At 4 he applied the scientific method observing the hens and wrote the first obituary for an animal: some of the curiosities about Jane Goodall that we tell you.
He is known as the first researcher to have asked us in front of the question: what makes us human? Jane Goodall died on October 1, 2025, at the age of 91, after having dedicated a whole life to the study of chimpanzees. He discovered, among other things, who built and used tools, developed a culture, performed rituals and each individual manifested their own personality. Characteristics that up to that moment were considered almost exclusive to the human being.
It will be remembered for leaving a generation of researchers to put the books aside and to go into the jungle, or in the savannah, to observe animals closely. Goodall, in reality, did not just look at them and take notes: he entered into empathy with them, learned and reproduced his language, he fond of their stories. It was she who was telling how some approaches to the growth of her son had taken them from the chimpanzee mothers. And this is not the only curiosity linked to his life and his work, in this article we have collected five …
It all started thanks to two dogs on the run
A few weeks ago, in an interview that will be released on the number of Evidence Network On newsstands from October 21 (and that we would never have imagined would be one of the last) told us how the esteem of the well -known paleontologist Louis Leikey had earned thanks to two Dalmatian who escaped. The dogs belonged to his wife, Mary Leakey, also a scholar of anthropology and human evolution.
The group, also composed of a fourth girl, Gillian, was in the throat of Olduvai, Tanzania. Gillian and Jane Goodall had to take the Dalmatian, Toots and Bottom Biter to a walk, to whom Mrs. Leikey was very fond. During the walk, however, the dogs started in pursuit of a Mickey Mouse and disappeared from the sight of the two women. Another animal instead captured Goodall’s gaze: an adult male lion who followed the scene with apparent curiosity. Frightened, Gillian suggested hiding, but Goodall sensed an un oballive detail: “If we hide, he will know where we are but we will no longer know where he is“. They therefore managed to recall the dogs and go back to the plateau, where the lion could not have seen them. Louis Leikey congratulated Goodall for the correct choice and convinced himself at that moment that the future colleague was suitable for the study of chimpanzees.
He learned the scientific method in the courtyard of the house
Jane Godall was born in 1934 and spent a good part of her life to feel that it was better if she forgot the studio of chimpanzees, too complicated for a girl.
But these statements did not make sense for a person raised in a house of women, between mother, grandmother, great -grandmother and aunts. From all of them he was encouraged to follow their ambitions and commit to obtaining the results he wanted.
In fact, the mother did not reply when one day she returned home late and with the dirty dress of earth. Rather, he listened to the detailed report of how the hens paid for eggs. To find out, Goodall had remained motionless for hours in a chicken coop to observe volatiles closely. At the age of only four he had sensed that, to deepen the mechanisms of the animal world, it was necessary to follow them with their own eyes while they occurred in their environment. The first step of the scientific method.
He wrote the first obituary not dedicated to a human being
Starting from 1960, Jane Goodall immersed himself completely in the study of the chimpanzee group who lived inside the Trove Stream reserve, in Tanzania. For 30 years, he will spend most of the time in their company and learn to know the individual specimens, to which he gave a name. David Greybeard, for example, was the one who showed them for the first time the use of the tools to allocate the termites. And then there was Flo, the matriarch and one of the monkeys to which he became most fond of.
He learned how the chimpanzees could give birth to a son every four or six years and how they were born two puppies per year inside the group. Just when she discovered that Flo had become a mother, Goodall wanted to stop the honeymoon with the neospious, the naturalist photographer Hugo Van Lawick, and immediately run to Gombe. In 1972, the monkey unfortunately died. The researcher wrote for her an announcement to be published on Sunday Times: He was the first obituary of the story dedicated to a non -human animal to appear in a newspaper.
The accusation: he had earned the funds for searches thanks to his legs
To summarize the prejudices with which he had to deal with all his life, as a woman, Goodall loved to tell an anecdote, also remembered by Catrin Einhorn of New York Timeswho interviewed her in 2016. Spending most of the time in Africa, Goodall was used to wearing short pants. It doesn’t take long for the attention of the media to pass from research to his legs, described as very attractive.
Some men’s scientists, perhaps fueled by envy for not having received the same support for their research, complained of the fact that it had become famous and therefore obtained funding mainly thanks to his legs.
«If someone said it today, it would be reported. So, however, all I wanted was to return to the chimpanzees. So if my legs gave me the money to do it, well, thanks legs! ».
Even the best are wrong (and apologize)
Jane Goodall was a pioneer not only of research on animal behavior, but also of the scientific dissemination to which he has dedicated above all the last years of his life. Like everyone, however, she also had to notice some errors made during her career and apologize. The most famous is the one linked to the release of his book: Seeds of Hope: Wisdom and Wonder from the World of Plants (“Seeds of hope: wisdom and wonder from the world of plants”). In 2013 he had to admit, and apologize, for copying without mentioning the sources some passages taken from websites.
More interesting for our relationship with animals, however, are the reflections compared to the ways in which he tried to establish contact with the chimpanzee of Gombe. One of these was giving them bananas. It was, however, noticed as that gesture believed to be harmless sparked struggles between chimpanzees and baboons for the contest of food. Furthermore, receiving fruit seemed to have made the chimpanzees of more aggressive tires than groups residing in more distant areas. Today we are aware that bringing wild animals through food is a wrong behavior: among other things, it could make the latter more dependent on man and getting them down to a correct diet.
