Facts about Bonobos
Along with the Common Chimpanzee, the Bonobo is the closest extant relative to humans. They have been observed engaging in all of the following sexual activities: face-to-face genital sex, tongue kissing, and oral sex. Sexual intercourse plays a major role in their society, being used as a greeting, a means of conflict resolution, and post-conflict reconciliation. Females have slightly more prominent breasts, in contrast to the flat breasts of other female apes, although not so prominent as those of humans. You can find this animal in the wild only in the 'Democratic Republic of Congo'. They were previously called the 'Pygmy Chimpanzee' and sometimes 'Dwarf Chimpanzee' or 'Gracile Chimpanzee'. Bonobo males frequently engage in various forms of male-male genital sexual behavior (frot). In one form, two males hang from a tree limb face-to-face while "penis fencing". Frot also may occur when two males rub their penises together while in face-to-face position. A special form of frot called "rump rubbing" occurs to express reconciliation between two males after a conflict, when they stand back-to-back and rub their scrotal sacs together. Bonobo females also engage in female-female genital sexual behavior called tribadism. Female Bonobos carry and nurse their young for five years and can give birth every five to six years. Compared to Common Chimpanzees, Bonobo females resume the genital swelling cycle much sooner after giving birth, allowing them to rejoin the sexual activities of their society. Also, Bonobo females who are sterile or too young to reproduce still engage in sexual activity. One study analysed and recorded sounds made by human babies and Bonobos when tickled. It found, that although the Bonobo's laugh was a higher frequency, the laugh followed a pattern similar to that of human babies and included similar facial expressions. The Bonobo also has highly-individuated facial features, as humans do, so that one individual may look significantly different from another, a characteristic adapted for visual facial recognition in social interaction. It is one of the two species making the genus 'Pan', the other species in the genes Pan is known is the 'Common Chimpanzee'. They also do not seem to discriminate in their sexual behavior by gender or age, with the possible exception of abstaining from sexual intercourse beween mothers and their adult sons. Females are considered to have a higher social status in Bonobo culture and their's is a female-dominant society. Bonobos never form permanent relationships with individual partners. Scientists such as Morris Goodman of Wayne State University in Detroit argue that the Bonobo and Common Chimpanzee are so closely related to humans, that their genus name also should be classified with the human genus Homo: Homo paniscus, Homo sylvestris, or Homo arboreus. An alternative philosophy suggests that the term Homo sapiens is the misnomer rather, and that humans should be reclassified as Pan sapiens. Frans de Waal, one of the world's leading primatologists, states that the Bonobo often is capable of altruism, compassion, empathy, kindness, patience, and sensitivity. They have been observed hunting monkey species. This primate is mainly frugivorous, but supplements its diet with leaves and sometimes the meat of small vertebrates, such as flying squirrels and infant duikers, and invertebrates. It has a black face with pink lips, small ears, wide nostrils, and long hair on its head that forms a part. 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. Female Bonobo is somewhat smaller than the male. |
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