No human being probably knew chimpanzees better. And no human was probably better known to chimpanzees than her. She was their best friend amongst human beings. Jane Goodall, who died on Tuesday aged 91, became a global icon for her pioneering research on chimpanzees of the Gombe National Park in Tanzania. That research work has continued for over six decades after she initiated it in 1960, and is possibly the longest-running study of its kind on any animal species, ever. Goodall spent years living with the chimpanzees, sometimes months at a stretch, in simple tents and camps. In the process, she closely observed and studied behavioural patterns that drastically improved human beings’ understanding of their closest living relatives in the evolutionary tree. Among her discoveries was the fact that chimpanzees happen to be non-vegetarians. She also revealed their ability to make and use tools, something that was widely known as a special capability of human beings, which distinguished them from every other species. “I think chimpanzees have helped people understand that we are part of and not separated from the animal kingdom, and that has opened the way to having respect for the other amazing beings with whom we share the planet,” Goodall told Scientific American in 2010. She also broke many stereotypes — a young woman spending time alone in the wild studying animals was unheard of in the 1960s and 1970s. A natural Born in London in 1934, Goodall did not study to become a scientist. Yet, she ended up becoming the world’s best-known primatologist (a scholar of primates, the family that includes monkeys, apes and humans) and ethologist (a scholar of animal behaviour, particularly in the wild). An outdoors person from her childhood, Goodall was drawn to nature and natural life from the very beginning. In several of her interviews, she recalled how, as a girl of ten, she fell in love with the fictional character of Tarzan, a boy raised in the jungle, and lamented that he had married the wrong Jane! (Tarzan’s wife is a character named Jane Porter) Goodall often spoke about being dismissed by people whenever she expressed her desire to observe and study animals. She credited her mother, Margaret Myfanwe Joseph, for not just supporting her but also actively encouraging her to pursue her dreams. Keen to travel to Africa, having heard stories of its majestic wildlife, Goodall worked as a waitress to save some money for the journey, according to an account on the Jane Goodall Institute. She established the organisation in 1977 to work for the protection of chimpanzees and other great Apes, particularly in Africa. Goodall was advised to travel to Kenya to meet the well-known palaeontologist Louis Leakey, which she did. Since she had no prior academic training or experience, Leakey got her employed as a secretary at the National Museum in Nairobi, which allowed her to spend time with him during his expeditions into the wild in search of fossils. Seeing her interest and dedication, Leakey later advised her to move to Tanzania to study the chimpanzees of Gombe. She arrived in Gombe in 1960, initially accompanied by her mother, since it was difficult for women to make such journeys alone at the time. The jungle soon became almost a second home to her. For most of the 1960s and 1970s, Goodall was stationed there, often living alone in the forests, observing and interacting with chimpanzees. She also enrolled for a PhD at Cambridge University and produced a doctoral thesis titled “The Behaviour of Free-living Chimpanzees in the Gombe Stream Reserve” in 1965. Landmark research There is nothing extraordinary about humans spending months or years observing and studying animal behaviour. But before Goodall, such studies were mostly carried out in zoos or laboratories. Expeditions into the forests were relatively short-term affairs. This is where she broke the mould. Goodall spent decades in the Gombe National Park, not weeks or months. She followed individual chimpanzees and their families over generations, which allowed her to gain behavioural insights that could not be obtained in a few short visits. Her approach of naming her subjects instead of assigning them numbers was criticised by some academics for not being objective. Goodall was of the view that just like humans, animals (be it dogs, cats or chimpanzees) had personalities and feelings. She thus gave names to many chimps around her, including “David Greybeard”, “Goliath”, and “Fifi”. Discovering that chimpanzees also ate meat, she first observed a young male chimpanzee eating raw meat, and later witnessed a group working on an organised hunt and sharing meat between them. Such behaviour of chimpanzees was completely unknown at that time. She also documented one of her friendly chimpanzees using leaves as a tool to fish out termites from a mound. This was the first documented instance of a non-human making and using a tool. When she telegraphed Leakey about it, he replied with a line that captured the deeper questions this discovery threw up: “Now we must redefine man, redefine tools, or accept chimpanzees as humans.” In her later years, Goodall became the face of environmental and wildlife conservation, with her work expanding beyond the mere study of animals to involvement with campaigns and advocacy related to their habitat protection and conservation. “We know that nature, birds, leaves, flowers are essential for really good psychological development for young children. It’s just very tragic that we have got so isolated in our little bubble of making money that we have stopped thinking about our relationship to the natural world,” she said in a recent interview with Forbes magazine. She also travelled and spoke frequently about the climate crisis well into her late 80s, and called on governments to increase their ambition for climate action.
