History Book: Jane Goodall’s life mission

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NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, October 6th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, the WORLD History Book. Today, we remember the pioneering scientist whose decades of work with chimpanzees transformed our understanding of nature.

WORLD’s Emma Eicher has the report.

NARRATOR: In 1960, Miss Jane Goodall arrives in Tanzania. Her discoveries here will startle the scientific world, and lead to the possible redefinition of the word: man.

EMMA EICHER: That’s from National Geographic’s 1965 documentary on Jane Goodall. It’s called: Miss Goodall and the Wild Chimpanzees.

JANE GOODALL: When I arrived at the Gombe Stream reserve, I felt that at long last, my childhood ambition was being realized. Always I had wanted to go out into the field and study animals.

At 26 years old, Goodall makes camp in western Tanzania to study chimpanzee behavior. But first, she has to find them. She spends the first two months hiking in temperatures reaching 115 degrees without success.

But Goodall is persistent—she searches 12 hours a day, through tall grass and dense forest.

GOODALL: As I am not a defeatist, it only made my determination to succeed stronger … There was never any thought of quitting. I should forever have lost all self-respect if I had given up.

At last, Goodall finds a group of chimps, but they run from her. She has to make her observations from afar, peering through binoculars and scribbling notes.

SOUND: [Chimp noises]

It takes more than a year for the chimps to get used to Goodall’s presence. But one day, they decide to let her come close.

GOODALL: I was allowed to approach a small group without attempting to hide. I think it was one of the proudest and most exciting moments of my life.

Finally, the real work can begin. And the research will become Goodall’s life for the next 26 years.

GOODALL: I simply wanted to be amongst animals in the wild. And to discover as much as possible about the lives of the chimps.

Her love of animals began when she was a young girl, after reading The Story of Dr. Dolittle. Here’s 86 year-old Goodall in the 2020 National Geographic documentary, Jane Goodall: The Hope.

GOODALL: Christmas, 1942. There. That’s the picture: the monkeys making a bridge and Dr. Dolittle walking across. [Laughing]. But for you, I might never have gone to Africa.

In 1957, Goodall met Louis Leakey, an archaeologist in Kenya. She didn’t have a college degree, but Leakey recognized her passion for animals. He sent her first to the University of Cambridge, and then to Oxford to study for a PhD in ethology.

By 1960, she went to live on the Gombe Stream to study chimpanzees. Primatology was a little-known field at the time.

Goodall grew to love the chimpanzees that she studied, giving each one a name and documenting their lives. She saw how relational they were, with their own personalities. And she is often touted as the only person ever accepted into chimpanzee society.

GOODALL: I often used to think, sitting out there on my own, that maybe there’s a spark of that great spiritual power in each one of us. And if it’s so, then maybe it’s in every animal too. So if we have soul, maybe so do the chimpanzees.

Goodall discovered that chimpanzees used tools, much like humans. And she refuted the longheld belief that chimps were vegetarian.

Her work did more than increase understanding, it significantly fueled evolutionary explanations. As she documented similarities between humans and apes, many used her research as evidence for the idea that humans evolved from apes.

Casey Luskin is a geologist at the Discovery Institute.

CASEY LUSKIN: People did not accept or anticipate or expect even that chimpanzees had emotions or that they could form sort of relational bonds. And I think that she was really groundbreaking in showing that that was true.

Luskin says Goodall’s evolutionary commitments bolstered her research. Her discoveries could just as easily—if not more accurately point to an Intelligent Designer.

LUSKIN: We could be designed by the same designer, to be able to have similar relation building abilities, or to form relations across species with one another. I think that's a beautiful thing, and maybe that's the way God intended to be so.

Goodall was a spiritual person. She was raised in a Congregationalist church, and said she was open to the reality of God.

LUSKIN: She certainly had some kind of a view of there being something greater than us in the universe, maybe some kind of divine force, or spiritual force. But she definitely tried to synthesize it with evolution.

Goodall was more than a scientist. She became a strong conservationist after leaving Tanzania. She founded the Jane Goodall Institute to advocate for and fund environmental initiatives.

LUSKIN: Part of her legacy is raising environmentalism to the level of it being like a religion where it's all that matters … the environment is important, but humans are also part of this world.

Goodall’s work contradicts scriptural teachings on the nature of humans and God’s creation, but her respect for animals has served as an inspiration for millions.

LUSKIN: I really admire the fact that she was willing to put her life on the line to go and work with these very wild and sometimes dangerous animals. That still was very remarkable.

Goodall was a frequent speaker. She was on tour when she passed away peacefully at the age of 91 on October 1st.

GOODALL: My job is to go around and inspire people and get them to take action. The message is, we are part of the natural world. Once you take action, once you’re doing something, once you feel “Well it’s my little bit, but I’m going to do my little bit. And I’ll die easier if I’ve done my little bit,” … even if it’s no use, I’m going to die trying.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Emma Eicher.

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