Jane Goodall
(aka Angela K.)

Hi, I am Jane Goodall and I was born in 1934 in London, England.

As a child I loved all living creatures. I once saw a man kill a dragonfly. I was very sad that such a pretty thing was destroyed. One day my mother gave me a present, a stuffed chimp. I named it Jubilee. She has been my traveling companion for many years.

Ever since I read the book about Dr. Doolittle I wanted to go to Africa. After I graduated from high school I studied to be a secretary but I did not make enough money to be able to pay for a ticket. When a school friend of mine invited me to visit her in Africa I worked as a waitress for a year to be able to buy my ticket. At the age of 23 I finally made it to Africa. I arrived to Nairobi, Kenya and I met Dr. Leakey who was an anthropologist at the National Museum of Natural History and I became his secretary. For months I was helping him dig up bones of prehistoric animals but I always wanted to work with living animals.

One day, Dr. Leakey offered me to move out into the wilderness to study a group of wild chimps that have never been in contact with humans before. He thought that the study of wild chimps could tell us about the habits of prehistoric people. After getting all the permits I could finally moved to the Gombe Game Reserve on Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania.

We arrived by boat. I saw tall mountains with steep slopes, narrow valleys, thick rain forest and it was very very hot. My mother accompanied me. I had a cook and some of the local natives help me too. We set up camp and I started looking for the chimps right away. I caught a glimpse of a group of chimps one of the following days. They were feeding on the fruits of a tree. When they saw me they left in silence. They kept coming back until there were no fruits in the tree. Then I did not see any chimps for months and almost gave up hope. After a year or so they became used to me and allowed me to sit around and observe them.

I named all the chimps, about 50 of them and recorded everything I saw. David Graybeard was the first chimp that allowed me to touch him, it was a wonderful experience!

One day I observed a group of chimps track down, hunt, kill and eat a red monkey. They shared the kill. Before this people thought that chimps are very peaceful and eat only fruits and vegetables.

Another day I observed David Greybeard hunched by a termite mound. He plucked a wide blade of sword grass, trimmed the edges then stuck it into the termite nest. He waited a little, then pulled the blade out with termites sticking to it and licked off the termites. When his grass got bent he got a new one, made it into a tool and used it to get termites. This was the first time a human saw a primate make and use a tool. Many people did not believe me at first.

In 1962 the National Geographic Society sent out Hugo Van Lawick, a photographer to help me document my observations. We worked together long hours, published wonderful photographs, fell in love and got married in 1964. Our son, Grub grew up with the chimps in Gombe.

After many years of observations and taking notes I earned a PhD from Cambridge University in England and I established the Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve.

Today young researchers work at the Reserve, that I still visit often. I also teach at the universities of Palo Alto in California and Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania and never miss the opportunity to talk: about my oId friends, the chimps.

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