and visit us in France. The door is always open to you.
Keep well and continue your good works. As you have said the "story of Lucy" was only the beginning.
Liz Chevlier
Posted by Lise Chevalier on January 15,2012 | 04:19 AM
Dear Janis,
I am also a wildlife biologist (snakes, frogs, bats), also working within the local community to adjust attitudes towards those with whom we share our world. I was deeply moved by the Radiolab piece about you and Lucy, and your dedication toward those animals and their conservation and that of their species. I very much wanted to say Thank You.
Posted by Renata on July 25,2011 | 10:08 AM
... just can't shutup about this ... did I forget to thank Janis? ... and Lucy? - here done so ... something (wild + free) tells me this also: that Lucy was not afraid of death - not out of ignorance - but out of supreme awareness - what humans would do well to cultivate - such as that which Tibetan Monks / Shamen / Saints + the like so fervently practice against all consumer odds... what being would so hug another for such a long, deep time (as I read online = 3 - 4 hours?) - this - their time, and w/ such intense simplicity?
Lucy chose peace.
Posted by chip on July 5,2011 | 07:27 PM
Also - I wonder whether or not it was so difficult - and took such time - for Janis to teach Lucy to ingest her natural plant foods (if in the wild) what leaves / plant foods safe to eat, etc. - whether or not it went against any of Lucy's early / past training - perhaps from her original human parents ... Did they unwittingly train Lucy not to eat (for ex.) the house plants / indeed any plants???
Was this a cause for Lucy's seeming stubbornness when she was clearly intelligent enough to learn/relearn such a behavior?
Posted by chip on July 5,2011 | 07:08 PM
Ouch ... when will we learn?
How dare too many of us humans decline such knowledge in the face of such sacrificial beauty?
I don't know from where such comes to me of feeling certain that Lucy is saying "thank you + goodbye + I love + I love you"... as if she was in touch w/ a fortelling of her end - sad - in this plane-ette... I am a human who fully believes that each + every life form - including leaf + tree + rock + mountain + water + fire + wind, etc. ... each + every ... is totally + completely valid, necessary, divine, certainly destined to be - wherever it is - and no more important than I am ... if you get my drift, and surely so definitely - no less important than I am - truly - there IS - such terrible ONENESS ... and - IF WE DON'T FIGURE IT OUT SOON ... OUCH.
Posted by chip on July 5,2011 | 06:56 PM
I find it incredible that no mention is made of the fact that the project was initiated by Eddie Brewer, and his daughters Stella and Heather carried it on until very recently, when Stella sadly died and her husband David and others members of the Chimpanzie Rehabilitation Project were ousted, in a very unpleasant manner. I have visited Baboon Islands and stayed with Stella and her husband David, and have therefore witnessed the fantastic work done by Stella. Of Janis Carter I cannot comment because she was never there. I have got to know the villagers in Sambel Kunda and the other projects that are still going strong that were started by Stella and David Marsden, and now run by Heather, Stella's sister.
Posted by Judy Clarke on April 8,2011 | 07:41 AM
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