Althouse: Goodbye to Jane Goodall.

October 2, 2025

Goodbye to Jane Goodall.

From "Jane Goodall: A Life in Pictures The primatologist gained scientific acclaim for her work with chimpanzees and then later used her fame to champion conservation" (NYT)(free access link, so you can see the pictures).

34 comments:

Joe Bar said...: "You cannot imagine how wrong you are."; 10/2/25, 6:10 AM
Whiskeybum said...: I attended a lecture of hers in college some 50 years ago. I remember her as a good speaker, but strangely, I can’t remember any highlight from her speech; just that she seemed to be a very disciplined person. RIP; 10/2/25, 6:17 AM
rehajm said...: It’s a fun photo…hopefully she doesn’t ignite a chain of naturalist deaths…; 10/2/25, 6:18 AM
Money Manger said...: So if her parents had instead given her, say, a stuffed Beluga Whale, she would have spent her life on the high seas.

Infant toys as destiny.; 10/2/25, 6:41 AM
n.n said...: Just aping around.; 10/2/25, 7:25 AM
rhhardin said...: The philosophical crisis when chimps were taught sign language is covered in Vicki Hearne _Adam's Task_.; 10/2/25, 7:27 AM
Bob Boyd said...: Thanks, Althouse. Those are some great pictures.; 10/2/25, 7:29 AM
Peachy said...: I like people who love animals.; 10/2/25, 7:46 AM
Bob Boyd said...: When Greta Thunberg was a baby her parents gave her a broken thermometer.; 10/2/25, 7:47 AM
Peachy said...: Money - perhaps she has a few stuffed animal verities - but was the one.; 10/2/25, 7:47 AM
Marcus Bressler said...: Terminal TDS catches up to another: Donald Trump and chimpanzee behavior: In 2022 and 2016, Goodall's comments comparing Donald Trump's behavior to male chimpanzees vying for dominance went viral.; 10/2/25, 7:53 AM
Wince said...: Goodall wrote…
For several years I struggled to come to terms with this new knowledge. Often when I woke in the night, horrific pictures sprang unbidden to my mind—Satan [one of the apes], cupping his hand below Sniff's chin to drink the blood that welled from a great wound on his face; old Rodolf, usually so benign, standing upright to hurl a four-pound [1.8 kg] rock at Godi's prostrate body; Jomeo tearing a strip of skin from Dé's thigh; Figan, charging and hitting, again and again, the stricken, quivering body of Goliath, one of his childhood heroes.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War; 10/2/25, 7:55 AM
n.n said...: standing upright to hurl a four-pound [1.8 kg] rock at Godi's prostrate body

Capitol punishment.

cupping his hand below Sniff's chin to drink the blood that welled from a great wound

Planned Chimphood (PC)

Cruel and unusual.; 10/2/25, 8:00 AM
Eva Marie said...: The author of the article in the comments:
“When Jane Goodall began her work, it was absolutely the convention for scientists to refer to their animal subjects only by number -- to do anything else was viewed as a breach of scientific objectivity. And ascribing personalities to animals was viewed as anthropomorphic -- simply humans projecting our own attributes onto other species.
In psychology, "behaviorism" had also been the dominant paradigm for decades. Many of these researchers viewed their animal subjects as essentially a collection of hard-wired instincts -- rather than the thinking, feeling creatures that we now know they are.”
Just interesting. Not saying one view or the other is correct. Just interesting.; 10/2/25, 8:06 AM
RCOCEAN II said...: Glad she lived so long and was relatively healthy in her old age. David Attenborough is 99. Must be healthy for you to be out of doors studying nature. Although, IRC, she had some close calls with pouchers.

Good photos. Her mother has such an English look to her.; 10/2/25, 8:32 AM
RCOCEAN II said...: The only downside of her research is she burst my bubble about chimps. They're alot more sexual, violent, and manipulative than I thought. More like humans, in other words.; 10/2/25, 8:34 AM
Bob Boyd said...: I think you mean poachers.
Pouchers are sneaky criminals who steal baby kangaroos and other marsupials from their mothers. They're like pickpockets, only different.; 10/2/25, 8:46 AM
Will Cate said...: She was a strikingly beautiful woman.; 10/2/25, 8:49 AM
Wince said...: Goodall wrote…
For several years I struggled to come to terms with this new knowledge.

If only liberals could do the same with Antifa et al.; 10/2/25, 9:12 AM
Quaestor said...: R.I.P. Jane Goodall.

