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Jane Goodall (8349210416).jpg Photo by Peter Broster – Wikimedia Commons
Top 10 Fascinating Facts about Jane Goodall
Jane Morris Goodall was born on 3 April 1934, in Hampstead, London. She is an English primatologist and anthropologist. She is seen as the world’s foremost expert on chimpanzees and is known for her 60-year study of chimpanzees’ social and family interactions. She is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and the Roots & Shoots program.
Jane has worked intensively on conservation and animal welfare issues, and as of 2022, she joined the board of the Nonhuman Rights Project. Jane is also an honorary member of the World Future Council. In 2002, she was named a UN Messenger of Peace.
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1. Her Education
In 1957, Jane went to her friend’s farm in the Kenya highlands. During her time there, she contacted Louis Leakey, the Kenyan archaeologist, and paleontologist, to discuss animals. Louis suggested that it was best if Jane worked for him as his secretary. After his wife Mary Leakey, a British paleoanthropologist, approved of the idea, Jane was sent to Olduvai Gorge in Tanganyika where he laid his plans.
In 1958, she was sent to London to study primate behavior with Osman Hill and primate anatomy with John Napier. In 1960, Jane went to Gombe Stream National Park which is in present-day Tanzania with her mother. In 1962, Louis Leakey arranged funding and sent Jane to the University of Cambridge, she instead opted for Newnham College, Cambridge, and received her Bachelor of Arts in natural sciences by 1964.
She later joined the new Darwin College, Cambridge for a Doctor of Philosophy in ethology. Jane was the eighth person to be allowed to study for a Ph.D. there without first having obtained a bachelor’s degree. Her thesis was completed in 1966 under the supervision of Robert Hinde on the Behaviour of free-living chimpanzees which details her first five years of study at the Gombe Reserve.
In 2006, the Open University of Tanzania awarded her an honorary Doctor of Science degree.
2. Her Work In Tanzania
Jane Goodall 2015.jpg Photo by U.S. Department of State from United States – Wikimedia Commons
Jane is known for her study of chimpanzees’ social and family life. In 1960, she began studying the Kasakela chimpanzee community in Gomber Stream National Park, Tanzania. She also observed behaviors such as hugs, kisses, pats on the back and even tickling all of which were considered human actions. Jane insists that these gestures are evidence of the close bonds that develop between family members and other individuals within a community.
Janes’s research at Gombe Stream is best known to the Scientific community for challenging two long-standing beliefs of the day which are human beings could construct and use tools and that chimpanzees were vegetarians. Jane observed one chimpanzee feed on a termite mound and repeatedly place stalks of grass into the termite holes.
Jane also discovered that chimpanzees will systematically hunt and eat smaller primates such as colobus monkeys, she watched as a hunting group isolate colobus monkeys blocking all exits and killing the colobus. The others then took it apart and shared it with other members of the troop which is in response to begging behaviors. This was a major scientific find that challenged previous conceptions of chimpanzee diet and behavior.
3. The Jane Goodall Institute
The Goodall institute was established in 1977. The institute supports the Gombe research and she is the global leader in the effort to protect chimpanzees and their habitats. The institute has nineteen offices around the world, it is widely recognized for community-centered conservation and development programs in Africa.
The institute has a global youth program that began in 1991 when a group of local teenagers met with Jane on her back porch in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The organization now has over 10,000 groups in over 100 countries.
In the Mid-1990s, the institute’s center for Primate studies at the University of Minnesota was created to house and organize all the data that was piling up.
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4. Her Part-Time Work as An Activist
Jane Goodall with admiring student.jpg Photo by William Waterway – Wikimedia Commons
Jane has been able to use her free time to advocate and support movements that need to be voiced. Jane is the former president of Advocates for animals, it is an organization that is based in Edinburgh, Scotland. The organization campaigns against the use of animals in medical research, zoos, farming, and sport.
Jane is a vegetarian and advocated the diet for ethics. environmental, and health reasons. In 2021, Jane became a vegan and authored a cookbook titled Eat Meat Less. Aside from advocating for vegetarians, she is also an outspoken environmental advocate and speaks on the effects of climate change o endangered species such as chimpanzees. Alongside her foundation, collaborated with NASA to use satellite imagery from the Landsat series to remedy the effects of deforestation on chimpanzees and local communities in Western Africa.
5. Her Personal Life
Jane Goodall GM.JPG Photo by Floatjon – Wikimedia Commons
On 28 March 1964, Jane married a Dutch nobleman, and wildlife photographer Baron Hugo van Lawick at Chelsea Old Church, London. During their marriage, she was known as Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall. The couple had a son Hugo Eric Louis who was born in 1967. They divorced in 1974.
In the following year, she married Derek Bryceson. He was a member of Tanzania’s parliament and the director of that country’s national parks. Due to his position, he was able to protect Jane’s research project and implement an embargo on tourism at Gombe. He died of cancer in October 1980.
6. Her Religious Background
Jane was raised in a Christian Congregationalist family. When she was young, she took night classes at Theosophy. Her family was occasional churchgoers but Jane began attending regularly as a teenager. In 1999, in her book Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey, Jane describes the implications of a mystical experience she had at Notre Dame Cathedral.
Jane, however, has always felt that there is some great spiritual power but it can’t be labeled as a god. She has always noted that she definitely feels great power when she is out in nature.
7. Criticism Due to Feeding Stations
Jane acknowledged that feeding contributed to aggression within and between the groups. However, it maintained that the effect was limited to alteration of the intensity and not the nature of chimpanzee conflict.
Primatologists found the studies to be flawed and that even without feeding restrictions, chimpanzee groups would still show aggression similar to that in Gombe even in the absence of feeding.
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8. Her Addition to Popular Culture
Jane Goodall Institute Australia – Melbourne -MarchforScience on -Earthday (34167967146).jpg Photo by Takver from Australia – Wikimedia Commons
Jane was involved in one of Gary Larson’s Far Side cartoons. At the time the cartoons were released, the Jane Goodall Institute described the cartoon as an atrocity. However, Jane found the cartoon amusing, and since then all the profits from the sales of a shirt featuring the cartoon have gone to the Jane Goodall Institute.
On March 3, 2022, in celebration of Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day, The Lego Group issued set number 40530 which was named A Jane Goodall Tribute. It depicted a Jane Goodall Minifigure and three chimpanzees in an African forest scene.
9. Awards and Recognition
Dr. Jane Goodall, My Way Preisträgerin 2015 (18728928638).jpg Photo by Franz Johann Morgenbesser from Vienna, Austria – Wikimedia Commons
Throughout the course of Jane’s career, she has received many honors for her environmental and humanitarian work. In April 2002, she was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace by Secretary-General Kofi Annan. She was also named a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in an Investiture that was held at Buckingham Palace in 2004.
Her other honors include the French Legion of Honor, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, Japan’s prestigious Kyoto Prize, the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life science, and the Spanish Prince of Asturias Awards.
Jane has received many awards and honors from local governments, schools, and charities worldwide. Jane is honored by The Walt Disney Company with a plaque on the Tree of Life at Walt Disney World’s Animal Kingdom theme park. Jane is also a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.
10. Radio Programme
On 31 December 2021, Jane was the guest editor of the BBC Radio Four Today program. She chose Francis Collins to be the presenter of Thought for the Day.
