Jane Goodall’s Contributions: Studying Chimps, Understanding Humans
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Jane Goodall appears in the television special “Miss Goodall and the World of Chimpanzees” originally broadcast on CBS, Wednesday, December 22, 1965. Location, Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania. (Photo by CBS via Getty Images) CBS via Getty Images Jane Goodall, the world-renowned ethologist and anthropologist, passed away on October 1, 2025, marking the end of an era in primatology and animal behavioral research. Best known for her groundbreaking, decades-long study of chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania, Goodall’s insights reshaped our understanding of human evolution, intelligence, and culture. What many do not fully appreciate is how her work also rippled through fields like behavioral economics and psychology. Her findings on innovation, social behavior, and culture among non-human primates forced a fundamental rethink of decision-making, cooperation, and the evolutionary roots of rationality. While Jonathan Haidt has famously said that humans are 90 percent chimp and 10 percent bee (meaning we are largely selfish and competitive but capable of hive-like cooperation), Goodall demonstrated long before that chimpanzees are not far removed from us. Sharing 98.6 percent of our DNA, chimpanzees exhibit remarkable similarities to humans in behavior, emotion, tool use, social hierarchy, and communication. She blurred the boundary between species, not by argument but through patient observation and immersion in their world. Goodall was undoubtedly one of the most influential scientists in ethology and primatology, but her impact extended far beyond. She shaped behavioral science by expanding our understanding of complex social systems, empathy, and cooperation across species. Her observations revealed that chimpanzees form lasting relationships, experience grief, pass on knowledge, and even wage war. These insights redefined what it means to be human by revealing how much of our behavior has roots in the animal kingdom. Rather than observe from a distance, Goodall lived among the chimpanzees of Gombe…
