Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
174
We don't put forth
Quite recently in terms of human history, people have used disempowered
groups for experiments, as with the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, conducted from 1932 to 1972.
It is no surprise that, if we are only beginning to recognize each other's humanity, we still struggle
to accord consciousnesses to the other apes.
174
He goes on to enumerate
The discovery of what isn't known may be what most excites us, and
we often seek out what isn't yet understood about bonobos and attempt to inflate it, not so much
to educate people as to make a name for ourselves, to put a stamp on little-known territory. Ian
Parker's
New Yorker
article, “Swingers,” is representative of this mentality. It deserves scrutiny
not only because of what it reveals about how research works in the Congo but because of the
New
Yorker's
reach in our culture and the way that it influences opinions.
In his response to Parker's article on
Skeptic
magazine's website, Frans de Waal explains that
we must not conflate hunting with aggression:
Perhaps the bonobo's peaceful image can be countered with descriptions of them catching and
eating prey? Isn't this violent behavior? Not really: feeding has very little to do with aggres-
sion. Already in the 1960s, Konrad Lorenz explained the difference between a cat hissing at
another cat and a cat stalking a mouse. The neural circuitry of the two patterns is different: the
first expresses fear and aggression, the second is motivated by hunger. Thus, herbivores are not
any less aggressive than carnivores—as anyone who has been chased by a bull can attest. The
fact that bonobos run after duikers and kill squirrels—which has been seen many times—is
therefore best kept out of debates about aggression.
Also regarding their alleged violence, de Waal writes:
How much bonobos differ from chimpanzees was highlighted by a recent experiment on co-
operation. Brian Hare and co-workers presented apes with a platform that they could pull close
by working together. When food was placed on the platform, the bonobos clearly outperformed
the chimpanzees in getting a hold of it. The presence of food normally induces rivalry, but the
bonobos engaged in sexual contact, played together, and happily shared the food side by side.
The chimpanzees, in contrast, were unable to overcome their competition. For two species to
react so diferently to the same experimental set-up leaves little doubt about a temperamental
difference.
In another illustration, at a forested sanctuary at Kinshasa it was recently decided to merge
two groups of bonobos that had lived separately, just so as to induce some activity. No one
would ever dream of doing this with chimpanzees as the only possible outcome would be a
blood bath. The bonobos produced an orgy instead. [In this citation, he references Brian Hare
et al., “Tolerance Allows Bonobos to Outperform Chimpanzees on a Cooperative Task,”
Cur-
rent Biology
17 no. 7 (April 2007): 619-23.]
Frans de Waal, “Bonobos, Left & Right,”
eSkeptic
, August 8, 2007,
http://www.skeptic.com/
174
Though it's true that bonobos
Richard W. Wrangham and Emily van Zinnicq Bergmann Riss,
“Rates of Predation on Mammals by Gombe Chimpanzees, 1972-1975,”
Primates
31 no. 2 (April
1990): 157-70; Craig B. Stanford et al., “Patterns of Predation by Chimpanzees on Red Colobus
Monkeys in Gombe National Park, 1982-1991,”
American Journal of Physical Anthropology
94
no. 2 (June 1994): 213-28; Kano,
The Last Ape
, 106; all referenced in Wrangham and Peterson,
Demonic Males
, 216-17.
174
“
For years,” he writes
Frans de Waal,
The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism
Among the Primates
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2013), 11.
174
Over the centuries
,
Why should we, in light of our own worst traits, expect great apes to be an-
gelic? For instance, the Lola ya Bonobo sanctuary was flooded with orphans during and after the
war, and started a reintroduction program in Équateur. But several of the bonobos, shortly after be-