They look like pygmy chimpanzees, but they are a totally different species. They live in a happy and eternal orgy, which they use as a kind of social lubricant to resolve their conflicts based on sex, without distinction of rank or age. Thebonobos, Pan paniscusThey live in the Congolese jungles and could give us great lessons in tolerance towards our fellow men. Brian Hare, one of the few experts on these apes in the world, works to meet and protect the few bonobos that still survive.
-I confess my ignorance about these animals. Does this happen to many people?
-Nobody knows anything about bonobos. Even the most cultured people are surprised when they hear about them for the first time. There are three reasons that explain this ignorance; On the one hand, they were discovered by chance in 1933, when a European anthropologist realized that the skull he was holding in his hands was not that of a young chimpanzee, as was believed, but that of a totally different species. The second reason is that they inhabit only one country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They live concentrated within an incredibly dense jungle, where there is no infrastructure, no roads, or anything at all. It is a jungle in the heart of a nation that has been at war for more than 60 years. Finally, the number of bonobos is very low if we compare it with the millions of chimpanzees that exist in more than twenty countries. Bonobos are very few: they would not fill a stadium.
“Is that why there hasn’t been a Dian Fossey of the bonobos?”
-Exactly. For this reason and because the anthropologist Louis Leakey – the one who sent Jane Goodall to work with chimpanzees, Dian Fossey with gorillas and Biruté Galdikas with orangutans – did not know bonobos. The study of these primates is less advanced than that of the other three species. The first to do field research were the Japanese in the 1970s; but these studies were only observational. Only a few centers in the world carry out experimental work with bonobos; I am not talking about anything invasive, but about putting them to play and posing problems to see how they respond. There is one in the US, another in Leipzig (Germany), with which I work, and the third is our sanctuary of Lola Ya, outside Kinshasa. There are 30 hectares of land that includes the mansion where the former dictator Mobutu Sese Seko used to spend his weekends.
-Describe these creatures.
-They are small, with thin, black faces and intensely pink lips. They tend to walk long distances in a bipedal position. I love chimpanzees very much because I have worked with them, but I adore bonobos. A chimpanzee is that boy at school that one wanted to be; the bonobo is the one you always wanted to be with. They’re so funny, they look you straight in the eye and … yeah, I know I shouldn’t humanize them, but they do manage to convince you that you mean something to them.
-Some studies say that bonobos are evolutionarily superior to chimpanzees.
-Yes, because they are more tolerant with each other. I study how they relate to each other regardless of social rank, hierarchy, or sex. The ultimate goal is to find the roots of our own coexistence. If we want to know human evolution, we need to work with bonobos because our ancestor was probably very similar to theirs. Harvard University biologist Richard Wrangham studies primates in the wild. According to him, chimpanzees are like gangsters in cities who don’t get along with each other. They go to neighboring tribes to kill young males, just like humans do when we wage war. Wrangham realized that bonobos are not like that. A fatal interaction between different groups has never been observed. They have peaceful relationships.
-But if the research time that has been devoted to bonobos is so short, is it that these aggressive behaviors have not yet been observed?
-There are several primatologists who ask the same question. My answer is that if we compare what we know about bonobos with the information that was had about chimpanzees at the same stage of their study, we realize that all the things that we have learned from a species we should have already observed, if they existed in the other. Chimpanzees cooperate to kill. There is a group in Africa that every so often indulges in an intense hunt in which they can kill 30 primates in a week. Nothing similar has been observed among bonobos. We can be sure that they are very different.
-And they live in a wonderful endless orgy?
-That’s how it is. They use sex as an antidote to stress and difficult situations. Not only do they practice it between females and males, but with any member of the group, regardless of age, hierarchy or sex. And they do it several times a day. It is also the only species where face-to-face sex has been observed, in the missionary position, like humans.
-What kind of experiments do you do with them?
