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Jane writing in her notebook | Photographed by Norman Jean Roy, Vogue, August 2005
Remembering Jane Goodall
By Una Łysakowska
Volume 5, Issue 1 | November 21, 2025
On October 1st, 2025, Jane Goodall passed away in Los Angeles at ninety-one years old. Jane Goodall was an English ethologist and anthropologist who devoted much of her life's work to studying chimpanzee behaviour in the wild and advocating for animal rights. At just twenty-three years old, Goodall moved to Kenya, Africa, to pursue her childhood dreams of living in nature surrounded by animals. Her dream began at age ten, after reading Tarzan of the Apes. Thanks to her perseverance, Jane fulfilled her childhood dream, spending twenty-six years studying chimpanzees in Africa.
During her time in Africa at Gombe National Park Forest in Tanzania, she conducted naturalistic observation of chimpanzees, observing their behavior in their natural habitat without any interference. Her fieldwork revolutionized how humans view animals by documenting key chimpanzee behaviors that are strikingly human-like. One of the key points she observed is that chimpanzees, just like humans, use tools. Goodall observed a chimpanzee sticking blades of grass into a tree trunk to extract termites for its next meal. This discovery was groundbreaking because it challenged the belief that tool use was uniquely human. Before her research, animals were often seen as a completely different species exhibiting behaviors different from ours. Goodall's research helped pave the way for the idea that most animals are more similar to us than we expected.
Along with her discovery of chimpanzees' complex motor movements, Goodall also emphasized that chimpanzees possess complex emotional lives and social structures that were once only associated with humans. Through years of observation, Goodall observed how chimps interact with their family and others in their pack. Goodall discovered chimpanzees' human-like behavior through recognition of their emotions of sadness, happiness, manipulation, and affection. Chimps display these emotions in a multitude of ways. Commonly, when chimps are happy, they laugh and play. They cry when they are grieving and exhibit a great amount of emotional intelligence by faking injuries to gain sympathy, affection, or food. Lastly, chimpanzees show affection to their loved ones by kissing and touching each other.
Her field research transformed the human understanding of chimpanzees and helped redefine the connection between humans and animals, which continues to educate people all around the world.
Jane Goodall playing with with a Chimpanzee | Photo by Hugo Van Lawick
“The forest is for me a temple—a cathedral of tree canopies and dancing light.”
- Jane Goodall
While not in the field, Goodall established the Jane Goodall Institute, which aims to support conservation of animal habitats, protect chimpanzees from human threats, and further chimpanzee research. Fourteen years later, she launched Roots & Shoots, a global youth-led program that empowers teens and young adults to create positive change for people, animals, and the environment.
Jane Goodall's legacy continues to live on through her research, her institutes, and the millions of people she has inspired all across the world. As she famously said, "What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make." Her life's work has profoundly transformed our understanding of animals and the interconnectedness of all living beings.
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