Every Sunday in church, the children get a handout that makes them think about how to become better, more caring people. Today’s handout listed four individuals that parents were to tell their children about. There was the Dalai Lama, Caesar Chavez, Rosa Parks, and Jane Goodall. We talked about all four, but as I was explaining who each was, I wondered how many adults know who Jane Goodall is.
Goodall has spent the last 45 years of her life working with chimpanzees and it all started with a gift from her father. When Goodall was young, her father gave her a lifelike chimpanzee toy, which she still has in her London home today.
While some might have thought this an odd gift for a girl, Goodall always loved animals. In 1957, she went to a friend’s farm in Kenya. She contacted archaeologist Louis Leakey merely to talk about animals. But, as luck would have it, Leakey was looking for a chimpanzee researcher and Goodall was up for it.
Goodall studied primates with primatologists Osman Hill and John Napier in London then was sent to Tanzania for several years. She had no undergraduate degree, but her experience allowed her to get a Ph.D. from Cambridge University, only the eighth person at the time to be allowed to do so.
Returning to the Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania, Goodall named her chimps rather than number them as other scientists had done. She noticed that like humans, each displayed their own personality. She noticed them displaying certain traits, such as kissing, hugging, and tickling, thought specific to humans. She documented the social interaction between the chimp community and her research suggested that primates and humans are more alike than ever thought before. She saw chimps use stalks of grass as a tool to get termites out of a mound but she also noticed that like humans, chimps could be aggressive. Goodall grew close to the chimps and was essentially accepted into their community.
She served as president of Advocates for Animals, a Scottish organization that fights against animal usage in research, farming and for sport. She resigned when she stated the primates in Edinburgh’s Zoo were probably better off than those in the wild.
For her work, Goodall has been named a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, named a United Nations Messenger of Peace, won the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, the French Legion of Honor, Medal of Tanzania, the Benjamin Franklin Medal, the Gandhi-King Award for Nonviolence, and serves as a member on the advisory board for BBC Wildlife, and a patron of Population Matters.