-In two separate studies we gave chimpanzees and bonobos two piles of food. The bonobos played with each other before sitting down to share it, not being jealous of others eating from their pile. The chimpanzees avoided each other, they sat as far away as they could and made their message clear: “this is my food and I’m not going to give you anything.” Then we did another experiment that consisted of putting a single pile of food out of reach, in such a way that the only way to reach them was to pull a rope together from both ends. Bonobos figured out the trick immediately and got mountains of food, while chimpanzees pulled only one side of the rope and ended up frustrated and hungry. Chimpanzees are just as smart as bonobos and they know how to solve the problem to get the loot, but they don’t trust their mates. On the other hand, bonobos work with anyone, be it a member of their group or another, regardless of their hierarchy.
-So your main differences are social?-That’s how it is. That is very exciting because they are closely related species, not only with each other, but with us. We can even exchange blood with them if the blood groups match. To discover what allows humans to cooperate in a more sophisticated way than other animals, one must take into account the obvious: the most important ingredient of cooperation is tolerance. Without it there is no sharing, and if it is not shared there is no cooperation. If we could determine what the history of chimpanzees and bonobos was from their last common ancestor, we could learn a lot about how we have evolved.
-Could it be said that we are like the chimpanzee when we go to war and like the bonobo when we build the International Space Station?
-Bingo. Although it should be noted that when we built this facility we did it as Americans, in part to show others that they couldn’t do it. We are tolerant of our own group, but not of others. Bonobos accept any of their species, even if it is alien to them. But the degree of cooperation of human society demands to have something of that which bonobos have.
– Is there a gene that predisposes to this behavior?
– It has just been discovered that many of the differences between chimpanzees and bonobos could be due to a single “social” gene that acts through a neuropeptide called vasopressin. Those who possess certain levels of this substance tend to be more sociable and less aggressive. It turns out that is what bonobos have, and our genetic pattern for vasopressin is much more similar to theirs than to chimpanzees. There is a physical explanation related to social behavior.
-How did bonobos evolve to become like this?
-In the same way that happened with domestic animals, there was a selection that favored the little aggressive character of the bonobos and produced changes in their organism. It is very likely that this has happened through the females, who for generations have preferred the less aggressive males; it is a sexual selection. The forest where they live is so rich in resources that females can afford to be together in large groups and form coalitions that are not seen in chimpanzees. They take care of each other and discourage males who get heavy. They are the ones who rule.
-If your habitat deteriorates, would your personality change?
-It’s much worse than that. I don’t think they will have time to witness the environmental deterioration of their forest, because they are prey to the bushmeat market that has become fashionable among the rich in the cities of the Congo. For rural people, eating great apes is a disappearing taboo in cities.
-How long does a bonobo take to reproduce?
-They are slow, like other apes. If not one more bonobo were killed for the next hundred years, its population would not even double. At 30 or 35 years the female has only had about three babies.
-What happens to the orphans that the traffickers don’t kill?
-They are the reason for being of the sanctuary of Lola Ya Bonobo, “paradise of the bonobos”, where I work several months a year. They are usually brought into town to sell as pets – although there is no worse pet than them. We cannot buy them because we would be supporting the massacre. But that is where Claudine André intervenes, who has been risking her life for years to save the bonobos. He managed to convince the authorities of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to confiscate these pups and enforce the law. Now the orphans end up in the sanctuary, where there are already 52 specimens. His dream is to rehabilitate and free them. Meanwhile, Claudine, who is Belgian but raised in the Congo, periodically brings groups of children from the region to meet them and perhaps turn their luck. So far, more than 10,000 children have visited the sanctuary.
-Are there many in zoos?
-From 100 to 150 bonobos between Europe and America, while in the US alone, there are about 2,500 chimpanzees in captivity. Bonobo populations in zoos are important and must be maintained. What should not be allowed is buying wild bonobos. There is a zoo in Lisbon that is trying to smuggle them for their exhibits.
-What’s Malou’s story?
-Malou is my favorite among all the bonobos and chimpanzees with whom I have worked. She is a four and a half year old female bonobo who was smuggled from the Congo to Paris to be sold as a pet. She was saved because a customs official discovered her crouching inside a suitcase while undergoing X-rays at the airport. Claudine André found out and contacted the French embassy in Kinshasa, which in turn spoke with then-President Jacques Chirac, who interceded and sent Malou back to that African capital. Malou has something in his eyes that I can’t describe. When he looks at you, you know that there is something more in there. It is a creature that deeply moves me.
Angela Posada-Swafford
