Bonobo society is female-run and bonobos have a lot of sex. And there is supposed to be a message for humans in that: “And considering that both bonobos and chimpanzees are humans’ closest living relatives, each sharing roughly 99% of their DNA with us, it is a question whose answer could also reveal a lot about ourselves.”
From RealClearScience:
Bonobos are highly-intelligent primates that reside in a 190,000-square-mile area of the Congo Basin in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Their peaceful nature is even more remarkable when compared to that of chimpanzees. Though the two species share the same genus and are almost physically identical to each other when viewed with an untrained eye, their behavior couldn’t be any more dissimilar when it comes to temperament. Over fifty-four years of study, scientists have witnessed chimpanzee killings on 152 occasions. During that same time period, there has been only one suspected murder amongst bonobos.
Murder? Are we saying that the poor creature is culpable? Do cats “murder” mice?
Or is the real point of using such language that human beings don’t really murder? Anyway:
Interestingly, though bonobos seem to have more “evolved” sensibilities, they may be lesser evolved than chimpanzees
“If this evolutionary scenario of ecological continuity is true, the bonobo may have undergone less transformation than either humans or chimpanzees,” ethologist Frans de Waal wrote in a 1995 issue of Scientific American. More.
Actually, the article—while informative—doesn’t tell us anything about human beings at all.
See also: Are apes entering the Stone Age?
and
Do chimpanzees have sacred rituals? These people need chimpanzees to have a religion really bad, though they probably don’t want one themselves.
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