Jane Goodall with a friend in the Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania - December 1965
It breaks my heart to make this news today’s lead: Jane Goodall, whose lifelong work as a primatologist helped broaden the world’s understanding of animal behavior and emotions, died yesterday at age 91. Her field studies with chimpanzees not only broke barriers for women and changed the way scientists study animals, but documented emotions and personality traits within these primates that blurred the line between humans and the animal kingdom. Goodall arrived in Tanzania’s Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve in 1960 at the request of her boss, renowned anthropologist and paleontologist Dr. Louis Leakey.
There, the 26-year-old who had long been fascinated with Africa and its animals – but had no formal higher education – began her groundbreaking work observing and studying these intellectual primates in their natural habitat.At first, the chimps ran away from her. That changed when she met an older chimp she named David Graybeard. After following David through the forest, she offered him a palm nut. “He took the nut, he dropped it, but very gently squeezed my fingers,” Goodall recalled. “That’s how chimpanzees reassure each other. So in that moment, we communicated in a way that must have predated human language.”
According to her institute, she passed away due to natural causes in California during a speaking tour. All the great men - who it turned out didn’t know shit from shinola - were forced to stand in awe of a woman who thought becoming part of a community was the way to understand our similarities across boundaries. Further proof of why I wish women ran the world. The only “dumb animals” on this planet are us.
[TCinLA]