Jane Goodall Studied Chimpanzees Up Close: She Knows One When She Sees One

Jane Goodall’s Analysis Of Donald Trump’s Chimp-Like Behavior Goes Viral After Her Death
Lee Moran
Thu, October 2, 2025

Jane Goodall’s analysis of Donald Trump’s behavior as being chimp-like went viral online again following the primatologist’s death at the age of 91 on Wednesday.

Multiple social media accounts shared footage of Goodall’s 2022 interview with MSNBC’s Ari Melber in which she watched a supercut of Trump’s antics and said she saw “the same sort of behavior as a male chimpanzee will show when he is competing for dominance with another.”

“They’re upright, they swagger, they project themselves as really more large and aggressive than they may actually be in order to intimidate their rivals,” she explained.

Jane Goodall on Donald Trump: “I see the same sort of behavior as a male chimpanzee will show when he’s competing for dominance with another.” pic.twitter.com/x5iziQZtPO
— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) October 1, 2025

Goodall, who died from natural causes while on a speaking tour of the U.S., made similar comments during Trump’s first presidential campaign in 2016, when she told The Atlantic that his performances “remind me of male chimpanzees and their dominance rituals.”

“In order to impress rivals, males seeking to rise in the dominance hierarchy perform spectacular displays: stamping, slapping the ground, dragging branches, throwing rocks,” she said, adding that the “more vigorous and imaginative the display, the faster the individual is likely to rise in the hierarchy, and the longer he is likely to maintain that position.”
Related...