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Bonobos are a very rare species of primate. They are both genetically and intellectually very close relatives to humans, the closest of any other animal on earth. They are highly endangered and extreme measures need to be taken immediately to ensure their long-term survival. Educating the international public about the situation and raising support for proactive initiatives such as the Bonobo Conservation Initiative is absolutely paramount if we are to protect our closest relative and the best chance we have as a species to understand where we came from. Currently the biggest threat to bonobos is being killed by hunters who sell the meat as a delicacy, this is made much easier by logging roads put in by international logging companies (mostly German and French) operating in the Democratic Republic of the Congo., the only country where the bonobo is found. We spend billions of dollars every year searching for some kind of extraterrestrial intelligence, why not spend a fraction of that to protect our intelligent kin here on earth rather than simply doing nothing while our closest relatives are being slaughtered and eaten.
Intellectually, the most shocking characteristic of bonobos to those just learning about them is their ability to understand spoken language. Bonobos do not have vocal cords that allow them to speak words like humans but they have been taught to use a special keyboard with hieroglyphs that correspond to words or concepts in order to speak. They can understand questions and abstract sentences and generate their own abstract sentences and questions. Further research has been done demonstrating ability with mathematics, tool making and other basic characteristics of an intelligence that most people would define as exclusive to the human species. Watch these videos of Kanzi (a famous bonobo student) to see some of the ways laboratory science has been able to demonstrate these cogitative traits. Currently there is more work done on bonobo cognition in the laboratory than in the field but hopefully this will change as field studies can provide a much greater sense of what purpose intelligence serves.
Bonobos are one of very few animals that have recreational sex; they share this characteristic with both dolphins and humans. This makes humans and bonobos the only two primate species that have developed the physiological pleasures of sex into part of everyday social interchange, rather than just a behavior found among reproductively receptive individuals. Bonobos, like humans, express this sexuality in a number of ways; any member of the group regardless of age or gender might have sexual contact with another. However, unlike humans, bonobos have no cultural taboos so sex and they use sex as a way to resolve conflicts. Previously it was thought that bonobos engage in sex much more frequently than even humans do but recently it was show that this elevated frequency is a characteristic of captive individuals but is not reflected in the wild. Some researchers have attributed it to boredom in captivity. This same response to being forced into small, stressful living conditions has been shown with human populations; for example in Palestine where people have been forced off of farms and concentrated into walled compounds, reproductive rates have increased dramatically.
Studying bonobos in captivity to understand the species is like studying humans who have been forced into small, abnormal, stressful living situations (prisons, concentration camps, etc) in order to learn about the human species. Sure there are many things you can learn in this situation but it cannot give you the whole story. There are a few centers like The Great Ape Trust and the San Diego Zoo where bonobos are given enough space and interaction to keep them psychologically sound but they are still limited to their group size and the dynamics of living in the forest that they have evolved within are absent. The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany is one of the of the finest research institutes in the world for both field and captive studies of bonobos and other apes (including humans).
Naturally, humans are fascinated with their own existence and have been long before evolution was ever conceptualized. Indeed the only college classes other than Anthropology or Zoology where students might learn about Bonobos is in philosophy. Ever since humans began to record their thoughts about existence in an organized, non-religious way the notion that humans are unlike all other animals has been a paramount theme. Bonobos overturn this view; instead Bonobos demonstrate that intelligent life is more of a spectrum of organisms evolved for their particular niche and that humans are just as natural as any other animals on earth. That’s why preserving them in their natural habitat is absolutely necessary and as, if not more, important than any other conservation initiative in the world today. These are our closest relatives, they can teach us so much about our history on this earth.
THOSE ARE THE HAPPY FACES OF BONOBOS
HERE IS THE STARK REALITY OF WHAT PEOPLE ARE DOING TO
THE PRIMATES IN THE CONGO BASIN
WARNING!! THESE IMAGES ARE DISTURBING
Most of the following photos are by Karl Ammann
THIS IS NOT JUST SOME MINOR EXAMPLE OF HUMAN BARBARISM, THIS IS A DAILY OCCURRENCE. THEY EAT ALMOST EVERY ANIMAL THEY CAN KILL IN THE FOREST. THE PRIMATES ARE LARGE ANIMALS SO THEY ARE THE FIRST ANIMALS TO BE HUNTED AFTER AN ACCESS ROAD IS BUILT TO OPEN FORESTS UP FOR LOGGING.
PRIMATE MEAT IS NOT A SUBSISTENCE FOOD IN THE CONGO BASIN, IT IS A LUXURY MEAT. HUNTERS TRAVEL DEEP INTO THE FOREST TO HUNT AND THEN TRANSPORT THE MEAT TO PEOPLE WHO WANT TO EAT APES BECAUSE IT IS MORE DESIRABLE THAN OTHER MEAT.
READ KARL AMMANN'S BOOK FOR MORE INFORMATION
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