Even at age 77, Jane Goodall travels the world more than 300 days each year to offer hope in refugee camps and promote conservation among children. “I can’t slow down,” says the famous chimpanzee expert, citing her “advanced age” and the tick-tock of her biological clock. “If we’re not raising new generations to be better stewards of the environment, what’s the point?” Goodall asks.
[Last year], in more than 460 theaters nationwide, she appeared in a live interactive program that also previewed Jane’s Journey, a film with newly discovered footage of her early research and guest appearances by actors Angelina Jolie and Pierce Brosnan. “I can’t be in more places than I am today, but the film can,” Goodall says. The 88-minute documentary lauds her half-century of work, including her discoveries that chimps eat meat, use tools, wage wars and have more complex social interactions than previously believed.
Dreaming big dreams
“My dream was to live with animals, any animals,” says the London-born Goodall, recalling how she watched them intensely from the time she could crawl. Her father gave her a stuffed chimpanzee, Jubilee, which became her favorite toy. More influential were the books she read about Dr. Dolittle and Tarzan. “I was in love with him [Tarzan],” she says with a chuckle. “And then he goes and marries Jane. I was so jealous.”
She says her family didn’t have money for her to go to college, so she got secretarial training and worked as a waitress. When she met anthropologist Louis Leakey, he offered her a job as a secretary and later, though she had no formal training, he sent her to Gombe Stream Reserve in Tanzania in 1960 to observe chimpanzees. Although she was 26, he felt she needed a chaperone, so her mother went with her to live in the jungle. ...
Discussion Questions
- Would you be willing to move away from home and live in the jungle? Why or why not?
- How can you be a responsible caretaker of the earth? Give examples.
