Jane Goodall

Jane Goodall

The Watcher Jane Goodall was born in England in 1934. As a child, she liked to learn about animals and watch how they behaved. Jane loved to read colorful stories about wild animals that lived in Africa. She even dreamed about living there. Jane was sure that, one day, she wanted to work with animals and write stories about them.

Off to Africa At age eighteen, Jane graduated from high school and became a secretary. She wondered how being a secretary would get her to Africa, but she kept working. By 1957, Jane had saved enough money to take a trip to Kenya, in eastern Africa. Within months, she met a famous scientist named Dr. Louis Leakey. Dr. Leakey was studying how apes and humans were alike and different.

At the time, Dr. Leakey needed a new assistant. Even though Jane had no scientific training, he hired her for the job. She learned fast and loved the work. One day, Leakey talked about starting a special field study of chimpanzees. In a field study, scientists live near the animal they want to learn about. For this special study, Dr. Leakey needed someone who was patient and curious. The person would have to feel comfortable living in the forest among the chimps. He asked Jane. For young Jane Goodall, it was a dream come true.

Into the Forest Goodall was twenty-six years old in 1960. That year, she went to the Gombe Forest, in Tanzania, Africa, where the chimpanzees lived. At Gombe, Jane sat quietly on a hill, watching the chimpanzees all day, every dayeven in the rain. Goodall took organized notes. She noticed that the chimps always stayed in family groups. So she gave each chimp in each family group a name that began with the same letter of the alphabet.

The Gombe Gang For a long time, the chimps were afraid of her. Then a curious older chimp that Goodall had named David Greybeard came to her camp in search of food. She hid a banana under her shirt and let him find it. As his trust in her grew, he led Jane into the forest to meet his family. The chimp family let her sit and watch them on a daily basis. Her reports about her early observations of the family group upset many long-held scientific beliefs about chimps.