Jane Goodall dies at 91: How the British conservationist became the ‘chimpanzee whisperer’

The world has lost its ‘chimpanzee whisperer’ and one of the world’s most revered wildlife advocates. We are talking about British primatologist Jane Goodall, who has passed away at the age of 91 of natural causes.

Speaking on her demise, the Jane Goodall Institute said in a statement on Instagram that she “died peacefully in her sleep while in Los Angeles” on a speaking tour of the United States. The institute added, “Dr Goodall’s discoveries as an ethologist revolutionised science, and she was a tireless advocate for the protection and restoration of our natural world.”

Goodall’s demise led to an outpouring of grief from conservationists, politicians and entertainers.

UN chief Antonio Guterres said, “I’m deeply saddened to learn about the passing of Jane Goodall, our dear messenger of peace. She is leaving an extraordinary legacy for humanity and our planet.”

Even Hollywood superstar Leonardo DiCaprio paid his respect to the primatologist. “Today we have lost a true hero for the planet, an inspiration to millions, and a dear friend. Jane Goodall devoted her life to protecting our planet and giving a voice to the wild animals and the ecosystems they inhabit. Her groundbreaking research on chimpanzees in Tanzania transformed our understanding of how our closest relatives live, socialise, and think — reminding us that we are deeply connected not only to chimpanzees and the other great apes, but to all life.”

As the world bids adieu to one of the world’s most prominent animal activists, here’s a closer look at her life and achievements.

Jane Goodall’s early life

Born Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall on April 3, 1934, her fascination with animals began at a young age — her father gave her a stuffed toy chimpanzee that she kept for life and she devoured Tarzan books, about a boy raised by apes who falls in love with a woman named Jane.

In 1957, while pursuing a secretarial course when she was 18, she accepted an invitation to travel to a farm in Kenya. It is here that she met renowned palaeoanthropologist Louis Leakey, who then hired her to study chimpanzees in Tanzania. She became the first of three women he chose to study great apes in the wild, alongside American Dian Fossey and Canadian Birute Galdikas.

Describing her time here, she noted that at first the chimps ran away from her. “They’d never seen a white ape before,” Goodall told Deepak Chopra in 2019.

However, all that changed when she met an older chimp she named David Graybeard. After following David through the forest, she offered him a palm nut. “He took the nut, he dropped it, but very gently squeezed my fingers,” Goodall recalled. “That’s how chimpanzees reassure each other.

And this moment changed not only Goodall’s life but our understanding of the primates as well.

Goodall’s pioneering work and advocacy

It is during this period that discovered that like humans, chimps make their own tools. In fact, she saw the chimp, she had named David, use a twig to fish termites out of a nest. This finding was revolutionary, since scientists thought at the time that humans were the only animals capable of such innovation.

Through her work and stay with chimpanzees, she also revealed their capacity for violence — from infanticide to long-running territorial wars — challenging the belief that our closest cousins were inherently gentler than humans.

Notably, Goodall also went on to earn a PhD in animal behaviour (ethology) in 1965, without ever obtaining a bachelor’s degree. Some scientists scoffed at the way she named the chimpanzees she met while conducting her research, arguing that animals should not get human-like monikers.

But Goodall didn’t waiver in her approach.

And it’s a result of her untiring efforts that today we are aware that chimps have individual personalities and share humans’ emotions of pleasure, joy, sadness and fear. She also discovered that chimpanzees engage in a type of warfare, and in 1987 she and her staff observed a chimp “adopt” a three-year-old orphan that wasn’t closely related.

In 1986, her work shifted to advocacy when she watched a disturbing film of experiments on laboratory animals. ″I knew I had to do something,″ she said. ″It was payback time.″

Her untiring efforts led the National Institutes of Health to end the use of chimpanzees in medical research.

In 1991, she formed the non-profit Roots & Shoots with the mission to stop environmental destruction. She believed that the next generation would be better stewards of the world than the previous one. She also made allies of unlikely recruits. She persuaded Conoco Oil to build the Tchimpounga Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Center, in the Republic of the Congo, which opened as a sanctuary for orphaned chimpanzees in 1992.

And it seemed that age couldn’t slow down Goodall. In her 80s, she travelled some 300 days a year to meet with world leaders about climate change, visit conservation projects, and support her Roots & Shoots youth environmental programme.

And when Covid hit the world, she continued spreading her message virtually, speaking out about climate change as well as her thoughts on what led to the coronavirus pandemic.

Honours and accolades for Goodall

For all of her efforts and advocacy, she has been honoured across the world. In 2002, Goodall was named a UN Messenger of Peace, and in 2004, was named Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. In 2025, she even received the US Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Her other honours include the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, the French Legion of Honor, the Kyoto Prize, the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science, and the Templeton Prize. In 2019, Goodall was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

If that’s not enough, in 2022, a new Barbie doll was modelled after her. The Goodall doll, dressed in field attire and equipped with a pair of binoculars and notebook, is made up of 75 per cent recycled ocean-bound plastic.

And when asked about the toy, she said, Girls don’t want just to be film stars and things like that; but many of them, like me, want to be out in nature studying animals. And so a Barbie doll who’s Jane is a super idea.”

Notably, she compared US President Donald Trump to an “aggressive chimp,” citing his campaign performances during the 2016 presidential race. Writing in The Atlantic, she had noted, “In many ways the performances of Donald Trump remind me of male chimpanzees and their dominance rituals.”

She elaborated, “In order to impress rivals, males seeking to rise in the dominance hierarchy perform spectacular displays: stamping, slapping the ground, dragging branches, throwing rocks. The more vigorous and imaginative the display, the faster the individual is likely to rise in the hierarchy, and the longer he is likely to maintain that position.”

And after Trump won the 2016 election, Goodall reinforced her comparison, describing him as a “swaggering” chimp who shows strength and brawn but lacks strategic intellect.

With her passing, the world has lost one of its foremost voices on animal and ecological conservation. But her message lives on — “Focus on the present and make choices today whose impact will build over time.”

With inputs from agencies

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