Bad boys: Study finds aggressive bonobo males attract more mates
Humankind's two closest primate relatives are often said to embody contrasting sides of our nature: peace-loving bonobos versus violence-prone chimpanzees.
Humankind's two closest primate relatives are often said to embody contrasting sides of our nature: peace-loving bonobos versus violence-prone chimpanzees.
Plants & Animals
Apr 14, 2024
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Chimpanzees and bonobos are often thought to reflect two different sides of human nature—the conflict-ready chimpanzee versus the peaceful bonobo—but a new study published in Current Biology shows that, within their own ...
Plants & Animals
Apr 12, 2024
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A UNIGE team shows that the human brain is capable of identifying the vocalizations of certain primate species, if they are close to us and if the frequencies used are also close to our own.
Plants & Animals
Dec 19, 2023
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Researchers led by a University of California, Berkeley, comparative psychologist have found that great apes and chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, can recognize groupmates they haven't seen in over two decades—evidence ...
Plants & Animals
Dec 18, 2023
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Human society is founded on our ability to cooperate with others beyond our immediate family and social groups.
Plants & Animals
Nov 23, 2023
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A study published in Science challenges the notion that only humans are capable of forming strong and strategic cooperative relationships and sharing resources across non-family groups.
Plants & Animals
Nov 16, 2023
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Humans are an interesting mixture of altruism and competition. We work together well at times and at others we will fight to get our own way. To try to explain these conflicting tendencies, researchers have turned to the ...
Plants & Animals
Apr 4, 2023
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Endangered great apes get malaria, just like humans. New evidence from wild bonobos shows us the infection harms them, too.
Plants & Animals
Feb 23, 2023
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As humans, we share many characteristics with bonobos, who together with chimpanzees are the ape species that are most closely related to us. There are a lot of similarities in our social behavior, but also some remarkable ...
Plants & Animals
Jan 11, 2023
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Oxytocin has sometimes been called "the love hormone." The past decade of research, though, has challenged this idea, meaning that this evolutionarily ancient neuropeptide hormone is involved not only in in-group love but ...
Plants & Animals
Aug 24, 2022
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The bonobo (English pronunciation: /bəˈnoʊboʊ/ /ˈbɒnəboʊ/), Pan paniscus, previously called the pygmy chimpanzee and less often, the dwarf or gracile chimpanzee, is a great ape and one of the two species making up the genus Pan. The other species in genus Pan is Pan troglodytes, or the common chimpanzee. Although the name "chimpanzee" is sometimes used to refer to both species together, it is usually understood as referring to the common chimpanzee, while Pan paniscus is usually referred to as the bonobo.
The lifespan of a bonobo in captivity is about 40 years. The lifespan in the wild is unknown.
Bonobos are far less aggressive than chimpanzees and other apes.
The bonobo is endangered and is found in the wild only in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Along with the common chimpanzee, the bonobo is the closest extant relative to humans. Because the two species are not proficient swimmers, it is possible that the formation of the Congo River 1.5–2 million years ago led to the speciation of the bonobo. They live south of the river, and thereby were separated from the ancestors of the common chimpanzee, which live north of the river.
German anatomist Ernst Schwarz is credited with having discovered the bonobo in 1928, based on his analysis of a skull in the Tervuren museum in Belgium that previously had been thought to have belonged to a juvenile chimpanzee. Schwarz published his findings in 1929. In 1933, American anatomist Harold Coolidge offered a more detailed description of the bonobo, and elevated it to species status. The American psychologist and primatologist Robert Yerkes was also one of the first scientists to notice major differences between bonobos and chimpanzees. These were first discussed in detail in a study by Eduard Paul Tratz and Heinz Heck published in the early 1950s.
The species is distinguished by relatively long legs, pink lips, dark face and tail-tuft through adulthood, and parted long hair on its head.
Bonobos are perceived to be matriarchal: females tend to collectively dominate males by forming alliances; females use their sexuality to control males; a male's rank in the social hierarchy is determined by his mother's rank. However, there are also claims of a special role for the alpha male in group movement.[citation needed] The limited research on Bonobos in the wild was also taken to indicate that these matriarchal behaviors may be exaggerated by captivity, as well as by food provisioning by researchers in the field. This view has recently been challenged, however, by Duke University's Vanessa Woods; Woods noted in a radio interview that she had observed bonobos in a spacious forested sanctuary in the DRC exhibiting the same sort of hypersexuality under these more naturalistic conditions; and, while she acknowledges a hierarchy among males, including an "alpha male", these males are less dominant than the dominant female.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA