They looked strangely human with their upright, bipedal gait long, slim arms and legs slender neck and a body whose proportions resemble ours more than they do a chimp's. Both males and females strode about the enclosure picking up fruit and mingling with their friends. But the male bonobos I saw in the zoo, unlike the chimps, did not try to dominate the females. Bonobos are smaller than chimps, all right-a male weighs about 85 to 95 pounds and a female, 65 to 85 pounds a male chimpanzee can weigh as much as 135 pounds. One of their nicknames is pygmy chimp, and I had expected to see a smaller version of the chimpanzee, with the same swagger and strut in the males and timorous fealty in the females. It was at Germany's Frankfurt Zoo some years ago that I first got hooked on bonobos. Maybe it shouldn't be surprising, but this close relative of ours turns out to be far more complicated than people realized. The alpha male's bellicose display was just the first of several signs I would see over the next ten days that not all is peace and love in Bonoboland. Moments later, the bonobos are gone, swinging and leaping from branch to branch, led across the rain forest canopy by the big male.īecause so much of what's known about these animals has been based on observing them in captivity or in other unnatural settings, even my first encounter with them in the wild was revelatory. Through binoculars, I see many dark eyes peering down at me. The male screams a warning to the other bonobos, and they respond with shrill cries. "He's angry we're here," Leonard says softly.
Instead, dung splatters the forest floor, flung at us by the alpha male. No other great apes-a group that includes eastern gorillas, western gorillas, Bornean orangutans, Sumatran orangutans, chimps and, according to modern taxonomists, human beings-indulge themselves with such abandon.īut when these bonobos awaken, their signature behavior is nowhere in evidence. While chimpanzees and gorillas often settle disputes by fierce, sometimes deadly fighting, bonobos commonly make peace by engaging in feverish orgies in which males have intercourse with females and other males, and females with other females. They are known to be gregarious, exceptionally intelligent primates, and the only apes whose society is said to be matriarchal.and orgiastic: they have sexual interactions several times a day and with a variety of partners. I try to ignore the fiery bites of ants crawling over my arms and legs as we wait for the bonobos to awaken. We creep toward the tree and sit beneath it. Keep quiet, because it means there are bonobos all around us." High above I see a large, dark, hairy creature propped between the trunk and bough of a sturdy hardwood. Most estimates put the number of bonobos left in the wild at less than 20,000.Īs the narrow trail plunges into a gloomy, rain-soaked tunnel through tall trees, Leonard, the head tracker, picks up a fallen leaf and brings it to his nose. The last of the great apes to be discovered, it could be the first to become extinct in the wild: in the past few decades, bonobo habitat has been overrun by soldiers, and the apes have been slaughtered for food. Along with the chimpanzee, it's our closest relative, with whom we share almost 99 percent of our genes.
Led by five trackers from the Mongandu tribe, I tread through a remote rain forest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the trail of the bonobo, one of the world's most astonishing creatures.
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