A look at the complex relationship between humans and wolves through the wolf experience in two regions of North America - Yellowstone National Park and the Canadian High Arctic. For the vast majority of human history, we lived alongside the wolf as a fellow hunter. Later, we welcomed them into our homes, and they became part of our families. Wolves are neither good nor bad - value is a human construct - and mirrors how modern humans treat the natural world.
Ronan Donovan was a two-time felon at the age of 13. Fast forward, and he's now a National Geographic Storytelling Fellow and Explorer who spends months in wild places documenting stories about our fellow social mammals for National Geographic. What led him to commit felonies, and what changed? What did he learn from that experience? In this presentation, he will share his experience as a wild child to living a wild life traveling the world for National Geographic. This talk is geared towards an audience aged between 10 and 25.
What can we learn about being more balanced humans through the lives of our fellow social mammals (chimpanzees, mountain gorillas, and wolves)? Can wolves teach us how to be better members of our families and communities? How similar are we to wild chimpanzees?
The short answer is yes, they can.
Ronan Donovan has been studying and observing these wild families for 15 years, and we share more commonalities that we can learn from. There is great wisdom in the lives of these wild families; we just have to listen.
He has lived with wolves in the High Arctic for months at a time, studied a wild family of chimpanzees for a year in Uganda, and hiked up the side of equatorial volcanoes to observe mountain gorillas.
For the vast majority of human history, we lived alongside the wolf as a fellow hunter. We welcomed them into our homes and they became part of our families. What changed? Wolves are neither good nor bad - value in a human construct. In this presentation on wolves, National Geographic Explorer Ronan Donovan brings the secrets of wolves to the big screen with stories and imagery from his time studying this species for a decade.
“The time that I’ve spent with wolves, immersed in the pulse of their daily life, has been one of the greatest honors of my life. Not because I have some misguided idea that I’m part of their lives—they do not think of me now, as I do of them—but because I feel that watching any animal living precisely how it evolved is an honor.”
Leadership has evolved out of a need that all social mammals share in order to succeed as a group. The idea is simple: how to achieve together what we cannot do alone. Yet leadership is a dynamic element of societies - both in humans and in chimpanzees. Not all leaders are the same because leaders are individuals. Leadership drives culture, innovation, and success in the human and wild worlds.
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