Customer Reviews

Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape

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Most people are familiar with chimps but few have heard of the bonobo, but we resemble them behaviorally more than any of the other great apes. Also I recall reading once that we have the greatest genetic similarity to bonobos. I forget the exact figure, but humans share something like 99.5 percent of their genetic material with bonobos.

De Waal teamed up with internationally acclaimed nature photographer Hans Lanting to produce not only a very scholarly but very readable and interesting book, and a visually very striking one as well.

There are many similarities between bonobo behavior and humans, and ways in which they differ from other apes. Females have higher social standing in bonobo society compared to chimps, and high-ranking males never stay that way for long unless they have the support of at least a high-ranking female or two.

Females also cooperate more than in other apes. They have been observed working together to drive off an aggressive male, which doesn't happen in chimps. Females are also very social, and seek to establish alliances with other males. This can come in handy in various ways. For example, during the mating season, if a a male the female doesn't like wants to mate, she can effectively rebuff his attempts by getting her other male friends to come to her aid. They even resemble us in their sexual behavior, since they are the only ape observed to use the missionary position during sex, which they do about half the time.

This is just a small sample of the many interesting and thought-provoking things I picked up from reading this book. Overall, a fascinating and very visually appealing presentation on this little-known and understood relative among the great apes.

This is the most scandalous book I've come accross in years. I am going to send it to all my favorite people.

Who would have thought that any animal has a more highly developed sexuality than humans? This book breaks ground and opens up a whole world of animal sexuality that most people don't like to even think about. Animals having sex for fun. Animals having oral sex. Animals having homosexual sex. It's fascinating, and the pictures are fabulous. They look just like us.

Say "ape" and people think of chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas. Most have never heard of the bonobo, the forgotten ape. No wonder. The bonobo was one of the last large mammals to be scientifically classified. Long confused with chimpanzees, it was declared a distinct species only in the 1930s. There are very few bonobos in the wild, and far fewer in zoos. But bonobos are, as is made very clear in this book, very different from chimpanzees, especially in their family and social structures and, to be most frank about it, their sexual habits. I will leave more detail to the author, world-renowned primatologist Frans de Waal. This is a very interesting and well written book, with much to say about apes, and much food for thought about our own species. It includes many excellent photographs by Frans Lanting.

Humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos evolved from a common ancestor. Humans have characteristics of both animals, plus some unique characteristics. By studying two of our nearest relatives, we gain insight into our past.

The social structure of chimpanzees and bonobos are very different. Chimps have a male dominated culture, while bonobos have a female dominated culture where infanticide is unknown. Human leaders tend to be male, but we have some bonobo features. Humans have sex for reasons other than procreation and we have empathy.

I had been fascinated by what little I had heard about the bonobo apes, and so when I discovered this treasure of a book I was temendously excited. It is written so well, and so beautifully photograghed, that the nature of the bonobo comes across in stark reality. An absorbing read, indeed! For any who doubt the intelligence of our closest relatives, this book shall certainly make them reconsider.

An exceptional book with beautiful and revealing photos that show how strikingly similar these pygmee chimps are to us humans. The main strength of this book lies in the photos by Lanting. They portray the Bonobo as an ape of gentle demaenor and high intellect. The text is a little rudimentary and does not give a very expansive overview of the species, but in all this book is definitely worth purchasing.

This book is wonderful in that it is one of the few scholarly works entirely devoted to pygmy chimpanzees, except for Randy Susman's edited volume (1984) and Kano's (1992) book. Interesting to the layperson, graduate student, and published scientist, Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape is not only filled with good information and beautiful glossy photos, it suggests new and interesting ideas to developing academics. A book like this is well worth the 20 dollars and is a good addition to the library of anyone interested in great apes.

This is a ground breaking book which forces humans to realize that not all of the great apes are violent as chimpanzees have been pigeonholed. It ultimately questions our humanness in relation to our 2 closest relatives: chimps & bonobos. Humans have characteristics of both, then why do many humans believe human nature is violent? This book gives us a mirror to see ourselves in.

In the popular imagination, the word "ape" conjures a brutish image, evoking a bestial human past in which life contained little more than the ruthless struggle for dominance. Until relatively recently, our knowledge of our genetic cousins seemed to confirm this picture; most apes, including chimps, have strongly hierarchical societies characterized by male dominance and frequent power struggles. The bonobo, however, has shattered scientists' assumptions about primate behavior. This book provides a fascinating glimpse into the complex lives of these gentle apes.

