Jane Goodall: My Life with the Chimpanzees.

• Author: Rothenberg, Robert S.

reviewed by ROBERT S. ROTHENBERG Managing Editor, USA Today

Columbia TriStar Home Video / 60 minutes / $19.95

Since 1960, when animal behaviorist Jane Goodall, then 26 years old, arrived in Africa, she has been observing what may be humans, closest relations--chimpanzees. Working in Tanzania's Gombe National Park, she has followed their actions, interrelationships, and lifestyles. Rather than trying to impose human values on these animals, she has allowed herself to absorb their mannerisms in many cases and even demonstrates an uncanny ability to imitate their language so successfully that they react as if she were one of the band.

Goodall has concentrated on a single chimp and his descendents over more than three decades. maintaining a sense of family continuity through four generations. (Ironically, her own family life has not demonstrated the same stability. Her first marriage--to the National Geographic photographer assigned to record her story during the 1960s--ended in...