She is keenly missed, but for devoting her life to reshaping how humans perceive other animals and reminding everyone that “all are deserving of our respect and our compassion and our care,” world-renowned primate expert, vegan, and trailblazing animal advocate Dr. Jane Goodall has been posthumously named PETA’s 2025 Person of the Year.
Goodall, who passed away on October 1 at the age of 91, began upending speciesist notions about animals in 1960 when she documented tool use in chimpanzees—an ability previously believed to be uniquely human. The gifted scientist—who said that her beloved childhood dog, Rusty, first taught her that “animals have personalities, minds, and feelings”—went on to become a champion for all living beings, as highlighted in a new PETA video released today.
After reading a copy of Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation—given to her by PETA Founder Ingrid Newkirk—Goodall went vegan, saying that the next time she saw meat, all she could see was “fear, pain, death.” After helping PETA expose a laboratory in Maryland that confined hundreds of chimpanzees to cramped, barren “isolette” chambers in a windowless room, Goodall became an outspoken critic of experiments on animals, calling her 1986 visit to the laboratory “the worst experience of my life.” Dedicated to teaching everyone that animals feel love, joy, pain, and fear, just as humans do—and don’t deserve to be eaten, experimented on, or exploited for entertainment—she also joined with PETA to urge UPS to stop shipping hunting trophies, called for SeaWorld’s closure, and pushed for the shutdown of the Oregon National Primate Research Center.
“Jane Goodall turned prejudices and preconceived notions about other species on their head, and along the way, helped to redefine all animals as someone, not something,” says PETA Founder Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA encourages everyone to honor Goodall’s memory by following in her compassionate footsteps and going vegan.”
To commemorate Goodall’s legacy of kindness, PETA dedicated a monkey puzzle tree and a plaque in her honor in its Bea Arthur Dog Park memorial garden beside its Norfolk, Virginia headquarters. PETA UK will also be donating copies of Animal Liberation to every library in Goodall’s hometown of Bournemouth, England.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
