A tireless advocate for the protection of our natural world

Conservationist who taught us all we know about our cousins

- BY SAM ELLIOT-GIBBS

NO human has ever known so much about our closest living cousins than Dr Jane Goodall, who has died at the age of 91.

The zoologist was the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, having devoted most of her career to studying them in the wild.

In lifting the lid on the apes' complex social structures and relationships, she paired a brilliant scientist's brain with a childlike curiosity, and formed a unique bond with the animals she studied.

Her favourite childhood toy was a chimpanzee named Jubilee, given to Jane when she was one by her father Mortimer Morris-Goodall.

Nine decades later, Jubilee still sits in her London home. But Jane, who was in Los Angeles on a speaking tour of the USA, will not return.

Her lasting legacy will be the Jane Goodall Institute, which she founded in 1977 to raise awareness of the challenges facing primates and to protect their habitats.