FOLLOWING FIFI
My Adventures Among Wild Chimpanzees: Lessons from our Closest Relatives
BY JOHN CROCKER, MD | FOREWORD BY JANE GOODALL
As a young student, John Crocker embarked on the adventure of a lifetime, spending eight months in the Gombe forest working with Jane Goodall.
He would follow families of wild chimpanzees from sunrise to sunset and learn the fundamental behavioral traits of these chimps as they raised their offspring.
One chimpanzee would captivate him. Her name was Fifi, and she displayed extraordinary patience and reassurance towards her infant, Freud. Upon returning home and becoming a doctor, Crocker found himself incorporating the lessons he learned from Fifi into his work as a father and physician. When he would witness his young patients rocketing around the exam room, he would picture Fifi’s patience and tacit approval of Freud’s uninhibited and joyful exploration.
Crocker shares how his time spent with our closest animal cousins has helped him better understand his patients with ADD, anxiety, and depression, and how primate traits hardwired into our own natural behavior help chimpanzees protect their community, raise their young, and survive. Finally, chronicling his return to Gombe thirty-six years later with his own son, he reflects on how his experience with the chimps has come full circle.
An illuminating book that will raise thought-provoking questions about the evolution of human behavior, the importance of patience, strong family bonds, and provide a greater understanding of what it means to be human. 24 pages of color photographs.
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Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1681775689
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“A truly extraordinary book. As I read it I was transported back to those wonderful days when I lived in Gombe. It is fascinating to read how John’s observations of chimpanzee children with their mothers and other family members helped him understand the problems of a human child.”
— Jane Goodall, New York Times bestselling author
“Spending time with wild chimpanzees and watching their mothering skills has marked John Crocker for life and shaped his work as a family doctor. A delightful book full of love and respect for both animals and humans.”
— Frans de Waal, New York Times bestselling author
“John Crocker’s memoir traces a unique and fascinating arc from his early fieldwork with Jane Goodall, through a career in family medicine, and then back to revisit the people and chimpanzees at Gombe Stream. Written with genuine feeling and filled with intriguing insights.”
— Thor Hanson, author of The Triumph of Seeds
“Patience, compassion, presence, and gratitude are the values championed by Crocker, a family physician, in this eloquent and appreciative memoir of his time as a student of Jane Goodall at Gombe, Tanzania, in 1973. Crocker’s book is emotionally stirring without being overly sentimental, and is as much about human experience as it is about comparative ethology.”
— Publisher’s Weekly
“Beautiful descriptions of the natural surroundings in Tanzania and the importance of spending time in nature weave their ways throughout the narrative. An absorbing tale of the profundity of the human-chimp bond and how it can inform interactions among humans.”
— Kirkus Reviews
“John Crocker was lucky to be a student at Stanford University when Jane Goodall taught there in 1970 and recruited field assistants for her groundbreaking research with the chimpanzees of Gombe, Africa. In Following Fifi, John recounts his life-changing year living in a grass hut in the Gombe jungle observing and recording the chimpanzees’ behavior under Jane’s mentorship. With a wealth of insights and wry humor, he shows how this extraordinary experience inspired him to become a family doctor and a better father by applying what he learned in Gombe to his human patients and to raising his two sons.”
— Clare Hodgson Meeker, award-winning National Geographic author of Rhino Rescue!
Dr. John Crocker’s FOLLOWING FIFI is a rare find: A real-life adventure story that works just as well as anthropology and a common-sense guide for modern human parents. A career family physician as well as a father, Crocker recalls his experiences alongside Jane Goodall with the wild chimpanzees of Africa as an object lesson in human behavior and society. His central conclusion — that the chimps’ primal child-raising techniques are often more effective than our oh-so-sophisticated ones, should be a tonic for today’s stressed and anxious parents.”
Peter Ames Carlin, author of Bruce
