(source)

Jane Goodall (3 Apr 1934 - ) English primatologist, anthropologist and ethnologist who spent 45 years studying chimpanzee social behaviour. She founded the Jane Goodall Institute. Short biography of Jane Goodall >>

Jane Goodall
What Separates Us From Chimpanzees?

In a TED talk by Jane Goodall (published in 2007), the renowned primatologist relates that after 40 years of studies, it has been found there is not a sharp line that divides humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. She calls it a very “wuzzy line, and it’s getting wuzzier all the time” as more behaviours of animals are found that compare to those of humans. These include the use of tools, non-verbal communication, and social structures. Our language may be more sophisticated, but chimpanzees exhibit intelligence, personality, self-recognition and a sense of humour. Goodall expresses her concern for the effect of deforestation, growth of human settlement, hunting for bush meat and oil extraction, all reducing the range and the population of chimpanzees. Humans should feel shame, she states, and give these sentient animals respect after all we have learned about them.

Goodall reflects on coming from the Ecuadorian rainforest, where indigenous people resist oil companies to preserve their forests while adopting selected modern tools like solar power and laptops. She connects this with her life’s work: bringing the voice of the animal kingdom into human discussions. She describes how technology has advanced research on chimpanzees, from DNA profiling to satellite imagery, revealing complex cognition and cultural behaviors once thought uniquely human—such as toolmaking, communication, cooperation, and even compassion.

Chimpanzees, however, face rapid decline due to deforestation, logging, and the unsustainable bush-meat trade, which also erodes human cultures. She warns of the interconnected crises of poverty, population growth, and environmental destruction, stressing that humans—despite their knowledge—are damaging the planet and themselves through pollution and waste.

To counter despair, she shares her program Roots and Shoots, founded in 1991, which empowers young people worldwide to take local action for communities, animals, and the environment. She emphasizes that every individual makes a difference and that solutions lie in knowledge, persistence, compassion, and nonviolence. Closing on a note of hope, she highlights the resilience of nature, the human spirit, and the possibility of change if people consciously reduce their ecological footprints and choose ethical actions.

(source)

(source)

click for more about this quote and a larger picture • 500px • 800px

(source)

Nature bears long with those who wrong her. She is patient under abuse. But when abuse has gone too far, when the time of reckoning finally comes, she is equally slow to be appeased and to turn away her wrath. (1882) -- Nathaniel Egleston, who was writing then about deforestation, but speaks equally well about the danger of climate change today.

Carl Sagan: In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) ...(more by Sagan)

Albert Einstein: I used to wonder how it comes about that the electron is negative. Negative-positive—these are perfectly symmetric in physics. There is no reason whatever to prefer one to the other. Then why is the electron negative? I thought about this for a long time and at last all I could think was “It won the fight!” ...(more by Einstein)

Richard Feynman: It is the facts that matter, not the proofs. Physics can progress without the proofs, but we can't go on without the facts ... if the facts are right, then the proofs are a matter of playing around with the algebra correctly. ...(more by Feynman)

Quotations by: • Albert Einstein • Isaac Newton • Lord Kelvin • Charles Darwin • Srinivasa Ramanujan • Carl Sagan • Florence Nightingale • Thomas Edison • Aristotle • Marie Curie • Benjamin Franklin • Winston Churchill • Galileo Galilei • Sigmund Freud • Robert Bunsen • Louis Pasteur • Theodore Roosevelt • Abraham Lincoln • Ronald Reagan • Leonardo DaVinci • Michio Kaku • Karl Popper • Johann Goethe • Robert Oppenheimer • Charles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about: • Atomic  Bomb • Biology • Chemistry • Deforestation • Engineering • Anatomy • Astronomy • Bacteria • Biochemistry • Botany • Conservation • Dinosaur • Environment • Fractal • Genetics • Geology • History of Science • Invention • Jupiter • Knowledge • Love • Mathematics • Measurement • Medicine • Natural Resource • Organic Chemistry • Physics • Physician • Quantum Theory • Research • Science and Art • Teacher • Technology • Universe • Volcano • Virus • Wind Power • Women Scientists • X-Rays • Youth • Zoology  ... (more topics)