In the summer of 1960 Jane Goodall arrived in Tanzania on Lake
Tanganyika's eastern shore. This marked the beginning of what has
become the longest ever continuous field study of animals in their
natural habitat. Five years later, she earned a Phd. in ethology at
Cambridge University and then returned to Tanzania to establish the
Gombe Stream Research Centre.
After 40 consecutive years of research, Dr Goodall and her team
continue to contribute significant findings on shimpanzee behaviour
and ecology. Her methodology and scientic discoveries revolutionized
the field of primatology. Dr. Goodall distinguished between individual
chimpanzee personalities, giving them names instead of numbers.
She also chroicled chimpanzees making and using tools, a skill once
believed exclusive to humans. To provide on going support for
chimpanzee research, Dr Goodall founded the Jane Goodall Institute
for youth.
Gombe Stream Research Centre
In 1960, Jane Goodall arrived at the Gombe Stream Reserve in what was
then Tanganyika to study chimpanzees. In 40 years of contnual observation,
Dr Goodall and her fellow researchers have amassed and extensive collection
of behavioural and demographic data on the chimpanzees of three
communities.
In her early years at Gombe, Dr. Goodall found that chimpanzees have vividly
divers persononalities and share behaviours and emotions once thought
to be unique to human beings. Today, the long therm monitoring of the
chimpanzees at Gombe is carried out by a highly-skilled team of Tanzanian
field assistants and students from the U.S. and Europe. The unprecedented
study continues to yield discoveries that are changing the way we view not
only our closest living relatives in the animal kingdom, but ourselves as well.