Unfortunately for science, Goodall went to Tanzania with the encouragement of Louis S. B. Leakey and the financial oomf of the National Geographic Society, but without sufficient background in the ethics of field research. In her ignorance she bribed the chimps with bananas and grapefruit, and made herself famous with invalid observations and bogus conclusions. Furthermore, the competition for Goodall's largess may have permanently shattered the fragile social order within the Gombé Stream clan. Goodall thought she could insert herself into the chimp community invisibly and obtain an unbiased record of their behavior. It took thirty years of mistaken methodology and harsh academic criticism before Jane Goodall began to apply useful principles to her research, and what she discovered shocked her to the core.; 10/2/25, 9:36 AM
BG said...: The Far Side's Most Controversial Comic; 10/2/25, 9:56 AM
GatorNavy said...: I came here to mourn a true icon.; 10/2/25, 11:13 AM
Quaestor said...: Though most of her active career, Goodall was doing journalism, not primatology.; 10/2/25, 12:12 PM
PM said...: Always reminded us that we are not alone.; 10/2/25, 12:41 PM
Lazarus said...: Say what you will, but to have spent so much time with chimps without them tearing off her face was an achievement.; 10/2/25, 12:54 PM
RCOCEAN II said...: "Furthermore, the competition for Goodall's largess may have permanently shattered the fragile social order within the Gombé Stream clan"

That's terrible. So, goodall became the alpha Chimp. Big males hardest hit.; 10/2/25, 2:05 PM
William said...: In some doctor's office or wherever, I picked up a copy of National Georgraphic and read an article by Jane Goodall. It was like something by Stephen King. She had apparently been under the impression that chimps were some kind of noble savage. In the article she related how savage they were and how dismayed she was to observe this behavior......That was years ago. She apparently didn't hold their bad days against them and continued living in their midst for decades. I don't know what moral to draw from her story.; 10/2/25, 2:26 PM
Eva Marie said...: I went to Grok to disprove Quaestor’s claim. Because jealousy also leads to unfounded claims.
Grok agreed with Quaestor: (please skip if you hate Grok)
“During her fieldwork starting in 1960, Goodall provided supplemental food (primarily bananas) to habituate the chimpanzees to human presence, making them easier to study.
This drew large numbers of chimpanzees together unnaturally, leading to heightened aggression, especially among males vying for dominance and mating rights.
The fragile hierarchy—built on grooming, alliances, and subtle power plays—began fracturing in the early 1970s.
This rift escalated into the “Gombe Chimpanzee War” (1974–1978), where Kasakela males systematically patrolled borders, ambushed, and killed all adult Kahama males, annexing their territory and females.
The war’s outcome was irreversible: the Kahama subgroup was annihilated, and the Kasakela clan expanded but retained a more militarized, territorial structure. Studies of 50+ years of Gombe data show that provisioning-induced aggression contributed to long-term shifts, including increased infanticide and cannibalism .”; 10/2/25, 3:14 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Teach a kid how to read and you won’t wont have to read’m to sleep. Give a kid a monkey toy and you’ll make’m a legend.; 10/2/25, 3:25 PM
Eva Marie said...: On the plus side: (Again I’m quoting Grok. Proceed at your own risk)
“ In the 1960s, provisioning was common in early primatology to habituate wild animals (e.g., used with mountain gorillas). Goodall, under mentor Louis Leakey’s guidance, followed this practice without foreseeing its impact.
Goodall acknowledged the provisioning’s flaws and adjusted her methods by the 1970s, reducing human interference. Her transparency about the error helped future researchers avoid similar pitfalls, shaping ethical standards in field studies.
Despite the provisioning’s disruption, the Gombe Stream Research Centre, established under Goodall’s leadership, became a cornerstone of primatology.”; 10/2/25, 3:51 PM
Eva Marie said...: I asked Grok if her conservation advocacy was a net positive or negative.
1. The JGI (Jane Goodall Institute) has protected critical chimpanzee habitats in Africa, including expanding Gombe Stream National Park’s buffer zones and supporting community-managed forests in Tanzania and Uganda.
2. Goodall’s advocacy led to stronger anti-poaching laws and international bans on the primate pet trade, notably influencing CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) regulations in the 1980s.
3. Unlike her early provisioning at Gombe, Goodall adapted her approach by the 1990s to prioritize local communities. JGI’s TACARE program (launched 1994 in Tanzania) integrates conservation with economic development, providing education, microloans, and sustainable agriculture training to reduce reliance on deforestation or poaching.; 10/2/25, 4:29 PM
RCOCEAN II said...: Ethical standards? I don't see any ethics involved in studying chimps. Giving them food is a no-no? Ridiculous.; 10/2/25, 9:32 PM
RCOCEAN II said...: Basically instead of praising Goodall for her massive contributions to understanding Chimps and her conservation efforts we get all these rig-a-moral about "real" scientist don't like her because blah de blah.

I wonder what the real reason is, other than jealously. I'm sure she was politically correct and hated trump. Maybe she wasn't a fan of transgendered chimps. LOL.; 10/2/25, 9:35 PM
Eva Marie said...: If your goal is to study behavior of chimps then your mere presence is going to affect behavior. For instance when Goodall popularized chimps it resulted in more tourism which resulted in a polio outbreak. It’s really an impossible to behave as if you weren’t there. Maybe now with drones and cameras but even so it’s difficult. Apparently her standards when she started weren’t any different from anyone else’s and when the standards for observing animals changed, not only did she change her methodology but she was transparent about the mistakes she made.; 10/3/25, 1:32 PM