Jane Goodall and Scientific Storytelling

Jane Goodall died last week.

The influential primatologist is credited with changing how we think about chimpanzees– and making scientific research more relatable and emotional.

Goodall’s research was the first to reveal that chimpanzees used tools and had complex social structures and communications.

Beyond these groundbreaking discoveries, it was how Goodall communicated her research that led to major changes in the scientific community.

Goodall gave the chimpanzees she studied names like David Greybeard, Goliath and Frodo and detailed the personalities and conflicts of different individuals.  

At the time, researchers assigned animals numbers, not names, and documented their actions with little regard for motivation or purpose.

“How naïve I was. As I had not had an undergraduate science education, I did not realize that animals were not supposed to have personalities, or to think, or to feel emotions or pain,” Goodall wrote.

Monkey Business

Goodall’s use of emotion and narrative in presenting her research underscores the power of story in compelling audiences to think differently about a topic. We care more about creatures that feel relatable, and Goodall did that with chimpanzees in profound ways.

Her style changed how scientists research and report animal behavior. Later in her career, she would use that same perspective for broader conservation causes.

But there’s a more tactical communications lesson for all industries in Goodall’s work and legacy. In bringing her research to the public, she clashed with her editor over specific content choices, including calling a specific chimpanzee “he” or “she” instead of “it” in her reports.

To change perceptions, she first had to challenge the style and convention of published work in her field.