Jane Goodall is a biologist who was born in war-torn London on April 3, 1934. Not long after Jane's arrival, the Goodall family moved to a town along the southern coast of England, called Bournemouth. On her second birthday, Jane's father gave her a stuffed chimpanzee named Jubilee after a baby chimp that was born at the London Zoo. The toy was quite life-like thus causing concern among her father's friends who thought it would perhaps frighten the toddler. Jane, however, fell in love with the gift, and now, sixty-four years later, Jubilee sits in her won chair in Goodall's England home.
Growing up, Jane was always fascinated by wildlife. She knew she wanted to study living animals since before she can remember. When she was four, living on a farm helping to collect chicken eggs, Jane became curious as to where there was a hole large enough in the hen for an egg to fit through. After no one gave her a satisfactory answer, Jane hid out in a cramped henhouse for over four hours to learn the answer. When she came running back to the house to share her exciting new knowledge, her mother did not scold her even though she had called the police. Instead, Jane's mother sat with her in the grass and listened to the enthusiastic child explain what she had discovered.
Much of Jane's motivation in life, as well as inspiration for her studies, came from such discoveries. She explains the feeling she will never forget, as she held for the first time, a bone she, herself, had dug up at Olduavai Gorge. It was a cone of a creature that had walked the earth millions of years ago, and as she held it, "a felling of awe crept over (her)." She thought, "Once this creature stood here, It was alive, had flesh and hair, it had its own smell. It could feel hunger and thirst and pain. It could enjoy the morning sun." Reading these thoughts, it is no wonder how her imagination is able to inspire her, as it tends to inspire anyone who encounters it.
