One of the world's most beloved and influential primatologists and conservationists has died,

Jane Goodall spent more than half a century studying chimpanzees and advocating for animal rights and environmental protection.

She died today of natural causes. And as Jeffrey Brown tells us, Goodall helped change the way that we look at animals and their behavior.

From the jungles of Tanzania to the halls of the United Nations, the natural world had no greater

advocate than Jane Goodall.

We're supposed to share the planet, and yet species are disappearing.

Ecosystems are collapsing. That's going to affect us.

Goodall was a pioneer who helped revolutionize our understanding of our closest living

animal relatives, and as a woman breaking through in a male-dominated field.

Oh, two people.

In 1960 at age 26, she began the longest-running continuous study of wild primates in the world

in what is now known as the Gombe Stream National Park of Tanzania, working with Lewis Leakey.

She had no formal scientific training, and her methods were unconventional.

But among her insights, like humans, chimps made and used tools, such as grass stems, to feed themselves,

a finding that shocked scientific consensus at the time. In 2020, marking the release of a National Geographic documentary on her life,

she told me of her earliest days in Africa. It's absolutely so vivid. And of course,

you know, it was a time when the chimpanzees were like part of my family. And the striking thing

was how like us they actually are.

When I got to Cambridge, because Louis Leakey said I had to get a degree,

I was told I'd done everything wrong.

I shouldn't give them the chimps names.

They should have had numbers.

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