Lynn Saxon - The Naked Bonobo

In 1997, in the preface to his book Bonobo: The ForgottenApe, Frans de Waal made the point that books and articles on the other apescould easily fill a small library, but for a complete collection of literatureon bonobos, a single cardboard box would do. At that time few had even heard ofthis ape but now, nearly two decades later, the bonobo takes the spotlight inmany a discussion about human nature. It seems that we are finally getting toknow our peaceful, hairy cousin; a peace achieved primarily (so we are told)through constant, casual sex.

Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape is full of wonderfullyendearing bonobo photographs (though the unnaturally reproduced redness of thelips and skin is a little unfortunate). The man who captured these images,wildlife photographer Frans Lanting, describes in the book how finding and thenkeeping up with bonobos in their natural forest habitat was no easy task.Whats more, if he did find them, photographs of black animals in a dark forestwerent going to show us much anyway. As a result, most of the photographs inthe book are either of bonobos at the artificial feeding sites, or they arephotos of captive apes, used to show close-ups and subtle expressions.

While it is inevitable that most of the images we have ofbonobos are from zoos or from the cleared areas of feeding sites (where theyare often seen clutching their sticks of sugarcane), it can leave us with adistorted image of this ape. We have to remember that the world they normallylive in is a world of trees and, while they will feed and travel on the groundand through the undergrowth, they spend most of their time traveling, feeding,and sleeping high in the forest canopy. Bonobos are particularly agile in thetrees; their long-legged, slender body once thought to show a closerconnection to our own is now recognised as a body-type well-suited to theirlargely arboreal life (White 1992).

The very same problems Frans Lanting experienced when tryingto find and then follow bonobos in their natural forest habitat, plus the factthat this region of Africa has seen some of the most harrowing and long-runninghuman conflicts, is why, even today, we know relatively little about theseapes. Most of what we do know still comes, like our images, from tiny captivepopulations or from bonobo behaviour at the artificial feeding sites.

Frans de Waal is probably the only writer on bonobos who isfamiliar to the vast majority of bonobo enthusiasts. His major interest hasbeen reconciliation behaviours across primates rather than simply this onespecies but the results from his study of a small group of bonobos at San DiegoZoo have massively impacted how most of us see this ape. Zoo studies have beenuseful in highlighting behaviours particular to bonobos but their use, ofcourse, is limited. (Imagine if some alien visitors to our planet killed somemothers for food, took and traded their infants, and that these infants, andtheir descendants over time, end up in various zoos on the alien planet. Whatwould alien scientists learn about us? Life for a bonobo may be far lesscomplex than our own but it is far more complex than is ever going to be foundin a zoo enclosure.)

Though our literature on bonobos has increased since 1997,it would still fit into a (somewhat larger) cardboard box. For those of usfeeling the rumblings of an inner bonobo on the verge of breaking loose, itwould be foolish not to at least take a good look inside that box rather thanleave its contents to the workings of the sometimes over-excited humanimagination.

Our first discoveries about bonobo behaviour came fromobservations of very small zoo populations. Frans de Waals early 1980s studyof the bonobos in San Diego Zoo is the most detailed of these, and it is deWaal who has been responsible for most of our general understanding of thisspecies. Not surprisingly, it has been the sexual behaviours of the bonobo thathave grabbed our attention, and the value of de Waals broader concern withreconciliation and peacekeeping behaviours across species usually loses out tothe titillation of bonobo sex.