Comprehension Passage
Comprehension Passage
Comprehension Passage
What a life!
Much of the information we have today about chimpanzees comes from the groundbreaking,
long-term research of the great conservationist, Jane Goodall.
Jane Goodall was born in London, England, on April 3, 1934. On her second birthday, her father
gave her a toy chimpanzee named Jubilee. Jubilee was named after a baby chimp in the London
Zoo, and seemed to foretell the course Janes life would take. To this day, Jubilee sits in a chair in
Janes London home. From an early age, Jane was fascinated by animals and animal stories. By
the age of 10, she was talking about going to Africa to live among the animals there. At the time,
in the early 1940s, this was a radical idea because women did not go to Africa by themselves.
As a young woman, Jane finished school in London, attended secretarial school, and then
worked for a documentary filmmaker for a while. When a school friend invited her to visit
Kenya, she worked as a waitress until she had earned the fare to travel there by boat. She was 23
years old.
Once in Kenya, she met Dr. Louis Leakey, a famous anthropologist. He was impressed with her
thorough knowledge of Africa and its wildlife, and hired her to assist him and his wife on a
fossil-hunting expedition to Olduvai Gorge. Dr. Leakey soon realized that Jane was the perfect
person to complete a study he had been planning for some time. She expressed her interest in the
idea of studying animals by living in the wild with them, rather than studying dead animals
through paleontology.
Dr. Leakey and Jane began planning a study of a group of chimpanzees who were living on the
shores of Lake Tanganyika in Kenya. At first, the British authorities would not approve their
plan. At the time, they thought it was too dangerous for a woman to live in the wilds of Africa
alone. But Janes mother, Vanne, agreed to join her so that she would not be alone. Finally, the
authorities gave Jane the clearance she needed in order to go to Africa and begin her study.
In July of 1960, Jane and her mother arrived at Gombe National Park in what was then called
Tanganyika and is now called Tanzania. At first, she was able to watch the chimpanzees only
from a great distance, using binoculars. As time passed, she was able to move her observation
point closer to them while still being hidden. One of the first significant observations that Jane
made during the study was that chimpanzees make and use tools, much like humans do, to help
them get food. It was previously thought that humans alone used tools. Also thanks to Janes
research, we now know that chimps eat meat as well as plants and fruits. In many ways, she has
helped us to see how chimpanzees and humans are similar.
Janes life has included much more than just her study of the chimps in Tanzania. She pursued a
graduate degree while still conducting her study, receiving her Ph.D. from Cambridge University
in 1965. In 1984, she received the J. Paul Getty Wildlife Conservation Prize for "helping millions
of people understand the importance of wildlife conservation to life on this planet." She has been
married twice: first to a photographer and then to the director of National Parks. She has one son.
Dr. Jane Goodall is now the worlds most renowned authority on chimpanzees, having studied
their behavior for nearly 40 years. She has published many scientific articles, has written two
books, and has won numerous awards for her groundbreaking work. The Jane Goodall Institute
for Wildlife Research, Education, and Conservation was founded in 1977 in California but
moved to the Washington, D.C., area in 1998. Its goal is to take the actions necessary to improve
the environment for all living things.
Q.1Read the statements given below and circle the correct option.
/2
1. Read the sentence from the passage But she was very patient and remained
focused on her work.
What is an opposite for the word focused?
a.
b.
c.
d.
Bothered
Tired
Disinterested
Concerned
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