![]() ![]() Even in the rainy season, when the grasses were over 6 foot high, she would rise before the sun and get soaked through with dew rather than miss even an hour with the primates. She followed and observed them all day and into the evening, then worked late into the night writing up her observations. Every day, she woke before dawn then scaled the steep slopes of the mountainous Gombe Stream reserve to find her chimpanzees. ![]() Goodall’s fascination with chimpanzees gave her an incredible motivation and energy. When she saw a similarity, she named the chimpanzees after people she knew. Unusually, rather than numbering her subjects of study, she gave them names: David Greybeard, Goliath, Flo and Flint to list a few. They communicated with one another, and made many human-like gestures: hugging, kissing, shaking their fists and patting each other on the back. They showed emotions such as happiness, sadness and fear. Goodall noticed that the chimpanzees each had their own personalities. She was able to observe them from closer quarters and got to know individual chimpanzees. Gradually, they became used to her presence. They would flee when they saw Goodall, and so in the early days she had to watch them from over 500 yards away using binoculars. Never mind Jane’s damehood, I think Mrs Goodall deserved a sainthood for that!Īt first, the chimpanzees were extremely wary of humans. The young European woman required a chaperone to live in the African chimpanzee reserve, and so Goodall’s mother gave up the security, comfort and climate of Southampton, England to spend months in an isolated African forest, just so that Jane could pursue her research. The remains of prehistoric man had been discovered there and he thought that an understanding of chimpanzee behaviour might shed light on the behaviour of our Stone Age ancestors. Leakey suggested that Jane might take on an ambitious project to study chimpanzees living on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. He sensed her passion for animals immediately and became an invaluable mentor. This gift would inspire Jane to become one of the most celebrated scientists of the 20 th century.Īdventurous and determined, 26-year-old Jane Goodall travelled from England to Africa where she met Louis Leakey. In February 1935 a chimpanzee was born in London Zoo for the first time, prompting Mr and Mrs Goodall to give their one-year-old daughter Jane a large and hairy toy chimpanzee. Her observations transformed our understanding of chimpanzees and the lives of our early human ancestors. She spent decades in the forest of the Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania living among mankind’s closest relatives. Her books were so widely read that when one of Jane’s subjects Flo died in 1972 The Sunday Times ran an obituary.Jane Goodall made the first serious study of chimpanzees in the wild. The idea that chimps and humans were related spurred debates about what it means to be human, inspiring a rethink on animal rights. While Goodall’s work made waves amongst her fellow researchers, the public enthusiastically responded to her revelations. Who’s in the text books now though chaps? 3. She found many of her predecessors snobbishly objected to being told their theories were wrong by a Bournemouth-educated young woman, who’d made her own way to Africa with no formal qualifications. The field of ape research, primatology, was a male-dominated profession before Goodall. She had to put up with some bad behaviour… not always from apes This suggested that chimps and humans are likely to have common ancestors. Through this she discovered that chimps used tools, created complex societies and could be so aggressive they could even kill one another. Goodall revolutionised the study of chimpanzees, pioneering new ways to study them. ![]()
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