Jane Goodall began her groundbreaking chimpanzee research at Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park in 1960.
She arrived at the Gombe Stream Research Centre after being encouraged by anthropologist Louis Leakey. Her early field observations documented chimpanzees making and using tools, including stripped twigs used to extract termites from mounds. At the time, tool-making was often treated as a defining human trait, so the discovery changed scientific views of animal intelligence.
Goodall also recorded complex chimpanzee social relationships, hunting behavior, meat eating, territorial conflict, and individual personalities. She identified chimpanzees by name rather than by number, an approach that some researchers initially criticized but that helped communicate the animals’ individuality.
Gombe became one of the world’s longest-running continuous studies of wild chimpanzees. Goodall later founded the Jane Goodall Institute and became a prominent advocate for conservation, animal welfare, and environmental education.