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Bonobo

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Mammals

                     iBonobo

                             Conservation status

   Endangered (EN)
            Scientific classification

   Kingdom: Animalia
   Phylum:  Chordata
   Class:   Mammalia
   Order:   Primates
   Family:  Hominidae
   Genus:   Pan
   Species: P. paniscus

                                Binomial name

   Pan paniscus
   Schwarz, 1929
   Bonobo distribution
   Bonobo distribution

   The Bonobo (Pan paniscus), until recently usually called the Pygmy
   Chimpanzee and less often the Dwarf or Gracile Chimpanzee, is one of
   the two species comprising the chimpanzee genus, Pan. The other species
   in genus Pan is Pan troglodytes, or the Common Chimpanzee. Both species
   are chimpanzees, although that term is now frequently used to refer
   only to the larger of the two species, Pan troglodytes. To avoid
   confusion, this article follows the growing trend to use "chimpanzee"
   to refer to both members of the genus.

   The Bonobo was discovered in 1928, by American anatomist Harold
   Coolidge, represented by a skull in the Tervuren museum in Belgium that
   was thought to have belonged to a juvenile chimpanzee, though credit
   for the discovery went to the German Ernst Schwarz, who published the
   findings in 1929. The species is distinguished by an upright gait, a
   matriarchal and egalitarian culture, and the prominent role of sexual
   activity in their society.

Name

Common Name

   One theory about the origin of the name "Bonobo" is that it is a
   misspelling of the name of the town of Bolobo on the Congo river. A
   more likely explanation is that it comes from the word for ancestor in
   an ancient Bantu language.

Taxonomy

   The scientific name for the Bonobo is Pan paniscus. As their DNA is
   more than 98% identical to that of Homo sapiens , they are more closely
   related to Humans than Gorillas. Another study on the similarity of
   critical DNA sites in human and chimpanzee genes suggests that 99.4
   percent are identical.

   Therefore, scientists reclassified the taxonomy of the Bonobo (and
   Common Chimpanzee), changing their scientific family name from the
   family Pongidae of apes to the family Hominidae of humans.

   But there is still controversy. Scientists such as Morris Goodman of
   Wayne State University in Detroit argue that the Bonobo and Common
   Chimpanzee are so closely related to humans, their genus name should
   also be classified with the Human genus Homo: Homo paniscus, Homo
   sylvestris, or Homo arboreus. An alternative philosophy suggests that
   the term Homo sapiens is actually the misnomer, and that humanity
   should be reclassified as Pan sapiens. In either case, a name change of
   the genus is problematic because it complicates the taxonomy of other
   species closely related to humans, including Australopithecus.

   Recent DNA evidence suggests the Bonobo and Common Chimpanzee species
   separated from each other less than one million years ago. The
   chimpanzee line split from the last common ancestor with the Human
   approximately six million years ago. Because no species other than Homo
   sapiens has survived from the human line of that branching, both
   chimpanzee species are the closest living relatives of humans.

Physical characteristics

   Bonobo
   Enlarge
   Bonobo

   The Bonobo is more gracile than the Common Chimpanzee. Its head is
   smaller than that of the Common Chimpanzee but has a higher forehead.
   It has a black face with pink lips, small ears, wide nostrils, and long
   hair on its head. Females have slightly prominent breasts in contrast
   to the flat breasts of other female apes, though not as prominent as
   those of humans. The Bonobo also have slim upper bodies, narrow
   shoulders, thin necks, and long legs compared with the Common
   Chimpanzee. Bonobos walk upright about 25% of the time during ground
   locomotion. These characteristics, and their posture, give Bonobos a
   more human-like appearance than that of Common Chimpanzees. Moreover,
   Bonobos have highly individuated facial features, as humans do, so that
   one individual can look significantly different from another, adapted
   for visual recognition in social interaction.

Psychological characteristics

   Frans de Waal, one of the world's leading primatologists, avers that
   the Bonobo is often capable of altruism, compassion, empathy, kindness,
   patience and sensitivity.

