When Dame Jane Goodall returned Wednesday to Lion Country Safari, a dear friend greeted her by making smoochy noises and stroking her white hair.

Little Mama, the Loxahatchee park’s oldest chimpanzee, was, by all accounts, thrilled to see the primatologist she first met in 1972.

Their reunion “was just as cute as you could imagine,” said Terry Wolf, Lion Country’s longtime wildlife director. “Mama focused on her immediately, made eye-to-eye contact with her, and made ‘come closer’ motions with her fingers and kissing sounds with her mouth.

“She just wanted to touch Jane’s hair and face and hands.”

The few Lion Country staff members who witnessed the scene in the chimps’ night house, some of whom were moved to tears, were certain Little Mama remembered Goodall.

Wolf hedged his bets: “I know Little Mama is very observant about people. Whether she recognizes Jane, I couldn’t say. She doesn’t share all her secrets with me.”

Wolf has known Little Mama since 1970. A diminuitive-for-a-chimp 90 pounds, she turned 77 on Valentine’s Day, making her among the oldest chimps in captivity in the United States, according to the Chimpanzee Species Survival Plan, a program administered by the American Zoo and Aquarium

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