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4 weeks ago
Wed, October 1, 2025 at 7:20 PM UTC
2 min read
Jane Goodall at Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania, in 1965. (CBS via Getty Images file)
Jane Goodall, the legendary animal rights activist who was made famous for her work with chimpanzees, died from natural causes at age 91, the Jane Goodall Institute announced Wednesday.
She was in California at the time of her death, on a speaking tour across the U.S.
Goodall began studying primates on a trip to Tanzania in the 1960s when she was 26, publishing some of the first observations of the animals and their complex social structures in scientific journals.
She immersed herself in the animals’ daily lives, documenting their activities and way of living. She later shared her observations with the public in a way that transformed the understanding of not only the chimps, but the emotional and social complexity of all animals.
She dedicated her life to species conservation and immersed herself in their habitats to understand them on a deeper level.
Take a look at a verdant and curious life, in photos.
Jane Goodall appears in the television special "Miss Goodall and the World of Chimpanzees" in Tanzania in 1965. (CBS via Getty Images)
Jane Goodall and husband Hugo van Lawick in 1974. (AP file)
Jane Goodall, her son and husband appear on 'Jane Goodall and the World of Animal Behavior: The Lions of the Serengeti' in 1976. (ABC via Getty Images file)
Jane Goodall and her son in 1973. (Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images file)
Jane Goodall studies the behavior of a chimpanzee during her research in 1987 in Tanzania. (Penelope Breese / Getty Images file)
Jane Goodall in New York City in 2003. (David S. Holloway / Getty Imagesfile)
Jane Goodall kisses Pola, a 14-month-old chimpanzee from the Budapest Zoo. Goodall symbolically adopted Pola in 2004. (Bela Szandelszky / AP file)
Jane Goodall and Leonardo DiCaprio at the General Assembly before the United Nations Peace Bell Ceremony in 2014. (Giles Clarke / Getty Images file)
Jane Goodall plays with Bahati, a 3-year-old female chimpanzee, at the Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary, north of Nairobi, in 1997. (Jean-Marc Bouju / AP file)
Jane Goodall is awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Joe Biden in 2025. (Tom Brenner / Getty Images file)
Jane Goodall at the chimpanzee enclosure at Taronga Zoo in Sydney in 2014. (Jeremy Piper / Newspix via Getty Images file)
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
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