Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
captures the abandonment and excitement exhibited by two females practicing it.” They suggest us-
ing the Bongandu's expression for it:
hoka-hoka
. The older female reclines and opens her legs, and
the adolescent climbs on top. Wrangham and Peterson describe the act as resembling humans in the
missionary position.
Their hip movements are fast and side to side, and they bring their most sensitive sexual
organs—their clitorises—together. Bonobo clitorises appear large (compared to those of hu-
mans or any of the other apes) and are shifted ventrally compared to chimpanzees. Kano
believes their location and shape have evolved to allow pleasurable
hoka-hoka
—which typ-
ically ends with mutual screams, clutching limbs, muscular contractions, and a tense, still
moment. It looks like orgasm.
Though sex among the females establishes a bond that likely strengthens the overall female coali-
tion of the group, there are other factors that prevent male aggression. For instance, chimpanzee
females emit an odor when ovulating, causing males to go into a frenzy and compete to breed with
them, whereas female bonobos neither show clear signs of ovulation nor limit sexual behavior to
their fertile period. The result is that males have no notion of individual paternity, and all males
are caring and nurturing with infants. This strengthens the bond between males and females, and
reduces the competition among males, supporting a social order that, compared with that of chim-
panzees, is highly stable, based as it is around dominant females who maintain power until their
deaths.
On our first trip to see the bonobos, we got up at 4:00 a.m., ate and dressed rapidly, then went
out into the dark, to BCI's Land Rover this time. Michael had brought a new axle for it, but the re-
serve's mechanic had mistakenly asked for a rear one. Michael and Jean-Pierre had returned in the
Land Cruiser to Djolu and had the broken axle welded. They'd also picked up Alan Root, who'd
arrived by bush plane. One of the most influential figures in the history of nature documentaries,
Alan had moved from England to Kenya shortly after his birth and spent his life there. His work
had been syndicated worldwide for over thirty years, in the course of which he had been bitten by
numerous animals, among them a python, a hippopotamus, and a puff adder. When a leopard bit
him twice in the buttock, the Serengeti's chief park warden jokingly told him, “You know you're
not allowed to feed animals in a national park.” A mountain gorilla also bit him while he was film-
ing in the Virungas for the Dian Fossey biopic
Gorillas in the Mist
. In her topic by the same name,
Fossey describes how Alan drove her from Kenya to her first research camp site in the Virungas
and helped her get set up. Sally had coordinated his arrival so that he could evaluate how well ha-
bituated and accessible the bonobos here were for the ecotourism company Abercrombie & Kent.
At seventy-five, he was tall and strong-looking, with gray-white hair, a goatee, and glasses.
The trackers as well as Sally, Michael, Alan, and I crowded into the Land Rover together, and
it took us through the forest, going slow because of Alan's back, which had titanium rods in it from
two helicopter crashes during his years of filming. The headlamps weren't working well on this
vehicle either, so one of the trackers held a flashlight out the window. After fifteen minutes of grind-
ing our way uphill and rolling through deep ruts, we stopped in front of a village and got out. There
was a faint smell of woodsmoke as we walked past the dark mud huts, embers glowing beyond a
doorway.
When we came to the edge of the forest, the head tracker took the lead. In his forties, Léonard
Nkanga Lolima was a slight man, with a round, faintly feline face. Though he was not imposing, his
