Re-Noted: Jane Goodall's Chimpanzee Notes

"I started with paper, pencil and binoculars."

Oct 13, 2025

In the early 2000s, I was lucky enough to hear Jane Goodall speak at a friend’s graduation. She greeted us in chimpanzee. I remember admiring her passion, her generosity, her fierceness. And this marvelous career of hers all began when she took paper, a pencil, and binoculars into Gombe Stream National Park. In honor of Jane Goodall’s life, please enjoy this post from the archives.

At the age of 26, Jane Goodall (b. 1934) traveled to Tanzania to fulfill her life-long dream of studying animals. With only a pencil, notebook, and binoculars, her discoveries would fundamentally reshape our understanding of what it means to be human. In the early 1960s, little was known about our closest relative, the chimpanzee. Jane’s discoveries helped revise scientific understanding. Once she witnessed chimps using tools to get at termites, scientists could no longer claim that humans were the only tool-using animal.

Goodall was as dedicated to her note-taking as she was to the chimps she studied. She innovated unique note-taking methods to support her unique study. So join me on an exploration of Jane’s note-taking habits during her time in Gombe Stream National Park.

Still from Jane, footage by Hugo van Lawick

In her memoirs, Jane notes how little technology she had with her when she first arrived in Gombe.

I started with paper, pencil and binoculars. Next I acquired a camera, a small telescope and a manual typewriter for transcribing notes.1

But this was all she needed, as she climbed the mountains and up trees, searching for the chimpanzees. Footage of Jane from this period, taken by her eventual husband, Hugo van Lawick, shows her either writing in her notebook or playing with the chimps.

From dawn until dusk, Jane recorded field notes (not unlike Rachel Carson’s). Here, Jane wrote down everything she observed: facial expressions, feeding habits, social interactions, playful behavior, mating rituals, and parenting habits. And then, under a kerosene lamp’s illumination, she would update her notes while the day’s events were fresh in her mind. Often, she recorded her disappointment at how difficult it was to find chimps to observe.

Wednesday—10th August
Woke to realize that it was going to be quite impossible to hear chimps however close they might be. The wind was quite gale force….
At 2pm I happened to see 2 chimps—miles and miles away. They were moving up a tree, but almost as I saw them, they vanished. They were right at the top of the furthest away mountain.

But there are also moments of triumphant discovery in Jane’s notes. For example, here, Jane records how a chimp used a bit of straw to get termites out of a hole:

He reached up and appeared to ‘test’ 3 or 4 pieces of straw before finally breaking off a piece about 2 1/2 feet long. Holding it in his left hand he broke it off with his mouth and returned to his place with it in his mouth. Then ran it through his fingers pulling it through his right hand with his left, then back. Then holding it in his left he bit off the required piece (near a node)…He then moistened the end of the straw with his lips, and still holding it with his left hand appeared to be pushing it downwards. In actual fact it must have been along the surface of the ground—there being no holes! As he pushed it along he moved his hand further back down the straw. Then lifted it, coated with termites & ate them all, using his lips and tongue…

Gombe Street View — Image of Jane’s early field notes

You can see some of Jane’s adventures with the chimps in this fantastic documentary:

Jane’s Character Files

Eventually, Jane would use her typewriter to further synthesize her notes. On the following page, she documents all the chimps’ activities from January 28, 1972. Note, how she has given each chimp a name (Satan, Humphrey, Flo, Flint…):

Still from “Everything Was Interesting” Duke University

Jane pioneered thinking about individual differences in chimps—rather than seeing them as a monolithic species. To do this, she created “character files” that document the actions of individual chimps. She would isolate entries for individual chimps and put them in that chimp’s file.2

File for the chimp named Fifi, still taken from “Everything Was Interesting,” Duke University

Finally, Jane created charts to document the chimps’ behavior. This work continues, decades later, by the scientists who still research chimps at Gombe. Of course, now it is all digital.

Charts of chimp behavior, from “Everything Was Interesting,” Duke University

Jane was one of our most important environmentalists. She traveled the world 300 days a year to spread her message of environmental conservation. The chimps she studied, once plentiful, are now an endangered species because of habitat loss, disease, and hunting.

But, as Jane Goodall warns us:

The greatest danger to our future is apathy.3

Noted is fueled by you. Your ❤️’s and comments inspire me. As always, I would love to know your thoughts.

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