Jane Goodall Tells Her Remarkable Life-Story, Animated
By Maria Popova
Legendary English primatologist and United Nations Messenger of Peace Jane Goodall (b. April 3, 1934) is not only an enormously influential scientist, who paved the way for our evolving understanding of animal consciousness, but also a thoroughly impressive spirit who never ceases to embody what it means to be a conscious human being. From Blank on Blank and Avi Ofer — the animator behind the fluid dynamics of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” — comes this magnificent animated adaptation of Goodall’s 2002 conversation with Science Friday host Ira Flatow, part of The Experimenters, a mini-series celebrating visionary innovators in science.
From how she turned her childhood dream into a reality to why she believes undiscovered Yeti-type species exist to how her research radically overturned the scientific establishment’s longstanding anthropoarrogance of considering humans the only animals capable of using tools, the world’s most beloved Dame-Doctor recounts her remarkable life-story and the formidable resistance she had to overcome on the way to becoming one of humanity’s most significant scientific minds.
JANE GOODALL: Of course at that time we were defined as man the toolmaker. That was supposed to differentiate us more than anything else in the rest of the animal kingdom.
IRA FLATOW: You discovered that chimps could make tools.
JANE GOODALL: David Greybeard, bless his heart, I saw him crouched over a termite mound. The whole thing putting in the grass, picking the termites up, picking up a leafy twig and stripping off the leaves which is the beginning of tool making. I couldn’t actually believe it. I had to see it about four times before I let Louis Leakey know and then I sent a telegram and he sent back his famous, “Ha ha now we must redefine ‘man,’ redefine ‘tool,’ or accept chimpanzees as humans.”
Complement with Goodall’s life and legacy in a sweet illustrated children’s book, her answers to the Proust Questionnaire, and her moving meditation on science and spirituality.
For more Blank on Blank goodness, see their animated adaptations of John Lennon and Yoko Ono on love, David Foster Wallace on ambition, and Janis Joplin on creativity and rejection.
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Published March 24, 2015
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https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/03/24/jane-goodall-science-friday-blank-on-blank/
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