Primatologist And Conservationist Jane Goodall Dead At 91

On October 1, 2025, the world said goodbye to history-making primatologist, anthropologist, conservationist, and legendary animal rights activist, Jane Goodall. She was 91 years old. According to an Instagram post from the Jane Goodall Institute, "The Jane Goodall Institute has learned this morning, Wednesday, October 1, 2025, that Dr. Jane Goodall DBE, UN Messenger of Peace and Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute has passed away due to natural causes. She was in California as part of her speaking tour in the United States. Dr. Goodall's discoveries as an ethologist revolutionized science, and she was a tireless advocate for the protection and restoration of our natural world."

Anything that could be said about Goodall's contribution to animal conservation, animal rights, and ethology (the study of animal behavior), particularly primate research, would sound grossly overstated if only it wasn't true. No single person in recent history has done more to make the public aware of our closest cousins, the great apes. And she did it all by setting off at the age of 26 into the forests of Gombe, Tanzania to live directly with chimpanzee populations, as the Jane Goodall Institute recounts.

At that time, in 1960, she worked with paleontologist Dr. Louis Leakey and his spouse, made field notes in her tent at night, was personally accepted into local chimp tribes, and has since upended our entire perspective on non-human animals. Goodall was driven by a single passion and dream to "find a way to watch free, wild animals living their own, undisturbed lives." She continued, "I wanted to learn things that no one else knew, uncover secrets through patient observation. I wanted to come as close to talking to animals as I could."

Some of Goodall's early accomplishments include the discovery that chimps make tools and engage in organized hunts for meat, which were both unknown at the time. In a Jane Goodall Institute tribute on YouTube, she said, "There isn't this sharp line dividing humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. We find animals doing things we, in our arrogance, used to think was just human."

Born Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall in 1934 in London, England, Goodall was drawn to animal life and its mysteries from a young age. As the Jane Goodall Foundation recounts, her father gave her a stuffed chimpanzee when Goodall was an infant, which she later named "Jubilee." Her future inclinations were very much on display when, at age five, she hid in a hen house for hours to learn exactly where eggs come from. 

In a testament to the power of familial support and parental encouragement, her mother didn't scold her, but merely sat down and listened as Goodall explained what she discovered. Later on, Goodall remembers her mother saying to her, "Jane, if you really want something, and if you work hard, take advantage of the opportunities, and never give up, you will somehow find a way." She spent much of her childhood happily exploring the outdoors around the family house in Bournemouth, about two hours southwest of London.  

Goodall jumped on her first chance to visit the African continent when she was invited to Kenya by a friend. She quit her job in London, moved back to Bournemouth, and got a job waitressing just to save up enough money for the boat ride at age 23. A mere five years later she was accepted into Cambridge University as a Ph.D. candidate in ethology, based on the strength of her hands-on field research alone, despite having no former, formal academic training.

Goodall remained active well into her late life, traveling as much as 300 days a year to give lectures, as the Jane Goodall Institute says. She was often seen in public with a stuffed chimp, "Mr. H," given to her by the blind magician Gary Haun and which represented the "indomitable human spirit," per CBNC. A full timeline of Goodall's 60+-year career, including her work with National Geographic and the Jane Goodall Institute, can be found on the Jane Goodall Institute website.

Goodall was also a lifelong vegetarian and opponent of the violent abuses of factory farms, both to animals and the environment. In an interview with The Conversation, she expertly stated, "Eating meat involves billions of animals in factory farms that have to be fed. Areas of environment are cleared to grow the grain, fossil fuels are used [to] get the grain to the animals, the animals to the abattoir, and the meat to the tables. Water is wasted changing vegetable to animal protein, and methane the animals produce in their digestion is one of the most intense greenhouse gases. All of this means we have to do something about continuing to eat more and more meat."

In her personal life, Goodall was married twice, first to colleague and filmmaker Hugo van Lawick, with whom she had a son, Hugo Eric Louis van Lawick, and later to Derek Bryceson, who died of cancer in 1980.