   Recent observations in the wild have confirmed that the males among the
   Common Chimpanzee troops are extraordinarily hostile to males from
   outside of the troop. Murder parties are organized to "patrol" for the
   unfortunate males who might be living nearby in a solitary state. This
   does not appear to be the behaviour of the Bonobo males or females,
   both of which seem to prefer sexual contact with their group to violent
   confrontation with outsiders. The Bonobo lives where the more
   aggressive Common Chimpanzee does not. Possibly the Bonobo has given a
   wide berth to their more violent and stronger cousins. Neither swim,
   and they generally inhabit ranges on opposite sides of the great
   rivers.

   Bonobos, at least in captivity, are generally held to have superior
   intelligence to chimpanzees.

Sexual social behaviour

   Sexual intercourse plays a major role in Bonobo society, being used as
   a greeting, a means of conflict resolution and post-conflict
   reconciliation, and as favors traded by the females in exchange for
   food. Bonobos are the only non-human apes to have been observed
   engaging in all of the following sexual activities: face-to-face
   genital sex (most frequently female-female, then male-female and
   male-male), tongue kissing, and oral sex. In scientific literature, the
   female-female sex is often referred to as GG rubbing or genital-genital
   rubbing, while male-male sex is sometimes referred to as penis fencing
   .

   Sexual activity happens within the immediate family as well as outside
   it, and often involves adults and children, even infants. Bonobos do
   not form permanent relationships with individual partners. They also do
   not seem to discriminate in their sexual behaviour by gender or age,
   with the possible exception of sexual intercourse between mothers and
   their adult sons; some observers believe these pairings are taboo. When
   Bonobos come upon a new food source or feeding ground, the increased
   excitement will usually lead to communal sexual activity, presumably
   decreasing tension and allowing for peaceful feeding.

   Bonobo males frequently engage in various forms of male-male genital
   sex ( frot). One form has two males hang from a tree limb face-to-face
   while "penis fencing". Frot may also occur where two males rub their
   penises together while in missionary position. A special form of frot
   called "rump rubbing" occurs to express reconciliation between two
   males after a conflict, where they stand back-to-back and rub their
   scrotal sacks together.

   Bonobo females also engage in female-female genital sex ( tribadism) to
   socially bond with each other, thus forming a female nucleus of Bonobo
   society. The bonding between females allows them to dominate Bonobo
   society - although male Bonobos are individually stronger, they cannot
   stand alone against a united group of females. Adolescent females often
   leave their troop of birth to join another troop. Sexual bonding with
   other females establishes the new females as members of the group. This
   troop migration mixes the Bonobo gene pools.

   Bonobo reproductive rates are not any higher than that of the Common
   Chimpanzee. Female Bonobos carry and nurse their young for five years
   and can give birth every five to six years. Compared with 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 either
   sterile or too young to reproduce engage in sexual activity.

   Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson emphasize the Bonobo's use of sex as
   a mechanism to avoid violence.

          "[Common] Chimpanzees and Bonobos both evolved from the same
          ancestor that gave rise to humans, and yet the Bonobo is one of
          the most peaceful, unaggressive species of mammals living on the
          earth today. They have evolved ways to reduce violence that
          permeate their entire society. They show us that the
          evolutionary dance of violence is not inexorable".

Other social behaviour

   Females are much smaller than males but can be considered to have a
   higher social status. Aggressive encounters between males and females
   are rare, and males are tolerant of infants and juveniles. The male's
   status reflects the status of his mother, and the son-mother bond often
   stays strong and continues throughout life. While social hierarchies do
   exist, rank does not play as prominent a role as it does in other
   primate societies.

   Bonobos are active from dawn to dusk and live in a fission-fusion
   pattern: a tribe of about a hundred will split into small groups during
   the day while looking for food, and then come back together to sleep.
   They sleep on trees in nests they construct. Unlike Common Chimpanzees,
   who have been known to hunt monkeys, Bonobos are primarily frugivores,
   although they do eat insects and have been observed occasionally
   catching small mammals such as squirrels.

