Surprising Insights
Through the years Goodall’s work continued to yield surprising insights, such as the unsettling discovery that chimpanzees engage in primitive and brutal warfare. In early 1974, a "four-year war" began at Gombe, the first record of long-term "warfare" in nonhuman primates. Members of the Kasekela group systematically annihilated members of the "Kahama" splinter group. Goodall would also chart surprising courtship patterns in which males force females into consortships in remote spots for days or even months. And she and her field staff in 1987 would observe adolescent Spindle "adopt" three-year-old orphan Mel, even though the infant was not a close relative.
The Gombe Stream Research Centre, which Goodall established in 1965, eventually became a training ground for students interested in studying primates. Today it hosts a skilled team of researchers and field assistants, including many Tanzanians.
Women primatologists owe a debt to Goodall. Said Gilbert Grosvenor, chairman of the National Geographic Society: "Jane Goodall's trail-blazing path for other women primatologists is arguably her greatest legacy. During the last third of the twentieth century, Dian Fossey, Birute Galdikas, Cheryl Knott, Penny Patterson, and many more women have followed her. Indeed, women now dominate long-term primate behavioral studies worldwide."
Perhaps most significantly, Goodall's work opened a window onto the world of chimpanzees for a public with a strong curiosity about its closest genetic relatives. Her books, particularly In the Shadow of Man and Through a Window, brought the world into a first-name basis with the chimpanzees of Gombe. Gombe's greatest mother, Flo, and her offspring became internationally known. When homely old Flo died in 1972, the London Times printed an obituary.
During her first months at Gombe National Park in Tanzania, Jane Goodall spent many hours searching the Gombe hills with binoculars looking for chimpanzees. © Jane Goodall Institute