Jane Goodall is considered the world expert on wild chimpanzee behaviour and social interactions. As a child, Jane was given a lifelike chimpanzee toy, Jubilee, from her father, which spurred her early love of animals. This passion took her to Kenya in 1957, making a connection with Louis Leakey, for whom she eventually began to work as a chimpanzee researcher in Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania. Leakey also raised the funds for her to attend Cambridge University to complete a PhD in Ethology, having not even completed an Undergraduate degree. Being a scientist coming from an unusual, non-scientific background, her practices and observations ventured places that they may not have done otherwise. She is famous for having named her chimpanzee subjects, instead of numbering them. She was one of the first to suggest that they had unique personalities, thoughts and emotions. Goodalls research into chimpanzees challenged many long held beliefs about them. She found that chimpanzees could design and use tools, fishing for ants with sticks and blades of grass. She also found that chimpanzees are omnivorous not vegetarian as she saw them hunt and eat colobus monkeys. Beyond this, she saw them interact with one another in brutal ways, with females occasionally killing the young of other females in their group. Her research and writing bridged the gap that was once thought to be vast, between humans and our closest relatives.
