Anyone proposing to offer a master class on changing the world for the better, without becoming negative, cynical, angry, or narrow-minded in the process, could model their advice on the life and work of pioneering animal behavior scholar Jane Goodall.
Goodall’s life journey stretches from marveling at the somewhat unremarkable creatures—though she would never call them that—in her English backyard as a wide-eyed little girl in the 1930s to challenging the very definition of what it means to be human through her research on chimpanzees in Tanzania. From there, she went on to become a global icon and a United Nations Messenger of Peace.
Until her death at age 91, Goodall retained a charm, open-mindedness, optimism, and wide-eyed wonder that are more typical of children. I know this because I have been fortunate to spend time with her and to share insights from my own scientific career. To the public, she was a world-renowned scientist and icon. To me, she was Jane—my inspiring mentor and friend.
Despite the massive changes Goodall wrought in the world of science, upending the study of animal behavior, she was always cheerful, encouraging, and inspiring. I think of her as a gentle disrupter. One of her greatest gifts was her ability to make everyone, at any age, feel that they have the power to change the world.
Discovering tool use in animals
In her pioneering studies in the lush rainforest of Tanzania’s Gombe Stream Game Reserve, now a national park, Goodall noted that the most successful chimp leaders were gentle, caring, and familial. Males that tried to rule by asserting their dominance through violence, tyranny, and threats did not last.
I also am a primatologist, and Goodall’s groundbreaking observations of chimpanzees at Gombe were part of my preliminary studies. She famously recorded chimps taking long pieces of grass and inserting them into termite nests to “fish” for the insects to eat, something no one else had previously observed.
It was the first time an animal had been seen using a tool, a discovery that altered how scientists differentiated between humanity and the rest of the animal kingdom.
Renowned anthropologist Louis Leakey chose Goodall to do this work precisely because she was not formally trained. When she turned up in Leakey’s office in Tanzania in 1957, at age 23, Leakey initially hired her as his secretary, but he soon spotted her potential and encouraged her to study chimpanzees. Leakey wanted someone with a completely open mind, something he believed most scientists lost over the course of their formal training.
Because chimps are humans’ closest living relatives, Leakey hoped that understanding the animals would provide insights into early humans. In a predominantly male field, he also thought a woman would be more patient and insightful than a male observer. He wasn’t wrong.
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