Bonobos are pygmy chimpanzees.
We share some 98% of our genes with chimps. We share more with bonobos.
To illustrate: human is to bonobo as dog is to fox.
I would have used rats and mice, but those two aren't quite close enough.
Matata and Kenzi are the best evidence we have for language in animals.
In the 1980s researcher Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and a few colleagues attempted to teach English to a bonobo named Matata. To overstep limitations in the bonobo's vocal cords in producing humanlike speech, Rumbaugh devised a special computer keyboard. The keys had pictures; pressing the keys generated a computerized voice speaking the name of the object depicted. Say "strawberry" to Matata, she presses the strawberry key. Simple association — there are children's toys exactly like this.
After two years and 30,000 research trials, Matata learned only six keys.
Matata failed to show that bonobos could learn English. But the experiment had an unexpected outcome. Matata's son Kanzi had been watching the research trials.
Rumbaugh's team gave up teaching English to Matata. The day they separated her from Kanzi, the younger bonobo approached the modified keyboard and started to express himself and make requests.
120 times on the first day.
The genesis of humans and bonobos stopped running together about six million years ago.
The long-gone ape Pan Prior evolved in two directions. Chimps and bonobos went one way; Australopithecines went another. Australopithecines fragmented into the homo lineage from which we emerged, planted seeds, and built skyscrapers.
Meanwhile Kanzi learned the meaning of strawberries.
"Ape" and "Monkey" are easily confused.
Apes do not have tails; apes have larger brains; apes have flexible shoulders. Apes have more complex nervous systems and are more soulful child-bearers. Apes and monkeys separated on the evolutionary coil some 25 million years ago. Apes are more "sophisticated" than monkeys in much the same way that humans are more sophisticated than other apes.
Science's discovery of the bonobo came in 1929, lagging some three hundred years behind that of the chimp. While all apes are confined to the equatorial regions in Africa and Southeast Asia, bonobos are further restricted to a shrinking region of forests bordering the left bank of the Congo. Even there they are sparodic. Since chimps hail from the right bank, chimps and bonobos are sometimes classified as 'right-bank' and 'left-bank' chimpanzees.
Bonobos are smaller than chimps, topping out at around 100 pounds. A healthy male chimp will exceed 150. Bonobos are slighter of build and walk upright more easily. They have hairier faces.
These little apes are omnivorous, feasting on fruits, seeds, vegetables, and nuts. They eat meat opportunistically, preying on small vertebrates in the wild. But unlike chimps, they don't form hunting parties. Kept in captivity they're strictly herbivoristic. They're the chimp's mild-mannered younger sister.
Bonobos have sex constantly.
As Frans de Waal says eloquently in his tome Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape:
The chimpanzee resolves sexual issues with power; the bonobo resolves power issues with sex.
Chimps are violent and scary. Bonobos are oversexed and extremely amicable.
Tension dissipates with a quick shagging. Heterosexual, homosexual. Bonobos are one of few species on this planet that mate for purposes other than procreation.
On average, female bonobos are eight times more receptive to mating than chimps. The ratio of males to females is equal. There is little competition for mates and fighting is very rare. Female genitalia is positioned frontally, facilitating same-sex coupling. Women are not the only mammals that experience orgasm.
Bonobo society is gynocentric. Run by females.
Al Bundy spins in his rerunned grave.
Ignorantly.
When the Allies bombed Hellabrun during the Second World War each and every one of the bonobos in a nearby zoo died of fright.
Watch bonobos in the zoo hugging, kissing, drawing sweetwater out of tiny rock pits with crushed reeds: that's us six million years ago.
Male bonobos display strength by running briefly and dragging handfuls of small branches.
Bonobos communicate non-verbally through facial expressions and hand gestures. They pout, smile, and grimace. You'll appreciate the complexity of this next time you're talking to someone at a party.
Bonobos live fifty to sixty years in captivity. Sexual maturity approaches at age ten or so. Gestation period is around 240 days — eight months. Communities grow as large as several hundred, broken into cluters of several individuals who forage together. While bonobo society is erotic, it is not without hierarchy. Males earn rank exclusively from their mothers, who also protect them from other males their entire lives. Older females tend to rank higher.
In Africa there was a long-standing taboo against eating bonobos.
War in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has driven people into the forest, where the alternative to death is the consumption of bushmeat.
Five of six bonobo research groups in the area have disappeared.
To learn about bonobo conservation:
2003 Bonobo Newsletter
Pan-African Sanctuary Alliance
Lukuru Wildlife Research Project
Image of Kanzi mulling over a computer
Sources
Calvin, William. "Bonobo."
http://williamcalvin.com/teaching/bonobo.htm
Colombus Zoo and Aquarium
http://www.colszoo.org/animalareas/aforest/bonobo.html
de Waal, Frans. "Bonobo Sex and Society: The behavior of a close relative challenges assumptions about male supremacy in human evolution."
http://www.primates.com/bonobos/bonobosexsoc.html
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo
Hickerson, Kevin. "Bonobo Apes."
http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~kevinh/bonobo.html
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