And what we’re seeing with bonobos is a very different pattern: female dominance resolving conflict using sex no infanticide not necessarily only the males hunting and eating meat. We only learned about bonobos much later –they were only recognized as a separate species in the 1920s. We’ve been studying chimps for forty years in the wild and so we know a lot about their patriarchy and about their patterns of warfare, and that seems similar to humans. For so long our only model that we could use to guess about our evolution, and what our last common ancestor would have looked like with chimpanzees five million years ago, was a chimpanzee model. And not everybody’s been willing to accept that because it is so rare in mammals to see patterns of female dominance. And so they have their make love not war reputation because of the kind of repertoire they have and the context in which they use it.ĬURWOOD: So this is really the matriarchal society? ![]() So when food is being put out for the bonobos, or when they encounter a fruit tree in the wild, or just after aggression, they resolve that aggression using sex. You see sexual interactions on almost any day that you’re out watching the bonobos, and they seem to be particularly concentrated during times when there might otherwise be tension. ![]() There are copulations that don’t occur around the time of ovulation, so they have what we call “continuous receptivity.” They can have sex anytime. There are same-sex copulations between females and also between males. PARISH: Bonobos have a reputation as the make love not war species, and they have that reputation because they have a very elaborate repertoire of sexual behavior that seems very similar to what we see in humans. Tell me more about how the bonobo interacts socially compared to chimps or even compared to, you know, us, the great ape people. But in bonobos you tend to see a lot more affiliative interactions and a lot more sexual interactions going on throughout the course of the day.ĬURWOOD: Now, the bonobo have gotten quite a bit of interest because of their, well, shall we put it, their rather interesting social life.ĬURWOOD: And you’ve been an observer of that for years. So in chimpanzees you’ll see a lot of dominance displays throughout the day and a fair amount of aggression going on, as well as grooming and peaceful interactions. So if you’ve heard chimps and then you heard bonobos, any layperson can clearly hear the difference between the two.īut the bigger differences are in their behavioral patterns. For instance, their vocalizations are much higher pitched. PARISH: If you saw one you might think that they’re a chimpanzee because they’re very closely related to chimpanzees, and yet there are some differences that become apparent if you watch them for a day. Thanks for having me.ĬURWOOD: Can you start by just telling us a little bit about the bonobo? What do they look like? Where do they live? What do they eat? That sort of thing. She teaches anthropology and gender studies at the University of Southern California and is a scientific advisor to the Bonobo Conservation Initiative. So, the Bonobo Conservation Initiative is creating a refuge for them called the Bonobo Peace Forest. The only place where they are found in nature is a small wedge of forest south of the Congo River in Africa and their numbers have been falling in the face of civil unrest, logging, and hunting. ![]() Now, the bonobo is as genetically similar to humans as the chimpanzee but unlike chimps these relatively peaceful creatures live in matriarchal societies and use sex to deal with competition and anger. CURWOOD: It’s Living On Earth, I’m Steve Curwood.ĬURWOOD: That's a bonobo ape summoning the rest of the gang together.
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