From Tarzan to Tanzania – how a dream of living with animals changed primatology

Perhaps the world’s best-known primatologist, Jane Goodall was an unlikely candidate for international fame when, at the request of her mentor Louis Leakey, she traveled to Tanzania to live among chimpanzees before she had earned even an undergraduate degree. Unexpectedly, her discovery that chimps craft and use tools would forever change how scientists view not only our closest relatives, but our own species as well. Fancifully animated from a 2002 interview with Science Friday’s Ira Flatow, this piece finds Goodall discussing everything from the possible existence of yetis to her uneasy relationship with traditional academia.