Jane Goodall, the soft-spoken conservationist known for her groundbreaking field research on chimpanzees, has died. She was 91.
The English zoologist was renowned for documenting primates’ distinct personalities and use of tools. She was also an environmental advocate who became a beloved household name through appearances in documentaries and on television, as well as her travels to address packed auditoriums and schools around the world, including Hong Kong.
The Jane Goodall Institute announced the primatologist’s death on Wednesday in an Instagram post. According to the Washington-based institute, Goodall died of natural causes while in California on a speaking tour in the United States.
Her discoveries “revolutionised science and she was a tireless advocate for the protection and restoration of our natural world”, it said.
While living among chimpanzees in Tanzania, Africa, Goodall documented the primates doing activities previously believed to be exclusive to humans.
In November 1960, she observed chimpanzees making and using tools. She would also witness chimpanzees embracing one another to comfort those in mourning and document the adoption of orphaned chimpanzees by others in the community.
Her discoveries transformed the world's perception of humans’ closest living biological relatives, as well as the emotional and social complexity of all animals.
“Out there in nature by myself, when you’re alone, you can become part of nature and your humanity does not get in the way,” she told Associated Press in 2021.
Goodall never lost hope for the future
Goodall had been scheduled to meet with students and teachers on Wednesday to launch the planting of 5,000 trees around wildfire burn zones in the Los Angeles area. Organisers learned of her death as the event was to begin at EF Academy in Pasadena, said spokesperson Shawna Marino. The first tree was planted in Goodall’s name after a moment of silence.
Goodall devoted decades to education on and advocacy for humanitarian causes, as well as protecting the natural world. She was known for balancing the grim realities of the climate crisis with a sincere message of hope for the future.
From her base in the British coastal town of Bournemouth, she travelled nearly 300 days a year, even after she turned 90, for public speeches. Tributes from animal rights organisations, political leaders and admirers poured in following news of her death.
Living among the chimpanzees
While first studying chimps in Tanzania in the early 1960s, Goodall was known for her unconventional approach. She did not simply observe them from afar but instead immersed herself in every aspect of their lives. She fed them and gave them names instead of numbers, which some scientists criticised.
Her findings were circulated to millions when she first appeared on the cover of National Geographic in 1963 and then in a popular documentary. A collection of photos of Goodall in the field helped her, and even some of the chimps, become famous. One iconic image showed her crouching across from the infant chimpanzee named Flint. Each had arms outstretched, reaching for the other.
In 1972, the Sunday Times published an obituary for Flo, Flint’s mother and the dominant matriarch. After showing signs of grief and losing weight, Flint died as well.
“What the chimps have taught me over the years is they’re so like us. They’ve blurred the line between humans and animals,” she said in 1997.
Charting a course from an early age
Born in London in 1934, Goodall said her fascination with animals began as she learned to crawl. In her book In the Shadow of Man, she described an early memory of hiding in a henhouse to watch a chicken lay an egg. She was there so long that her mother reported her missing to the police.
She bought her first book – Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes – when she was 10 and soon made up her mind about her future: to live with wild animals in Africa.
That plan stayed with her through a secretary course when she was 18 and two different jobs. In 1957, she accepted an invitation to travel to a farm in Kenya. There she met the famed anthropologist and palaeontologist Louis Leakey at a natural history museum in Nairobi. He gave her a job as an assistant secretary.
Three years later, despite Goodall not having a college degree, Leakey asked if she would be interested in studying chimpanzees in what is now Tanzania. She told Associated Press that he chose her “because he wanted an open mind”.
The beginning was filled with complications. British authorities insisted she have a companion, so she brought her mother. The chimps fled if she got within 460 metres (500 yards) of them. She also spent weeks sick from what she believed was malaria.
Eventually, she gained the animals’ trust. By the autumn of 1960, she observed the chimpanzee named David Greybeard make a tool from twigs to fish termites from a nest. It was previously believed that only humans made and used tools.
She also found that chimps have individual personalities and share humans’ emotions of pleasure, joy, sadness and fear. She documented bonds between mothers and infants, sibling rivalry and male dominance. She found there was no sharp line between humans and the animal kingdom.
In later years, she discovered chimpanzees engage in a type of warfare, and in 1987, she and her staff observed a chimp “adopt” a three-year-old orphan that wasn’t closely related.
