Humans tend to go to extremes: no other animal is as brutal and cruel. On the other hand, no one can be so compassionate, selfless and cooperative. These two contradictory sides of human nature seem to be reflected in man’s two closest relatives, the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and the bonobo (Pan paniscus).
Chimpanzees represent the dark Mister Hyde side of humans: they kill each other, infanticide has been observed as well as gang rape, in which several males force a female to have sex. In addition, chimpanzee clans, which are dominated by male animals, are xenophobic and wage outright wars against other groups.
Bonobos, which differ externally from chimpanzees in their pink lips and longer legs, live together in peaceful societies in which the females are in charge. Following the motto “Make love, not war,” they often relieve aggression and tension through sex, regardless of gender. If they meet strange bonobos in the rainforest, they walk together for a while, settle down to eat together and then part again amicably.
Male bonobos hit other males, while chimpanzees take out their aggression on females
Which doesn’t mean that bonobos don’t have aggression, as a current study shows, which is currently published in the scientific journal Current Biology has appeared. A team led by anthropologist Maud Mouginot from Boston University describes that male bonobos hit, push or bite their own species three times as often as male chimpanzees.
But bonobos deal with their aggression differently and use it differently. Among other things, the researchers observed that the aggression of male bonobos is almost exclusively directed against other males. Male chimpanzees, on the other hand, often attack females. In addition, the fights among bonobos seem to be more harmless; At least – unlike chimpanzees – it has never been observed that a monkey was killed in the process.
Figuring all this out must have been incredibly difficult for the scientists working with Maud Mouginot. Bonobos live exclusively in a dense jungle area in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where they are difficult to track and even more difficult to observe. For their study, the researchers had to feel their way through the jungle in the dark to the bonobos’ sleeping nests, which the primates build in the jungle trees. “You have to go to their nests and wait for them to wake up, and then follow them all day – from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to sleep at night – and record everything they do” says Mouginot after a press release from the publisher in which the study was published.
In this way, her team collected data from twelve bonobos in the Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve in the Democratic Republic of Congo and from 14 chimpanzees in Gombe National Park in Tanzania.
The fact that male bonobos hit and shove each other more often than chimpanzees “does not contradict the idea of a peaceful bonobo,” says Mouginot. Rather, it seems that the bonobos are more comfortable with the scuffle because they know it won’t turn into deadly violence and won’t actually mean anything. The world would be a better place if people had the same level of control over their aggression.