Jane Goodall
Thanks for joining us!
This episode was written by Jean and voiced by Kara and T.
Episode art was drawn by Jean.
It was originally released in November 2024.
— Check out these books about Jane Goodall —
Click on each photo for a link to the book on our Bookshop.org account
— Follow and support Dr. Jane Goodall’s organizations —
Jane Goodall’s Roots & shoots organization has a mission to empower young people to affect positive change in their communities.
A global community conservation organization that advances the vision and work of Dr. Jane Goodall.
Keep up with Jane Goodall @janegoodallinst on Instagram.
Jane Goodall’s conversation with Julia Louis-Dreyfus
for her podcast ‘Wiser Than Me’ in October 2024
— Jane Goodall Episode Summary —
Jane’s loved animals and being outdoors even as a young girl —
Many years ago, when Jane was a young child she loved animals. She had a pet dog named Rusty and a pet tortoise. She would watch insects and chickens in her garden.
When she was a baby her father gave her a stuffed animal but it wasn’t a dog or a bear; it was a chimpanzee that she named Jubilee. She loved Jubilee and still has him today even though she is grown up. Jane liked being outdoors.
She would sit in a tree and read books. She liked reading stories about Tarzan, a man who lived in the jungle. Another of her favorite stories was about Dr. Doolittle, an animal doctor who could talk to animals - according to the story.
As a young girl, Jane loved learning about nature and she knew, even when she was a kid, that she wanted to know about animals.
Her life changed on a visit to Africa —
After going to school and growing up, at 23 years old, she was invited to visit a friend who lived in Africa. She loved being in the country called Kenya. She watched animals she had never seen before, such as giraffes. She saw different kinds of trees and plants.
She still had a dream of working with animals. She got a job so she could stay in Africa. Her friend knew that she loved animals and introduced her to an important scientist named Dr. Louis Leakey. Dr. Leakey was an anthropologist, a scientist who studies how people live and behave. And he was a paleontologist, which is a scientist who looks at fossils and old bones to figure out how things lived long ago.
Louis Leakey was planning to study chimpanzees, because he thought that they were like people in many ways. And by learning about chimps (that’s a nickname of chimpanzee) he could discover more about how humans lived a long, long time ago. He needed someone brave, adventurous and patient to help him do that job. And that person was Jane Goodall.
Jane started her life’s work of studying chimpanzees —
According to animal scientists, a chimpanzee belongs to the animal group called great apes. Other animals in that group are orangutans and gorillas. Those animals are bigger than the monkeys. But they all are in the classification called primates.
Jane wasn’t a trained scientist and she’d never done a job like that before. So she spent some time getting prepared by studying the things that were already known about chimps. Jane took a notebook, pencil, and binoculars that she had to borrow from a friend, and moved to a camp in the jungle.
She went to a place called Gombe Stream Reserve in Tanzania. It was a huge forest area where many animals lived. She hiked through the forest to find chimpanzees to watch. She knew that she wanted to observe the animals in their home, their habitat.
This was important because no other scientist before had watched these animals in their natural habitat. So she was able to see how they behaved in their everyday lives.
At first, the chimps would run away when they saw her. They weren’t so sure if she was safe to be near. She started to wear clothes that would camouflage her. Because of her camouflage clothing the animals didn’t notice her. She watched them from on top of a hill, and even sitting in a tree. And all the while Jane would write notes in her notebook about what she saw the chimps doing.
She noticed that the chimps had groups: The mothers stayed together and took care of the babies. The fathers stayed together, and one was the leader. She noticed that they sometimes seemed happy or sad, angry or excited.
The chimps got used to seeing Jane around the forest. And one time, a group of them went into her camp and stole bananas and blankets and chewed up pillows. Jane was excited because that meant that they weren’t afraid of her. She thought that she might get closer to them if she put out some fruit. And it worked!
One day, something really cool happened. An older chimp let Jane come close to him. She held out a piece of fruit towards him, and he got close enough to reach for it. And he put his fingers in Jane’s hand. Can you imagine how exciting that was for Jane? She had been watching the animals for months and finally she was able to touch one!
Learning from David Graybeard & the chimps —
There was a chimp who became a regular visitor to Jane, and because he had gray hair on his face, she named him David Greybeard.
Jane would sit for hours just watching David Greybeard and writing notes in her notebook. He let her get close to him and he would check her pockets to see if she had a banana for him. It was unusual for scientists to name the animals they observed. But Jane thought that the animals were all different and so they should have different names.
One day, Jane saw something very important that amazed her. David Greybeard used a stick to get termites out of a hole, which was important because he was using the stick as a tool – he purposefully made the stick fit into the hole and used it to get food.
Before this observation, sscientists thought that only human beings were smart enough to make tools. So this showed that these animals were intelligent, they could think and plan and make something happen that would help them. Which also meant that they were more like people than anyone thought before.
Jane spent years living in the Gombe Forest and observing the chimpanzees. She became close with them as they let her watch them and even become part of their community. They would let her sit in their groups, touch them and give them fruits, and hold their babies.
Jane Goodall learned some important things about chimps.
Chimps make tools and use them.
Chimps are omnivores - they eat both plants and meat. Before Jane’s work, it was thought that they only ate plants.
Chimps show emotions and have personalities. They acted a lot like people! She saw them hold hands, and tickle one another. She saw chimps pat another on their back to make them feel better. Some were quiet, some were leaders, some were quick to get angry or excited. And because they were different, she gave them names so she could tell them apart and write about them.
Jane Goodall became the person who knew more than anyone about these special animals. People around the world respected her for her hard work and patience. Finally, Jane was a scientist who studied animals. And because chimps are in the animal group called primates, and she is a scientist who knows especially about chimpanzees, she is called a primatologist.
Jane Goodall’s work & legacy —
She was a trialblazer: She was the first person to observe chimpanzees in their natural habitat. Also, she was one of the first women to be an observer of animals. She has said that she was told when she was young that there was a certain way for girls to behave - and living in the jungle among animals was not one of them. But she chose to follow her heart and her own ideas. And that worked for her.
Jane Goodall spent many years in Gombe Forest. She realized that the forest habitat of the primates was getting smaller. People were cutting down the trees to use for making logs. They were cutting so much that there were fewer places for the chimpanzees to live. This is called deforestation.
Jane knew she had to do something to protect the forest for the animals. She worked to tell people all around the world what was happening. She worked with the government of Africa to make rules about cutting down fewer trees and to keep animals protected. She worked to make sure that chimps in zoos had bigger spaces to live. She set up places for chimps to live called sanctuaries when they needed a new home. Jane said, “The least I can do is speak for those who cannot speak for themselves.”
Jane had become a conservationist. A conservationist is a person who is working to help the earth.
She started a program called Roots and Shoots, which is a group for young people. This group teaches kids how they can help our environment and wildlife. They do projects to help the earth and animals, such as planting trees, and building bee hotels.
Jane Goodall is now 90 years old. She still travels around the world to urge people to take care of Earth and the living things on it. Jane has said that we all share the same earth, and when we protect the planet we protect each other. She says we can “use the gift of our life to make the world a better place”.
Jane says, “Until we have peace and harmony with the environment, we will never live in a world of peace”. Jane has become a peacemaker.