From the deepest forests of Gombe to the thriving research centers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Jane Goodall's benevolent hand has reached far and wide.
Three female primatologists spoke to The Daily Cardinal about how the late Jane Goodall, famed for her tireless commitment to conservation and groundbreaking research on chimpanzees, impacted them and their work.
“I, as a young high schooler, would see her story and was absolutely blown away with the fact that she had moved to the rain forests of Tanzania with her mother as the only person with her,” Dr. Alexandra Kralick, primatologist and feminist biology researcher at the UW-Madison, said.
Kralick was an undergraduate at The George Washington University when Goodall visited and spoke about her Roots & Shoots youth action program, which equips young people with tools and ideas for community projects. Kralick then revived a local chapter of Roots & Shoots her junior year to work on orangutan conservation.
“And now I study orangutans and orangutan skeletons,” she said.
Kralick said she looks up to Goodall for her “bravery” in her science, trusting her findings and letting them change our understanding of the world.
“I certainly strive to be brave in my science,” Kralick said. “I strive to not let the fact that something has never happened before or been done before scare me off.”
In the wild, there are two types of male orangutans. Though both are reproductively capable, one lacks its secondary sex characteristics, including the cheek pads and the throat pouch.
Kralick discovered orangutans lacking their secondary sex characteristics have an adult skull but juvenile-looking long bones, and their bodies are not necessarily female-size but can range in size — a finding she said “a lot of people find very surprising.”
“It might change our understanding of these orangutans, but I'm trying to be brave and let [the results] stand, even if no one’s said it before,” she said.
Kralick said her finding came from looking at the remains of each ape as remains of an “individual” opposed to a clinical specimen, an approach inspired by Goodall.
“I think a lot of us have taken great inspiration from the way that she brings such humanity to science in a way that doesn't necessarily anthropomorphize but does bring care to each individual and their stories,” Kralick said.
Goodall has also influenced Kralick to feel deep responsibility in the moments she’s been given a platform, like at her college graduation.
“I made it about ape conservation. I talked about how everybody in the audience, if they were to recycle their old phones in their house and get a used phone [instead of] a new one, how much that would help the gorillas and a lot of people in areas of conflict in Africa, particularly in the DRC,” Kralick said. “That was me being deeply inspired by the way she uses her platform with such responsibility.”
Dr. Margaret Bryer, an assistant anthropology professor at UW-Madison, also looks up to Goodall as a scientist and an “incredible” spokesperson.
Bryer works in South Africa with baboons and in Uganda with red-tailed monkeys and mountain monkeys. Her research focuses on primate social behavior and nutrition. She looks at the nutritional strategies that these animals engage in in their environments.
“I definitely am thinking about not only patterns we see across populations, but also variation between males and females and across individuals,” Bryer said. “And so in that sense, I feel like her research very broadly informs the way I approach some of my research.”
Bryer teaches an introductory biological anthropology course at UW-Madison and said her teaching was influenced by the way Goodall emphasized that humans are a part of nature and not above it.
“I definitely take that into how I try to introduce [students] to biological anthropology, thinking about humans as primates, humans as part of nature and thinking about what that means,” Bryer said.
Before coming to Madison, Bryer was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan and had the opportunity to go to Tchimpounga Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Center in the Republic of Congo, one of two sanctuaries the Jane Goodall Institute runs.
“And that was yet another way that I expanded how much I admired what she does for chimpanzees,” Bryer said. “These are sanctuaries for chimpanzees that have been rescued from the pet trade or from [other] instances…so it was just really incredible to see how she has such wide ranging effects on chimpanzees and people.”
Another admirer of Goodall, Dr. Karen Strier is a researcher and anthropology professor at UW-Madison. Her research concerns the muriqui monkey, one of the largest species of neotropical primates, and a species about which little was known before her work began in 1983.
Strier recognized the importance of Goodall’s work in paving the way for future female scientists.
“Jane is an important person in my field. She's influenced lots of people. She showed an entry for women scientists, but I wasn't thinking about her when I decided to become a primatologist. I was following the science,” Strier told the Cardinal. “But we'll never know if my opportunities to become a woman scientist weren't enabled by her breaking through.”
Strier noted many of the students in her freshman interest group last fall said their interest in primates grew out of a love for Goodall, and she commended the English primatologist for changing the way we think about the boundaries between humans and other animals.
“Jane Goodall is a great example of a pioneer. A perfect pioneer,” Strier said.
