jane goodall chimpanzee sanctuary tanzania

My relationship with the chimpanzees is what still connects me to Africa. It was thought there was a difference in kind between us and other animals, but I’d already learnt that that wasn’t true. However, I was shocked to be told that I’d carried out the study in the wrong way: I should have given the chimps numbers not names, and I couldn’t talk about personality or emotions – those were unique to human beings. No one had ever done what I was about to do, and so I went to Gombe in Tanzania with my mother, who had volunteered to accompany me for my six-month research trip.Īfter studying the chimps for two years, and with my revolutionary findings that challenged two long-standing beliefs that only humans could construct and use tools, and that chimpanzees were vegetarians, I went to Cambridge University, where Dr Leakey pushed for me to go and get a PhD in ethology. It was only after assisting the paleoanthropologist Dr Louis Leakey, who asked me to go and learn about the chimpanzees in Tanzania, that I found my calling. When I first began my journey in Africa, I had no intention of being a scientist I wanted to be a naturalist.

I got off the boat at Mombasa, and as we drove up into the highlands, I saw giraffes and rhinos, and I thought, ‘This is the ‘real’ Africa I’ve come all the way to see.’ But it was on my first night, when I woke up to find a fresh leopard print outside my tent, that I knew I had arrived. The idea was to stay in Kenya for a year and see what happened. In 1957, it really was the ‘Dark Continent’ – there were no 747s or package tours, so I went out on the old Union-Castle shipping line, and because there was a war going on with Egypt at that time, we had to sail the long way around via South Africa. I always dreamed of traveling there to see the continent’s abundant wildlife and animals, so I saved up money waitressing and then, when I was 23, I went to visit an old school friend living in Kenya. “My love affair with Africa began through reading Doctor Dolittle and Tarzan when I was 10 years old.

Jane goodall chimpanzee sanctuary tanzania