If bonobos could chant slogans, they would probably be imploring us to "make love, not war." Physically, bonobos differ little from other chimps, except for their smaller size. Yet their social lives are remarkably different. Although males are larger and capably of physically dominating females, female bonobos enjoy dominance within a relaxed, relatively fluid hierarchy. Unlike chimps, which can be quite violent toward members of their own species, bonobos are adept at resolving conflicts. Mostly, they achieve this through sexual behavior that would make any fundamentalist preacher turn purple (including homosexuality). Both in the wild and in captivity, they display a level of emotional intelligence that is amazing to find in a nonhuman animal, which the book documents through striking, often humorous anecdotes.

De Waal offers an intriguing discussion of how the bonobo's unique society may have evolved. Interestingly, he postulates that females became promiscuous, bonded with other females, and developed nearly year-round displays of sexual receptivity in order to counter the male habit of infanticide that sometimes occurs in chimps. Since females banded together to defend each other (and each other's offspring), and since males had no way of telling which offspring was their own, infanticide apparently disappeared. Meanwhile, as a result of their bonding, females became dominant.

Lanting's photos are striking, most of all because of the humanlike quality that comes through in so many of them. There is an astonishing...moving, in fact...familiarity in their facial expressions, intelligent eyes, gestures, and postures.

It is deeply tragic that this species, like so many, is threatened with possible extinction. Even though we have much more to learn about bonobos, their behavior raises thought-provoking questions about "human nature" and where we come from. Perhaps the "ape within" has a capacity for not only violence and patriarchy, but for cooperation and female influence as well.

This is a great book with plenty of great photographs by Frans Lanting and a good deal of basic information on these least-known ape cousins of ours from Frans de Waal. Equally genetically and evolutionally related to us as chimpanzees, they are best known for their sexual behavior and their relatively peaceful lives compared to chimpanzees but de Waal warns that the differences are a matter of degree and there is great flexibility.

The differences between the species are interesting. Though in both species the females (normally) leave at puberty and the males always remain in their birth groups, bonobo females bond more and males bond less than in chimpanzees. But the more important difference is that in bonobos the most important and strongest relationship is that between mother and son. This is all-important and at the core of bonobo society and includes serious rivalry between mothers over their sons' dominance ranks - and the fights between the mothers can be viscious.

What most people immediately think of when the bonobo is mentioned is sex, sex, and more sex. This is often misinterpreted and tends to obscure what is really going on. De Waal says their social life is better understood as being peppered by brief moments of sexual activity, the majority of which does not involve intromission nor is it carried through to sexual climax. It is largely brief and casual and used to reduce conflict. And when it comes to full mating with receptive females, this is normally limited to the top two males who occupy, with the females, the center of a travelling party and from where adolescent and lower ranking males are excluded.

De Waal discusses the possibility that the extended female receptivity of the female bonobo - receptive for nearly half of her adult life compared to 5% for the chimpanzee female - may be the bonobo strategy for avoiding male infanticide. In some species one male will remain with one or more females and protect his young from harm from others. In other species females mate with many males, including proactively soliciting males when the females are not normally receptive because they are not fertile, and this 'paternity confusion' is seen as a stategy to counter male infanticide. Infanticide has been observed in increasing numbers of species but, as yet, not in bonobos. De Waal suggests that the particular relationships of bonobos, with the reduced male aggression towards and dominance over females, may be a successful anti male-infantide strategy.

Another suggestion de Waal makes is that, as chimpanzee females have food priority when they are sporting sexual swellings, the extended sexual swellings and receptivity of bonobo females may have extended their food priority. Bonobo females almost always have food priority over males.

Another important difference between bonobo and chimpanzee is the relations between goups. Though chimpanzee females, like bonobo females, move between groups to breed (using sexual swellings as 'passports'), chimpanzee males from different groups are very aggressive and sometimes kill. Though bonobo males are antagonistic towards outsider males and display aggressively, there can be contact between the females of the two groups that meet and sexual contact between males and females of the two groups. I have read elsewhere that this contact between females, who in some cases will be known to each other as females move between groups, may have been something similar to the way our early ancestors were able to overcome full-blown aggression between groups, the females acting as links between groups that would ultimately lead to potentially positive alliances and trading links.

Whether we'll ever learn enough about these apes before they become extinct is unlikely. And that is sad. Whether we are interested in other species for comparision with our own or simply in order to understanding their particular evolutionary stories, we need to convince greater numbers of people that other species are interesting and deserve our full respect and protection. This book contributes to this for the bonobo.