Jane Goodall, whose studies of chimpanzees in the wild revolutionized the study of primates and our understanding of their behavior, died on Wednesday in Los Angeles. She was 91.
Louis Leakey, the most prominent paleoanthropologist of his day, was nearing the end of his career when he tasked three young women with studying our closest animal relatives: the primates. The chimpanzee, gorilla, and orangutan had been studied extensively in zoos and in labs, but little was known of their activities in the wild.
Leakey chose Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birutė Galdikas to study the chimpanzee, gorilla, and orangutan, respectively. This was one of the most inspired recruitments in the history of paleontology. All three women made extraordinary discoveries about the behavior of our closest animal relations.
Goodall was the first of the "trimates" to go into the field. In 1960, she traveled to Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania. It was the most frustrating time of her career, as the chimps refused to cooperate with this strange young woman's study.
After many months and extraordinary patience, she was rewarded by being allowed into the close circle of a chimp family unit that included a dominant male, juveniles and toddlers of various ages, and several females of child-bearing age.
She spent the next decades observing the chimps. What she discovered upended what scientists believed they knew about chimpanzee behavior.
Chimps were not vegetarians and actually hunted for meat, including eating other chimpanzees. The chimps exhibited familiar human behavior. "It isn't only human beings who have personality, who are capable of rational thought [and] emotions like joy and sorrow," she was quoted as saying in a PBS special on her work in 1996.
Her most significant discovery was that chimpanzees not only used tools but also made them. Upon hearing this, Dr. Leakey gave his famous quote: “Now we must redefine ‘tool,’ redefine ‘man,’ or accept chimpanzees as humans.” It was an excitable outburst, but it shows the shock that ripped through the scientific community after that discovery.
More than the science, Goodall's work, featured on several National Geographic prime-time specials, made her a household name and generated intense interest in several of her chimpanzee friends.
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Instead of giving the chimps numbers, which was standard scientific practice, Goodall gave them names. Millions of people followed the generational exploits of the Gombe chimps, whose life and death she chronicled with such humanity.
- David Greybeard, a grey-chinned male who first warmed up to Goodall;
- Goliath, a friend of David Greybeard, originally the alpha male named for his bold nature;
- Mike, who through his cunning and improvisation displaced Goliath as the alpha male;
- Humphrey, a big, strong, bullysome male;
- Gigi, a large, sterile female who delighted in being the "aunt" of any young chimps or humans;
- Mr. McGregor, a belligerent older male;
- Flo, a motherly, high-ranking female with a bulbous nose and ragged ears, and her children; Figan, Faben, Freud, Fifi, and Flint;
- Frodo, Fifi's second-oldest child, an aggressive male who also attacked humans, including Goodall.
She remained in Tanzania for 30 years before beginning the second chapter of her life, fighting to save the chimpanzee from extinction. She went about this task with as much determination and patience as she did studying the chimps.
She also became a noted anti-meat fanatic, a climate change warrior, and a Green Party member. Whatever her politics, Jane Goodall's contributions to our understanding of a creature with 98% of the same DNA as humans, and how its behavior gives us clues to early human social development, cannot be minimized or dismissed.
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