Eco Warriors

Wild Encounters
Garbage into Gold
Snake Saviour
Pigeon Lady
Queen among Elephants
Rachel Carson
Gerald Durrell
A Sacred Space
Jane Goodall
Greenpeace movement
When mom takes over
A Tree House for Butterfly!
The Tree Huggers of Khejadali

Jane Goodall

By Rani Iyer

For some the dreams begin when they are young. When Jane was 2 years old, her father gifted her with a chimp soft toy. She loved the toy and still has it in her home! Her dream to meet the chimps in the wild finally came true when she was 26 years old. It took her decades of painstaking, careful observations to convince the world that chimps were closer to us than we gave them credit for.
Following chimps is hard work. They are up at sunrise and don't settle down until sunset. They climb mountains, wade streams, and forage far and wide for food. They take no holidays. They are awake and active from dawn to dusk, in rain or sunshine, and travel and play when sick or safe. Jane Goodall dedicated herself to study them for 25 years.
Jane Goodall earned her Ph.D.

degree from Cambridge University in 1965. By then, she had already revolutionized the primatology fieldwork. She gave the chimps she studied in Gombe, Tanzania, human names instead of numbers. Her observations showed that chimps were distinct as human were and each had their own emotions, minds and personalities. In the very first year of study, she observed that the chimps made tools, by removing the leaf blades and retaining the midrib to fish out termites from the holes in the ground. It is through her observations that we learn that chimps are capable of group hunting as also of having a 'primitive' warfare lasting for four years. Here, the challengers to the dominant male were systematically killed, while the females were forced to submission by holding them hostage in remote spots.
From 1995, numerous awards and prizes have comes in her way. In 2002, Kofi Annan appointed her as the UN Peace ambassador.

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Last updated on :12/27/2003

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User's Comments

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bertha barrera: Jane if you read this note please send me an e-mail with your observations in Africa and what you did because I'm doing a history project about you. I'm really interested in that.

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Nina Brigando: Hi Jane! I really hope you read this and e-mail me. I am doing a research report in Science class about a famous scientist, and we got to pick who we wanted to do. I picked you because I was really interested about your work. Also, I love chimps! If you read this, please e-mail me back with any information you can give me about what it was like with the chimps when you studied them. Any information you can give me would be great and I'd really appreciate it! Thanks!!!!

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