I was with my family at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) over the recent Christmas break and happened to see a display based on Jane Goodall’s work with the chimpanzees of Gombe on the shores of Lake Tanganyika in East Africa. I’d always enjoyed primate exhibits at zoos, and the OMSI exhibit encouraged me to do some further reading.

Through a Window is Goodall’s autobiographical retrospective on her facinating career in Gombe. The stories of the chimpanzees that form the core of this book read more like sociology than biology. Their personalities and habits are wonderfully told. Altruism, murder, war, affection, ambition, depression, kindness, anger—the chimpanzees exhibit all these behaviors and more.

Goodall presents a variety of approaches in order to illustrate the breadth of chimp personality and society. Some chapters focus on specific behaviors: “Power,” “Sex,” “War.” Other chapters provide biographical sketches of individuals. Two chapters outline the relationships between “Mothers and Daughters” on the one hand and “Sons and Mothers” on the other. There’s also a very interesting chapter on the interactions between baboons and chimpanzees: competitors for food, childhood playmates, and occasionally sex partners.

It is this sophistication of chimpanzee society that Goodall believes places a heavy moral burden on humans. The contrast between these primates in their natural communities and others in man-made prisons could not be more stark. Looking back on the individual chimps she has known, Goodall attests that “my affection for them is close to love. But it is a love for beings who are essentially wild and free.” Keeping chimpanzees alive—as pets, zoo exhibits, or labratory subjects—is not the same as letting them live. As with humans, chimpanzee personalities and society are far more intricate than the sum of their biological raw material.