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Dr. Jane Goodall

Born: 1934

Dr. Jane Goodall is the world's leading authority on chimpanzees. At the age of 23, determined to learn about African wildlife, she left her native England for East Africa, where she hunted for fossils with Louis and Mary Leakey. Three years later, accompanied only by her mother, she began to study chimpanzees at Gombe National Park in Tanzania. The chimpanzees at Gombe gradually accepted Goodall, and, with patient observations, she learned much about them. Before Goodall's work no one knew just how similarly chimpanzees and humans behave-for example, that chimpanzees make and use tools, or that they eat meat. More than 40 years later, Goodall continues her Gombe work, which is now the longest field study of any wild animal species.


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