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Jane hides for hours in henhouse to see how a hen lays an egg, unaware her family is frantically searching for her.
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Jane receives The Story of Dr. Dolittle as a gift. It entrances Jane, as does Tarzan of the Apes. She decides that someday she will travel to Africa to observe and write about animals.
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Jane starts a nature club, The Alligator Society, which includes her younger sister Judy and their friends Sally and Sue.
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Jane finishes school and passes her Higher Examinations. Her family cannot afford to send her to university, so Jane will learn secretarial skills.
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Jane begins Queen’s Secretarial College in South Kensington.
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■Jane assists her aunt Olly with clerical work at Olly’s clinic for children and adults in need of physical therapy.
■August, Jane begins clerical work at Oxford University. She’s allowed to bring her pet hamster, Hamlette, to work. -
Jane takes a job at Schofield Productions in London, choosing music for documentaries. She enjoys the city’s tremendous cultural offerings, going to concerts, taking philosophy classes and generally exploring.
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Jane meets anthropologist and paleontologist Louis S.B. Leakey
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Jane travels with Louis and Mary Leakey to Olduvai Gorge to dig for fossils. Around this time, Louis asks Jane if she is interested in studying a group of wild chimpanzees in Tanzania. Jane eagerly accepts.
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Jane and her mother Vanne arrive on the shores of Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve in western Tanzania.
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Jane observes meat-eating for the first time. Later she sees the chimpanzees hunt for meat. These observations disproved the widely held belief that chimpanzees were primarily vegetarians.
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Jane observes David Greybeard and Goliath making tools to extract termites from their mounds, a discovery that would force science to reconsider its definition of homo sapiens: “Man the Toolmaker”
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Jane marries wildlife filmmaker and photographer Hugo van Lawick at the Chelsea Old Church
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National Geographic grants funds for aluminum buildings, the first permanent structures to exist at Gombe and the beginnings of the research center.
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Jane earns her Ph.D. in Ethology from Cambridge University