Explained: Jane Goodall and the Barbie doll modelled on her | Explained News,The Indian Express

Pioneering ethologist and environmental activist Jane Goodall now has a Barbie doll modelled after her. Who is Goodall, and how has she responded to the Barbie?

Pioneering ethologist and environmental activist Jane Goodall now has a Barbie doll modelled after her. Dressed in field attire and equipped with a pair of binoculars and notebook, the Barbie launched as part of the “Inspiring Women” series is accompanied by Goodall’s most well-known research subject, David Graybeard, a grey-chinned chimpanzee who she first began interacting with after she went to Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania in 1960. Credited with noticing human-like behaviours amongst chimpanzees, Goodall is also the UN Messenger of Peace and honorary member of the World Future Council.

An English primatologist and anthropologist, Goodall is considered one of the world’s foremost experts on chimpanzees. Drawn to animals since childhood, in the 1960, without any academic training in the area, Goodall travelled to explore the forests of Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania to observe chimpanzees in the wild. She named them instead of following the norm of numbering them, and made numerous observations that questioned prevalent beliefs about the apes, asserting that chimpanzees too were capable of social interactions.

In Public Service Broadcasting’s 1996 nature programme Jane Goodall’s Wild Chimpanzees, she noted it wasn’t only humans who have personalities and are capable of rational thought and emotions like joy and sorrow.

In 1962, without a bachelor’s degree, she was allowed to enroll at the University of Cambridge to pursue a PhD in ethology. She completed her thesis in 1966 on the subject Behaviour of free-living chimpanzees, that included observations made during her initial study at the Gombe Reserve. The discoveries drastically changed the way the animals were studied and revealed close evolutionary relationship between chimpanzees and humans.

In 1977, she founded the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI), a global wildlife and environment conservation organisation that supports wildlife research and education, and protects chimpanzees and other primates by supporting sanctuaries and law enforcement efforts.

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