Jane Goodall and the Payoff of Patient Observation
Only an introvert like Jane Goodall could have sat immobile all day every day for months waiting for a nearby troupe of chimpanzees to accept her presence up close.
From her early years in England, pioneering chimpanzee expert and environmental activist Jane Goodall (1934-2025) nourished a love of animals and a desire to see them in the wild in Africa. She spent much solitary time outdoors and also loved to read and write poetry. At age 23, her childhood wish came true when a former schoolmate invited her to visit a farm her parents had just bought in Kenya. There she met archaeologist Louis Leakey, whom she quietly impressed with her self-acquired knowledge about Africa and animals.
Although Goodall had no academic credentials, Leakey felt she was well-suited to study wild chimpanzees, who interested him because of their close genetic ties to humans. He obtained funding for this project from an Illinois entrepreneur, and off Goodall went into the field with just her intrepid mother and a local man who served as a cook and guard.
At first, the chimps ran away whenever they spotted her. For months she sat silently on a hilltop, making herself small and unobtrusive, so that the animals would become accustomed to her as an unintimidating presence. Gradually she moved closer to them, until one day a chimp whom she privately called David Greybeard took a banana directly from her hand. From then on, she related to them as a trusted neighbor, getting to know each creature’s individual temperament and carefully observing interactions among the group.
Received wisdom at the time had it that tool making was an ability that distinguished humans from all the rest of the animal kingdom. However, Goodall saw her friend David Greybeard and other chimps use sticks as tools in fishing termites out of their mound. This was a groundbreaking discovery, later confirmed by others. She also observed a complete range of emotions expressed by the chimps among one another, including tenderness, solidarity, irritation, gaiety and aggression. Again this went against the prevailing view of such animals as driven only by instincts.
These observations were possible only because with introverted patience and unthreatening stillness she had insinuated herself into their world. The natural interactions of the chimps in their home environment didn’t show up clearly in manmade settings like a lab or a zoo. Just as important was her ability to trust and report precisely what she saw rather than what others more educated than her might have believed. Personally, she thrived out in the bush, lamenting the noise and chaos when she returned to cities and so-called civilization. Alone, she found spiritual sustenance and peace in nature.
“The longer I spent on my own, the more I became one with the magic forest that was now my home. Inanimate objects developed their own identities and, like my favorite saint, Francis of Assisi, I named them and greeted them as friends. ‘Good morning, Peak,’ I would say as I arrived there each morning; ‘Hello, Stream,’ when I collected my water; ‘Oh, Wind, for Heaven’s sake, calm down’ as it howled overhead, ruining my chance of locating the chimps. In particular I became intensely aware of the being-ness of trees. The feel of rough sun-warmed bark of an ancient forest giant, or the cool, smooth skin of a young and eager sapling, gave me a strange, intuitive sense of the sap as it was sucked up by unseen roots and drawn up to the very tips of the branches, high overhead. I loved to sit in the forest when it was raining, and to hear the pattering of the drops on the leaves and feel utterly enclosed in a dim twilight world of greens and browns and soft gray air.”
Later in life, Goodall became a noted public speaker, advocating for conservation or restoration of wild habitats and for ethical treatment of animals. Like Susan B. Anthony and Eleanor Roosevelt, she gave lectures around the world even though this went against her temperament. Her causes and knowing she could have an impact on others’ thinking mattered so much to her. In her book Reason for Hope, she noted that lecturing to crowds depleted her, but having emotional contact with individuals in the audience after her talk would begin to fill her energy bank back up. Many introverts with a lesser global profile would find that pattern familiar.