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
I think we must cling to the hope that we can see in the great heroism, the bravery of the firemen and policemen, and the outpouring of caring and concern that has come pouring in from around the world.
Without the heart to ground it and open it to who we really can be as human beings, the brain is a very dangerous machine. A machine that is saying: we've got to have economic growth; we've got to have unending economic growth, otherwise societies will collapse. And yet there should be something saying: wait a minute, this isn't going to work.
Chimpanzees have given me so much. The long hours spent with them in the forest have enriched my life beyond measure. What I have learned from them has shaped my understanding of human behavior, of our place in nature.
I cannot remember a time when I did not want to go to Africa to study animals.
When I began in 1960, individuality wasn't an accepted thing to look for; it was about species-specific behaviour. But animal behaviour is not hard science. There's room for intuition.
The refugees flee to protect their families from violence; the Europeans, on the other hand, fear for their jobs that they need to feed their families.
Even when it comes to things like wars over oil, which may seem like a whole different ball game, there are still comparisons one can draw: chimps fight for their territory; they fight for the resources within that territory, so it does relate in a way.
....I understood why those who had lived through war or economic disasters, and who had built for themselves a good life and a high standard of living, were rightly proud to be able to provide for their children those things which they themselves had not had. And why their children, inevitably, took those things for granted. It meant that new values and new expectations had crept into our societies along with new standards of living. Hence the materialistic and often greedy and selfish lifestyle of so many young people in the Western world, especially in the United States.
I am living in the Africa I have always longed for, always felt stirring in my blood.
Chimps act the way they feel unless they are afraid of reprisal if they do so. But that doesn't apply to humans.
So long as we continued to attach more importance to our own narrow group membership than to the 'global village' we would propagate prejudice and ignorance. There was absolutely no harm in being part of a small group - indeed, with our hunter-gatherer band mentality it gave comfort, provided us with an inner circle of friends who could be utterly trusted, who were absolutely reliable. It helped give us peace of mind. The danger came only from drawing that sharp line, digging that ditch, laying that minefield, between our own group and any other group that thought differently.
And I thought how sad it was that, for all our sophisticated intellect, for all our noble aspirations, our aggressive behavior was not just similar in many ways to that of the chimpanzees - it was even worse. Worse because human beings have the potential to rise above their baser instincts, whereas chimpanzees probably do not.
And always I have this feeling--which may not be true at all--that I am being used as a messenger.
At some point, my body will collapse. But I hope that my brain will still be working so that I can carry on with writing.