Washington- The famous primatologist Jane Goodall He was recognized for his innovative work with Chimpanzees, but dedicated his life to helping all wild animals, a passion that lasted until his death this week while doing an oratory tour of the United States.
Decades passed by promoting humanitarian causes and the need to protect the natural world, and tried to balance the gloomy realities of the Climate crisis With hope in the future, they said their fans.
Those messages of hope “mobilized a global movement to protect the planet,” said the former president, Joe Bidenwho gave Goodall the La Libertad Presidential Medal Just before leaving office.
Here are some things to know about the life and legacy of Goodall:
I did not have a university degree when it started
Despite the enduring of Goodall’s passion for observing wild animals in Africa, he did not have a university degree when he arrived there in 1957, beginning as an assistant secretary in a Natural History Museum in Nairobi.
The famous anthropologist and paleontologist Louis Leakey gave her the job and then invited her to look for fossils with him and her wife in Olduvai’s throat. After seeing his determination, Leakey asked him if he would be interested in studying chimpanzees in what is now Tanzania.
He told The Associated Press in 1997 that he chose it “Porque wanted an open mind.”
It was not until 1966 that he obtained a doctorate in ethology, becoming one of the few people admitted at the University of Cambridge as a doctorate candidate without a university degree.
1/9 | Jane Goodall: A look at a life dedicated to chimpanzees and nature. While living between chimpanzees in Africa decades ago, Goodall documented how animals used tools and performed other activities that were previously believed exclusive to human beings. – Sumy Sadurni
Unconventional approach in Africa
While studying for the first time the chimpanzees in Tanzania in the early 1960s, Goodall did not spend their days simply watching animals from afar and giving them numbers like other scientists.
He immersed himself in all aspects of their lives, feeding them and giving them names and forming what can only be described as personal relationships with them. The approach was criticized by some scientists who saw him as an alarming lack of scientific distancing.
Documented the Chimpanzees War
Goodall documented the chimpanzees in a wide range of activities that at that time were believed to be exclusive to humans, including showing their ruthlessly violent side during what she described as “war.”
He described having seen a group to hunt and systematically kill members of a smaller group in the course of four years. The war ended only after all the members of the smallest group died.
“It was a shock to discover that they could show such a brutal behavior,” he said in 2003. “That made them seem even more like us than I thought before.”
In another case, he remembered a dominant chimpanzee by moving a younger chimpanzee to get fruit. When the second chimpanzee shouted, his older brother intervened to rescue him. And then when those two Chimpanzees They started screaming, a female two trees intervened.
He did not plan to become a scientist
Since Goodall could crawl, I had fascinated fascination with animals. When he bought his first book at age 10, “Tarzan de los Apes” by Edgar Rice Burroughs, his vision of the future began to solidify. He planned to travel to Africa and live with wild animals.
But his dreams did not imply becoming a scientist. Told The Associated Press in 2020 that He planned to be naturalistic and write books about animals. But that vision changed as I learned more.
“I always wanted to help animals all my life. And then, naturally, that led to ‘If you want to save wild animals, you have to work with local people, find ways to live without damaging the environment and then worry about children and what a future they could have if we continue as usual,” he said.
His fight lasted until death
Goodall has said that seeing a disturbing film in 1986 about experiments with laboratory animals promoted her to the defense, a vocation that lasted until her death.
“I knew I had to do something,” he said later. “It was time to pay.”
He still was traveling almost 300 days a year giving conferences to full audiences and was in the middle of an oratory tour of USA When he died from natural causes in California, said the Jane Goodall Institute. He planned to meet with students and teachers on Wednesday to begin an effort to plant trees in areas burned by forest fires in the Los Angeles area.
When he could not travel during the pandemic of COVID-19he began to make podcasts from his childhood in England. She spoke with guests as the American senator Cory Booker, author Margaret Atwood and Marina Ayana Elizabeth Johnson in dozens of “Jane Goodall Hopecast” episodes.
Inspired girls and women
His fans said that Goodall inspired generations of young people, particularly women and girls.
Jeffrey Flocken, International Director of Humane World For Animals, recalled how Goodall once spent two hours telling his young daughter stories about “her adventures with animals and the challenges of being a young pioneer in biological research in the field when conservation was still an emerging profession.”
“Chimpanzees, Pangolines, elephants and more. Jane passionately cared for all animals. And he was able to use that passion to inspire others, particularly children, ”said Flocken.
The primatologist at the University of St. Andrews, Catherine Hobiter, who studies the communication of the chimpanzees, said that her vision of science was transformed when she was a young researcher and listened for the first time to talk to Goodall.
“It was the first time … that I could hear that it was fine feeling something,” said Hobaiter.
