Jane Goodall died at 91 years old. Scientist, environmentalist, conservationist and popular popularizer, has revolutionized the understanding of primates.
Jane Goodall passed away on October 1 in Los Angeles, at the age of 91. She died from natural causes while she was engaged on a conference tour in the United States.
It is difficult to define in words the different souls of a scientist who became an icon of research, animal conservation and women in science: an ethologist who with his studies on the field, in the forests of Tanzania among the chimpanzees, has changed the way in which scientists study wild animals and revolutionized our vision of these primates, shown for the first time as with distinct personalities, emotions and ability once considered only human.
It is not excessive to say that Jane Goodall “has changed our relationship with nature forever, and with it, that with our humanity”, recalled the National Geographic Societyof which Goodall has been a member for over sixty years. He inherits a message of empathy and care for the animal world, of which he has become an ambassador and for whose conservation he spent until the last.
The first years and the meeting with Leikey
Born in London in 1934, she developed a passion for animals early: as a child she loved The story of Dr. Dolittle (A doctor who dedicates himself to animals and speaks with them in their language) and a chimpanzee -shaped plush received as a gift from his father. In 1957, at the age of 23 and eager to put his interests for wild life, he put in contact with Louis Leikey, the paleanthropologist who at the time was brought to light, with his wife Mary, Fossils of Ominini in the Olduvai throat, in the Serengeti plain (in the north of Tanzania).
Initially, the scientist assumed him as a secretary, but then glimpsed great potential in intelligence, passion, work ethics and in the mental opening of Goodall, who had not pursued at the time a formal education in paleontology or primatology. “He wanted someone whose mind was not confused by the reductionist attitude of science towards animals,” he would have explained the scientist later.
Leikey hoped that a better understanding of chimpanzees, the primates closest to man, helped to have intuitions on our most distant ancestors. And he knew that those that the scientific community of the time perceived as defects – not having a solid academic career behind him and being a woman in a category dominated by men, would have proved to be axes in the sleeve.
It was not wrong.
In the forest among the chimpanzees
Goodall arrived in the Gombe Stream National Park, a protected natural area of Tanzania that housed a population of a few thousands of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), of which less than a hundred specimens survive, in 1960, accompanied by the mother, to start studying primates in their natural habitat.
The patient and profound observation of Goodall, and his approach so intimate and informal in approaching animals, that he called “my friends” and identified by name, marked a revolutionary turning point. Instead of assigning numbers to chimpanzees, he gave them their own names, documenting their personality, their emotions and dynamics within their groups. It was earning the trust of an adult male, who called “David Barbagrigia”, who was accepted by the chimpanzees and was able to observe their behavior closely.
The chimpanzees fish the termites
Three months after the scientist saw David Barbagrigia do something that no human would ever have expected to see in a primate: put a leafy sprig specially deprived of the leaves in a nest of the end of the end, and then pull it out and eat the insects remained attached. The animal was using a tool to perform an action, and not only, had made it with a specific purpose.
So chimpanzees not only used tools, but also built them; A completely unpublished fact, which seemed to question human uniqueness, and that his mentor Leikey commented: “Now we must redefine” tool “, redefine” man “, or accept chimpanzees as human”.
The scientist also discovered – among other things – that chimpanzees have very well characterized personalities and can experience emotions such as joy and displeasure, which are capable of behaviors usually attributed to man as hugs, kisses, pats on the shoulders, which also eat meat and not only vegetarian, which develop family and deep friendly bonds that can last decades, but that as man are able to burn, aggressive and violent.
As the Cnnstill today the small Forest of Gombe hosts the longest and most detailed study of an animal in its natural habitat in the world.
Goodall obtained a grant from the National Geographic Society to continue his studies, married with the Dutch director Baron Hugo Van Lawick and had a son. He obtained his doctorate in Etology at the University of Cambridge, in 1965, and founded a research center on primates, the stream research center tires in the Gombe reserve.
An unpublished method
Goodall’s methodology, crawling for days in the forest between chimpanzees and establishing a direct relationship with them, which did not pass for a sterile number (an instrument at the time privileged precisely to maintain the distance and not to lose objectivity) made its contemporary ethologists turn up the nose. Just as criticized and accused of anthropomorphism was its attribute to them lexicon and typically human behaviors. But all this made Jane the first and only human accepted by the corporate society.
Animal Ambassador
Jane Goodall was also an incredible popularizer, who helped entire generations to understand the nature of the animals. He wrote 32 books, 15 of which for children, and inspired world leaders, celebrities, scientists and researchers to create a connection and a respectful relationship with other humans, with animals and the environment. “Chimpanzees learn by observing … but (human beings) can use words to discuss the past and tell stories” said, convinced that the ability to communicate to words also give us the responsibility to preserve the planet.
From the mid -1980s, having taken note of the rapid disappearance in Africa of the forests where chimpanzees were studied, the scientist decided to concentrate his efforts on environmental protection, becoming an activist. His Jane Goodall Institutesubscribed in 1977, is engaged in programs in defense of conservation all over the world, through “a network of programs and interconnected projects that put the strength of the local communities for conservation at the center of development”.
Jane Goodall was also a messenger of peace of the United Nations, and protagonist of the prominent of objection 15 of Agenda 2030, which aims to “protect, restore and encourage sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, manage forests in a sustainable way, to contrast desertification, arrest and reverse the degradation of the soil and stop the loss of biodiversity”.
