Jane Goodall
Jane Goodall
Dame Jane Morris Goodall, DBE, formerly Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall, is a British primatologist, ethologist, anthropologist, and UN Messenger of Peace. Considered to be the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, Goodall is best known for her 55-year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania. She is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and the Roots & Shoots program, and she has worked extensively on conservation and animal welfare issues. She has...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth3 April 1934
CityLondon, England
My hope for the future is that we learn wisdom again.
It has actually been suggested that warfare may have been the principle evolutionary pressure that created the huge gap between the human brain and that of our closest living relatives, the anthropoid apes. Whole groups of hominids with inferior brains could not win wars and were therefore exterminated.
But does that mean that war and violence are inevitable? I would argue not because we have also evolved this amazingly sophisticated intellect, and we are capable of controlling our innate behavior a lot of the time.
When you meet chimps you meet individual personalities. When a baby chimp looks at you it's just like a human baby. We have a responsibility to them.
We have language and they do not. Chimps communicate by embracing, patting, looking - all these things. And they have lots of sounds. But they cannot sit and discuss. They cannot teach about things that are not present, as far as we know.
If we could just stop building up armies and things like that, we would have all the money we need for wildlife and poverty.
We can't leave people in abject poverty, so we need to raise the standard of living for 80% of the world's people, while bringing it down considerably for the 20% who are destroying our natural resources.
We are beginning to learn that each animal has a life and a place and a role in this world. If we place compassion and care in the middle of all our dealings with the animal world and honor and respect their lives, our attitudes will change.
It's up to us to save the world for tomorrow: it's up to you and me.
We find animals doing things that we, in our arrogance, used to think was "just human".
I feel a desperation to make people see what we are doing to the environment, what a mess we are making of our world. At this point, the more people I reach, the more I accomplish. ... I miss Gombe and my wonderful years in the forest But if I were to go back to that, I wouldn't feel I was doing what I should be doing.
There isn't a sharp line dividing humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. All the time, we find animals doing things that, in our arrogance, we thought were just human.
Young people, when informed and empowered, when they realize that what they do truly makes a difference, can indeed change the world.
People don't believe that their actions really and truly are going to make a difference. But kids get it. They know. And they get all excited about the difference they're making.