Singing in the rain — how Jane Goodall and her chimpanzees changed our world

The primatologist and scientists like her illuminate our minds — their vision alters how we look at life Did you know, dear reader, it’s not just you and me — someone else who likes dancing in the rain is the chimpanzee. So described Jane Goodall, on her first anthropological fieldtrip to the Gombe Valley, situated by the mighty Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania. Writing in 1960, amidst cavernous forest canopies and malarial swamps, accompanied by her Welsh mother and African cook, the 26-year-old observed how chimpanzees, who were considered devoid of feelings except the most basic, responded to downpours, trilling happily, drumming their feet on the ground and swaying as the rain fell.

This was joy, noted Goodall, who also wrote of how chimpanzees made tools with careful deliberation,