Closeness to humanity

   Bonobos are capable of passing the mirror-recognition test for
   self-awareness. They communicate through primarily vocal means,
   although the meanings of their vocalizations are not currently known;
   however, humans do understand their facial expressions and some of
   their natural hand gestures, such as their invitation to play. Two
   Bonobos, Kanzi and Panbanisha have been taught a vocabulary of about
   400 words which they can type using a special keyboard of lexigrams
   (geometric symbols), and can respond to spoken sentences. Some, such as
   bioethicist Peter Singer, argue that these results qualify them for the
   "rights to survival and life", rights that humans theoretically accord
   to all persons.

Habitat

   Around 10,000 Bonobos are found only south of the Congo River and north
   of the Kasai River (a tributary of the Congo), in the humid forests of
   the Democratic Republic of Congo of central Africa. They are an
   endangered species, due to both habitat loss and hunting for bushmeat,
   the latter activity having increased dramatically during the current
   civil war due to the presence of heavily armed militias even in remote
   "protected" areas such as Salonga National Park. Today, at most several
   thousand Bonobos remain. This is part of a more general trend of ape
   extinction.

Conservation efforts

   The genetic closeness of Bonobos, their relative rarity, and their
   self-awareness compel a moral and scientific imperative to preserve
   them and protect them from both abuse and extinction. Currently Bonobos
   may still be hunted to extinction by humans who eat them. The recent
   war in the DRC, driven by illegal exploitation of resources, had a
   major impact on the Bonobo and the local population. The locals now,
   more than ever, have a stronger desire to protect their interests and
   rights. Bonobo conservation efforts, are balancing these issues.

   As the Bonobo's habitat is shared with people, the ultimate success of
   conservation efforts will rely on local and community involvement. The
   issue of parks vs. people is very cogent in the Cuvette Centrale, the
   Bonobo's range. There is strong local and broad-based Congolese
   resistance to establishing national parks as indigenous communities
   have often been driven from their forest homes by the establishment of
   parks. In Salonga, the only existing national park in the Bonobo
   habitat, there is no local involvement, and recent surveys indicate
   that the Bonobo, the African Forest Elephant and other species have
   been severely devastated by poachers. In contrast to this, there are
   areas where the Bonobo and biodiversity still thrive without any
   established parks, due to the indigenous beliefs and taboos against
   killing Bonobos.

   During the war in the 1990s researchers and international NGOs were
   driven out of the Bonobo habitat. In 2002, the Bonobo Conservation
   Initiative, initiated the Bonobo Peace Forest Project in cooperation
   with national institutions, local NGOs and local communities. The Peace
   Forest Project works with local communities to establish a linked
   constellation of community-based reserves, managed by local and
   indigenous people. Although there has been only limited support from
   international organizations, this model, implemented mainly through DRC
   organizations and local communities, appears to have success, inasmuch
   as agreements have been made to protect over 5,000 square miles of the
   Bonobo habitat. According to Dr. Amy Parish, the Bonobo Peace Forest
   "…is going to be a model for conservation in the 21st century."

   This initiative has been gaining momentum and greater international
   recognition and has recently gained greater support through
   Conservation International, the Global Conservation Fund, US Fish &
   Wildlife Services Great Ape Conservation Fund, and the United Nation’s
   Great Ape Survival Project.

   Starting in 2003, the US government allocated $54,000,000 to the Congo
   Basin Forest Partnership. This significant investment has triggered the
   involvement of international NGOs to establish bases in the region and
   work to develop bonobo conservation programs. This recent initiative
   should improve the likelihood of bonobo survival, but its success may
   still depend upon supporting greater involvement and capacity building
   of local and indigenous communities.

   In addition, Some concerned parties have addressed the crisis plight of
   these cousins of humanity on several science and ecological websites.
   Organizations like the WWF, the African Wildlife Foundation, and others
   are trying to focus attention on the extreme risk to the species. Some
   have suggested that a reserve be established in a less unstable part of
   Africa, or on an island in a place like Indonesia. Non-invasive medical
   research could be conducted on relocated free Bonobos with little risk
   or discomfort.

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
