Jane Goodall lived for her chimpanzees

As a toddler, Jane Goodall took earthworms to bed: she thought it was pathetic that they had to sleep in the dark, cold ground. That animal love retained the primatologist until her death. She died this Wednesday at the age of 91, the Jane Goodall Institute announced. Goodall stayed in California in the context of a reading trip through the United States. Until her death, the people monkey researcher, who was best known for her groundbreaking fieldwork to chimpanzees, was committed to nature conservation.

Born on April 3, 1934, Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall grew up in Bournemouth, England. After the divorce of her parents, Jane lived with her younger sister Judy with their mother, and day dreamed about her first great love: Tarzan, the jungle hero from the books of Edgar Rice Burroughs. He could communicate with monkeys and fell in love with Jane, a human woman. In interviews, Goodall said: “Unfortunately, Tarzan married the wrong Jane.” And so she went looking for jungle dromanticism: at the age of 23 she left for Kenya, to visit a school friend, and was then able to work as a secretary of anthropologist Louis Leakey.

Chimpanzee

He sent her to Gombe in Tanzania in 1960 to study chimpanzees. He wanted someone who would look at the animals with an uninhibited look, unhindered by biological prior knowledge: Goodall was the ideal candidate for that.

She had no prior education or experience. With little more than an old binoculars, a tent and her mother, who would accompany her in the jungle for a few months, she left for Gombe. Initially, Goodall walked around on good happiness; Occasionally she saw a chimpanzee shooting away. “I would not have come anywhere without patience,” she said later. One day she decided to follow a chimpanseemannetje, which she called David Graybeard. Later Goodall often told about the moment she sat down with him and raised an oil palm fruit for him: “David hesitated for a moment, took on the fruit and dropped him. Then he grabbed my hand and closed his fingers around mine. If I don’t need the nut, but thanks.” Me Graybeard, You Janebut without words.

On the instructions of National Geographic After a few months, the Dutch nature filmmaker Hugo van Lawick came to Gombe to make a documentary about Goodall and the chimpanzees. A large part of the visual material – after it was considered lost for a long time – was used in the biopic in 2017 Jane. It shows, among other things, how Van Lawick and Goodall married and lived with their young son Grub in Gombe. Later from Lawick shifted his field of work to the Serengeti and eventually Goodall grew and he apart; They divorced in 1974. A year later, Goodall married Derek Bryceson, director of the National Parks in Tanzania. They stayed together until his death in 1980.

World news

One of the first discoveries that Goodall made in Gombe was that chimpanzees caught leaves and then with termites from a termite poop rods. Never before had it been observed that animal species – apart from humans – made and used tools. Goodall, Gombe and the chimpanzees became world news.

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On the intercession of Leakey, Goodall was able to promote to Cambridge, without ever following a university study. Colleagues made her habit of giving chimpanzees names: real researchers used numbers, no names. But Goodall didn’t care. Later she discovered, among other things, that chimpanzees can wage war: from 1974 to 1978 a bloody battle took place between two tribes in Gombe, in which the animals killed their opponents.

She was especially proud of her research into family relationships at chimpanzees, such as the bond between mothers and their children. “They support their children, just like my mother did with me,” she said later. When raising her own child, she said she had copied many female chimpanzees.

Since 1986, Goodall has rarely been in the same place for more than three weeks: during a chimpanza congress in which she participated as a scientist, she decided that it was her task to make men’s monkey research known to the general public, and in this way inspire new generations. Initially she returned to Gombe twice a year, where chimpanzee investigation is still going on.

In 1977 she founded the Jane Goodall Institute, an international non-profit organization, and gave lectures on the environment and animal welfare around the world through the Roots & Shoots program. She also wrote various books about her work with the chimpanzees. The most recent book, The Book of Hope: A Survival guide for trying TimesGoodall published during the Corona epidemic, in 2021, together with author Douglas Abrams.

Since 2002, Goodall has been ambassador of the United Nations. In 2004 she received a knighthood of the British Empire and in 2023 she was appointed officer in the Order of Oranje-Nassau. She also received countless honorary doctorates worldwide and an orchid was named after her: the Dendrobium Goodallianum. In 2022, toy manufacturer Mattel even launched a Jane Goodall-Barbarpop.

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Goodall remained optimistic until the end. According to her, apathy was the biggest threat to the future. Doing nothing was not in her nature. Or as she said herself: “Every individual can make a difference, every day again. It is up to us to determine what difference that is.”

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