Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
gorilla conservation. She didn't relent, protecting them until she was killed with a machete, likely
by poachers, though her murderers were never caught and theories abound.
But when Sally learned about bonobos—creatures so much like us, with so many qualities that
might teach us about ourselves—she became obsessed. Everything she'd read until then associated
human behavior with that of chimpanzees, focusing on territoriality, belligerence, and aggressive
sexuality. Bonobos were gentler and more cooperative in their use of resources, and they lacked the
sense of paternity that obsessed other great apes, humans included. For Sally, they exemplified the
qualities that humans should emulate if we were to ensure our own survival.
All her life she'd been looking for something to which she could give herself. Bonobos reson-
ated with her on all levels. She read about the Japanese primatologist Takayoshi Kano, who ha-
bituated them in the wild, and Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, who was working with them in captivity.
But while she could read endlessly about the other great apes, very little had been written about
bonobos.
She ended up telling Nick Nichols, the photographer whose images appeared in
The Great Apes:
Between Two Worlds
, how bonobos fascinated her. She'd met him at the National Geographic So-
ciety offices, and he'd invited her to interview him at his home in Charlottesville, Virginia, and to
see his collection of mountain gorilla photographs. The images inspired her, as did his conviction
that the world needed to know how these animals lived in the wild, and how humans treated them.
He'd done investigative projects, going into laboratories to photograph chimpanzees locked in tiny
cages, operated on and injected with diseases, hooked to electrodes. His work conveyed to Sally the
intelligence and compassion of apes, and how they suffered. His photographs of medical research
disturbed her, as did the images of great apes abused and eaten in Africa, and his stories of the
problems surrounding conservation. She worked with him for several months before she told him
about her desire to quit her job and write about bonobos, to help them by telling their story, and he
encouraged her.
Over the weeks in Kokolopori, Sally told me these stories in snippets, during breaks in work or
delays, and when she and I spoke, it was rarely without interruption. People asked her questions,
or a new face arrived in the camp so that, midsentence, she lifted a hand to wave and hurried to
greet the person. Even two years before, during Skype interviews, the demands of the BCI office
and calls from the Congo had interfered. She would be describing how she first learned of the great
apes' critical situation, and how she knew that—given the Congo's population boom, its political
instability and poverty—bonobos would be next in line for extermination; then she would pause,
derailed by the thought of how much she had to do, and switch the conversation to the to-do list in
her head. This happened often on our trip as well.
“I learned more about my own nature reading about great apes,” she said, “than in years of
psychology courses. In bonobos, I saw a creature so much like us, one that has learned to cooper-
ate—the closest thing to us on the planet, mirroring a side of ourselves that we often ignore.”
She explained how important bonobos' sexual fluidity is to their closeness and happiness,
though scientists often reduce it to a means of resolving conflicts or defusing tension—largely, she
believes, because of Western discomfort with sexuality. She told me that it has been easy for hu-
mans to align ourselves with chimpanzees, as if we are pardoning male violence, saying it is natural,
especially after a century with so many wars. She found the fact that coalitions of female bonobos
prevent male aggression not only inspiring but important for people to understand. After all, what
we can conceive of is often what we create. In focusing on attributes that we identify as masculine,
