Dr. Jane Goodall, the world’s foremost expert on chimpanzees, has died at the age of 91.
Known as a renowned conservationist and animal welfare advocate, Goodall spent years studying chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park.
“Dr. Goodall’s discoveries as an ethologist revolutionized science, and she was a tireless advocate for the protection and restoration of our natural world,” her institute posted on social media Wednesday.
She died of natural causes while in California on a speaking tour.
She leaves behind her son, Hugo, and three grandchildren.
According to the Jane Goodall Institute, which she founded in 1977, she “went into the forest to study the remarkable lives of chimpanzees—and she came out of the forest to save them.”
Chimpanzees seemed to accept Goodall as one of their own, and the public was fascinated.
“They kiss, embrace, hold hands, pat one another on the back. They show love and compassion, and they also show violence and have a kind of primitive warfare,” Goodall said. “It’s because the chimpanzees are so like us that we can then say, ‘What makes us different? What makes us unique?’ ”
She told The Associated Press in 2021, “Out there in nature by myself, when you’re alone, you can become part of nature and your humanity doesn’t get in the way,” she told The Associated Press in 2021. “It’s almost like an out-of-body experience when suddenly you hear different sounds and you smell different smells and you’re actually part of this amazing tapestry of life.”
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