She had prosopagnosia, an early childhood neurological condition that meant she didn’t recognize faces. She relied on voice, posture, clothing style, hair length, name tags and attitude to identify people.
As a little girl, her first crush was on Tarzan.
When she was 26, she boarded an English freighter bound for Tanganyika, where she stayed for six decades befriending shy chimpanzees. She watched them rain dance, give birth, fight, soothe and work it all out.
The tools of her trade were a notebook, binoculars, and khakis. She noticed a chimpanzee pull a stick from a tree and stick it in an ant pile. Ants covered the stick, and the chimpanzee licked them off. She proved that animals besides us made tools, and that chimpanzees ate meat.
Jane Goodall died while on tour last week. She spent 91 years doing exactly what she wanted to do. She inspired generations by listening, thinking, wondering and writing. She learned to live by watching others do it – just not other people.
She did more than explain chimpanzees to us, she explained us to us.