Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
If bonobo research and conservation have taken a firm hold in this part of Équateur, it is because of
the Bongandu, one of several tribes that inhabit Équateur Province. Japanese primatologist Takay-
oshi Kano explored the region in 1973 by boat, truck, and raft, and by crossing hundreds of miles
on bicycle, all the while asking villagers where the bonobos lived. He found that few remained in
the west of their habitat, where they were hunted. But when he crossed east of the Luo River, where
Kokolopori is located, he entered the territory of the Bongandu, and learned that there were numer-
ous groups of bonobos lived in the forests.
Bongandu literally means people of the Ngandu culture (“bo” signifying “people,” and “mo,”
as in Mongandu, referring to a single individual of the ethnic group). The Bongandu believed that
bonobos walked on four legs only when watched, but otherwise went about like humans. Unlike
the Congolese in neighboring areas, they saw bonobos as distant ancestors and had a taboo against
hunting them. Consequently, there were large numbers of bonobos, and they were relatively un-
afraid of people. Kano established his first research camp in an area that, nearly two decades later,
would become the Luo Scientific Reserve, not far from where the Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve has
since been established.
The work done at Kano's research camp from the 1970s on set the foundation for our current
understanding of bonobos, how they bond socially and sexually. Essential to their nonviolence, the
Japanese researchers realized, is the stability of their groups. Since chimpanzees have to forage over
great distances and expend significant energy to find limited food supplies that are patchily dis-
tributed, they travel in small groups to prevent competition among their own members. However,
the bonobos have more varied diets and can remain in larger, more stable social groups that allow
females to bond. Such coalitions, which tend not to exist in the chimpanzee world, permit female
bonobos to limit the aggression of males and even prevent some from mating. Recent studies theor-
ize that bonobos may have essentially domesticated themselves, females selecting those males best
for group cohesion and thus gradually eliminating aggressive traits from the gene pool. Not only
are the statuses of males determined by those of their mothers, but they will always side with their
mothers during conflicts. And, even if the highest-ranking bonobo male attacks a female, all of the
females will gang up on him and defeat him.
One of the mysteries of these coalitions, however, is why females forge such strong bonds when,
as adolescents, they leave their family groups and travel to new ones to prevent inbreeding. How
can unrelated females not find themselves competing for resources and male attention? The research
of Takayoshi Kano and Gen'ichi Idani offers an explanation. When adolescent females come upon a
new community, they each select an adult female in that group. Each one lingers nearby, observing
the older female, attentive to her needs, and if the older female is welcoming, the adolescent ap-
proaches to groom, sit close together, or have sex. Though scientists have labeled the latter genito-
genital rubbing, or GG-rubbing, Dale Peterson and Richard Wrangham write that this term “hardly
