Overview

• Goodall died of natural causes on October 1 at age 91.
• Her 1960 fieldwork in Tanzania documented wild chimpanzees fashioning and using tools, notably by David Greybeard, leading Louis S.B. Leakey to urge a redefinition of “tool” and “human.”
• She showed that chimpanzees hunt colobus monkeys and share meat in patterns tied to male hierarchy and to females’ sexual receptivity.
• Her long-term studies recorded territorial killings between groups, as well as infanticide and occasional cannibalism within communities.
• By naming individuals and tracking lifetimes, she revealed personality, emotion and cultural transmission, and her legacy endures through the Jane Goodall Institute’s global offices and the Roots & Shoots network of thousands of youth-led projects.