Jane Goodall stressed that empathy and kindness are not enemies of scientific rigor and there always is hope.

We should always treat every single living being with the compassion and reverence they deserve.

By Marc Bekoff, Ph.D. and Carolyn Cott

On October 1, 2025, Dr. Jane Goodall passed away at the age of 91. In her 65 years of research, advocacy, and persistence, she reshaped our understanding of non-human animals and dismantled the longstanding myth of human exceptionalism and separateness.

Before she stepped into the dense canopy of Gombe Stream, Tanzania, in 1960, mainstream science treated non-human animals largely as stimulus-response, instinct-driven mechanisms. Before her work, ethology—the scientific study of animal behavior—dismissed the suggestion that animals have minds, emotions, and individuality as unscientific—the cardinal sin of anthropomorphism.

Goodall proved her critics wrong, not with hostility but with rigorous, decades-spanning evidence.

The research that shifted our lens on who we are and who other animals are

Goodall's scientific research permanently altered the artificial boundary between humans and the rest of the natural world. Her book The Chimpanzees of Gombe, published in 1986, remains a classic, and she wrote or coauthored many other books. Goodall also won many awards for her scientific and humanitarian work. Her significant contributions include, but are not limited to, these areas:

Making and using tools by nonhumans: In November 1960, she observed David Greybeard (one of her named chimpanzees) stripping leaves off a twig to "fish" for termites, shattering the long-held belief that humans alone made and used tools. People didn't believe her until she showed them a video. The........

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