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
People say, "Oh, we ought to fight for animal rights." We fought for human rights, but even if humans have rights, they can still be horribly abused and are every day. You don't have to go to some far off land, far away place; we have a lot of child abuse in our own society.
I have never had an animal that didn't have a personality, one differing from another.
Some people actually do not like animals - hard for me to understand, but true.
There are many people out there (me being one of them) who can vouch that animals have feelings; they feel compassion and love, as well as pain!
I always loved animals. And when I was ten, I decided I had to go to Africa and live with animals and write books about them.
We have to create more and more vegetarians, and help people to understand that it is not only the suffering of the animals (which is what made me vegetarian) but also the incredible harm to the environment, the tremendous amount of greenhouse gas created by the whole vast machinery of intensive animal farming.
Certainly it's very often true that women tend to be a bit quieter and more prepared to sit there and let the animal tell you things.
Animals were my passion from even before I could speak apparently. When I was about 10, 11 I fell in love with Tarzan.
When I was a child, the African forest sounded like a dream to me, because it was full of animals and it was wild.
I don't even think of chimps as animals. I think of them as beings.
Of course animals have a personality and emotions.
Chimps are far too much human to be my favorite animal.
When you meet these outstanding leaders who have been through a programme that empowers them to take positive action, to make things better for people, for animals and for the environment - when you watch them interact and they start brainstorming, you realise you can relax, because they have got it right. They understand that there's more to this life than just money.
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.