Jane Goodall can best be described as
an extraordinary woman. She has spent her entire lifetime studying
animals, beginning with sneaking a peek at a hen laying its egg, and coming
to a climax with her groundbreaking studies of chimpanzees in their natural
habitat. The findings Goodall made regarding the behavior of her
beloved chimpanzees are just her easily visible accomplishments.
Before she could get to that point, she had to get through every obstacle
from WWII to being a woman in the then male game
of science.
Jane Goodall began her career at age
five. She spent all of her time outdoors, and took notes on the habitats
and behavior of just about every living thing she saw. Her goal was
to someday travel to Africa. The Goodall family moved frequently, because
of the father's involvement with the war, but always wound up somewhere
where young Jane's talent could flourish.
Despite her gift for understanding
and appreciating the natural world, Jane would have to wait awhile to go
to Africa. Once the war was over, her mother insisted that she travel
to Germany, so that she could understand that the Germans were normal people
just like her. When she returned from Germany, her mother again intervened,
suggesting that becoming a secretary would be a good career move.
Surprisingly enough, she proved right, because Jane made her first trip
to Africa as the secretary of the famous anthropologist Dr. Louis Leakey.
Seeing her interest in chimpanzees, Leakey encouraged
her to begin studying the chimpanzees on her own. Sure enough, Goodall
went back to school and received her Ph.D. in ethology, the study of animal
behavior.
Since Jane Goodall burst onto the
scene in the 1960's with her daring solo trip to Africa, she has left a
trail of accomplishments a mile long. First and foremost, her work
studying the chimpanzees has been invaluable. Before Goodall there
had been only one man who had attempted to study the chimp and he left
the field after two and a half months! Goodall, on the other hand,
has developed a mutual respect between herself and the chimpanzees.
It took her six, long, frustrating months to build it. However, once
she was able to get close to the chimps and observe them, she found out
some fascinating information. For example, she discovered very convincing
evidence that chimps experience grief when another chimp that is close
to them, especially their mother or child, dies.
For example, when a young adult chimp named Flint experienced the loss
of his mother, Floe, he stopped eating and eventually died himself.
The information uncovered by Goodall
has been useful in more than just her field. She was one of the first
scientists to notice that chimpanzees use tools to get food. The
most common is a long piece of grass that is stripped of all of its leaves.
The chimp then sticks the grass down a termite hole, pulls it back out,
and voila! The chimp has its breakfast. Because chimps are so closely
related to humans, this information can be used to make intelligent guesses
as to what prehistoric people were like. There have been numerous
bodies found from before the Bronze Age, and until this discovery it was
considered likely that humans had simply not developed the ability to use
tools yet. However, if the prehistoric tools the humans used
were the same as those of the chimp, they were biodegradable and therefore
would not be preserved.
The size of Jane Goodall's expeditions
has grown considerably over the years as well. Where there was once a was
one bold woman venturing off into the African wilderness alone (strictly
taboo at that time) there is now a research expedition, consisting of Goodall,
her husband, photographer Hugo Van Lawick, her son Grub, and a handful
of other researchers. Goodall's dream of preserving the chimpanzee's habitat,
and the chimp itself, through public awareness is becoming truer every
day, and it can all be contributed to her determination. That is
the wonderful thing about Jane Goodall: it is her consistent habit of success
that truly makes her great.
Bibliography
Baroness Van Lawick-Goodall, Jane. My Friends the
Wild Chimpanzees. Washington
D.C.: National Geographic Society, 1967.
Bowman, Kathleen. New Women in Social Sciences.
Mankato, MN: Creative Educational Society Inc., 1976.
Goodall, Jane. My Life With the Chimpanzees.
New York: Pocket Books, 1988.
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