Jane Goodall Essay, Research Paper

JANE GOODALL

Jane Goodall is a biologist who was born in war-torn London on April 3, 1934. Not long after Jane’s arrival, the Goodall family moved to a town along the southern coast of England, called Bournemouth. On her second birthday, Jane s father gave her a stuffed chimpanzee named Jubilee after a baby chimp that was born at the London Zoo. The toy was quite life-like thus causing concern among her father s friends who thought it would perhaps frighten the toddler. Jane, however, fell in love with the gift, and now, sixty-four years later, Jubilee sits in her won chair in Goodall s England home.

Growing up, Jane was always fascinated by wildlife. She knew she wanted to study living animals since before she can remember. When she was four, living on a farm helping to collect chicken eggs, Jane became curious as to where there was a hole large enough in the hen for an egg to fit through. After no one gave her a satisfactory answer, Jane hid out in a cramped henhouse for over four hours to learn the answer. When she came running back to the house to share her exciting new knowledge, her mother did not scold her even though she had called the police. Instead, Jane s mother sat with her in the grass and listened to the enthusiastic child explain what she had discovered.

Much of Jane s motivation in life, as well as inspiration for her studies, came from such discoveries. She explains the feeling she will never forget, as she held for the first time, a bone she, herself, had dug up at Olduavai Gorge. It was a cone of a creature that had walked the earth millions of years ago, and as she held it, a felling of awe crept over (her). She thought, Once this creature stood here, It was alive, had flesh and hair, it had its own smell. It could feel hunger and thirst and pain. It could enjoy the morning sun. Reading these thoughts, it is no wonder how her imagination is able to inspire her, as it tends to inspire anyone who encounters it.

Jane accredits much of her influence in life to her mother, who is an internationally known author, Vanne Goodall. Jane recalls her mother once telling her, Jane if you really want something, and you work hard, take advantage of the opportunities, and never give up, you will somehow find a way.

Jane was also influenced by her war battered childhood s affect on her imagination. She grew up in England during the Second World War, and escaped the realities of her war-torn world though her imagination. Jane s imagination, as she read books such as Tarzan, The Jungle Book, and Dr. Doolittle, allowed her to turn these books into dreams. By about the age of ten, Jane dreamed of living among animals in Africa. This was an especially unusual aspiration at the time, because girls were not expected to want to go to the Dark Continent of Africa.

Jane Goodall was strongly influenced by a prominent anthropologist named Louis Leakey. As a secretarial school graduate, she was working for a documentary film company in England when, in 1957 at the age of twenty-three, she traveled to Kenya to visit an old high school friend. While there, Jane took the opportunity to meet Leakey, who was working at a Kenyan museum. Soon, Jane was working for Leakey with documentation of the behavior of monkeys and the collection of fossils. Leakey, who was yet to become famous for the discovery his wife mostly made of early human remains at the Olduvai Gorge, believed that chimpanzees held much insight into Man s existence. He eventually decided Goodall was the person he had been looking for to study the extraordinary animals.

The chimpanzees habitat in the East African nation of Tanganyika, now known as Tanzania, is highly rugged and harsh. Many scientists were offended that Louis Leakey believed that someone, who…

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