Jane Goodall Remembers Tarzan Making Her Fall in Love With Wildlife: ‘I Was Very Jealous — He Married the Wrong Jane’ (Video)
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Jane Goodall‘s path to becoming the world’s foremost expert on chimpanzees started with one of the most relatable experiences of all time: having a crush on a fictional character. While promoting her new Apple TV+ series “Jane,” Goodall stopped by “The Kelly Clarkson Show” Tuesday and spilled on what led her down her groundbreaking path.
“I read ‘Tarzan of the Apes’ and fell in love with him,” Goodall said. “And I was very jealous. He married the wrong Jane.”
That book planted the seed of Goodall’s dream to eventually go to Africa and to live and write among animals. According to the renowned anthropologist, “everybody” laughed at her dreams except for her mother.
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“She said if you really want to do something like this, you’ll have to work really hard. Take advantage of every opportunity. And if you don’t give up, hopefully you’ll find a way,” Goodall said. “I’ve spread that around the world, especially in disadvantaged communities.”
When Goodall was starting out in her career, she said she would have studied any animal. Yet Dr. Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey offered her the animal in nature who is “most like us.” “It’s like fate, isn’t it? It was meant to be,” Goodall told Clarkson while sitting alongside the day’s other guest, Kate Mara.
Dr. Leakey initially hired Goodall to be his secretary. At the time, he was secretly searching for a chimpanzee researcher, and he found that researcher in Goodall. After going to London to study primate behavior, Goodall was sent to the Gombe Stream National Park in 1960 where she became the first of what would later be known as the The Trimates — three women chosen by Dr. Leakey to study primates in their natural environments. Goodall helped pave the way for women in the male-dominated world of primatology.
Over the course of her career, Goodall has spent more than 60 years studying the social and familial interactions of wild chimpanzees. Her research challenged the long-held belief that only humans used tools. She also became the only human to ever be accepted into a chimpanzee society. Her work has led to the Jane Goodall Institute, which supports the research of these animals, and she is the global leader in the effort to protect chimpanzees and their habitats.
Rather than focusing on the leader and activist she grew up to be, Apple TV+’s “Jane” celebrates the young woman Jane Goodall was. The family-friendly series follows nine-year-old Jane (Ava Louise Murchison), a budding environmentalist who’s on a quest to save endangered animals.
