Learning From Cousin Bonobo

All our siblings have died. Homo erectus – dead. Homo habilis -dead. Homo neanderthalensis  - dead. All our evolutionary brothers and sisters are dead and extinct. Only us – Homo sapiens – are left alive from our immediate family.

But we do have a couple of cousins. Pan troglodytes and Pan paniscus. More commonly these two cousins are known as chimpanzees and bonobos. They are the closest to us in the evolutionary family. We share 98.7% of our genes with these other two primates.

Our common ancestor lived some 6 million years ago, at which point our immediate families diverged. Then the families of bonobos and chimpanzees further split around 2 million years ago.

Using corridors across the river that no longer exist, one family, the chimpanzees, settled north of the Congo River. The other, the bonobos, made their home south of the Congo River. Neither chimpanzees nor bonobos have learnt to swim, and so the two species live separated today by the mighty Congo River. Hence, they learnt to adapt to their unique environments and learnt differing behaviours.

When Jane Goodall began studying chimpanzees in their natural habitat in the 1960s she thought that if the behaviour of chimpanzees was similar to that of humans, then the behaviour of our common ancestor (the one that lived 6 million years ago) was probably also similar.

Soon after she began her research one of the big debates in the scientific world was that of nature versus nurture. This debate centred around the question; Is a baby born with a clean slate, and will only experience make that child aggressive or kind? Jane Goodall thought she could answer this question through her studies. In a 2021 interview in response to a question about this debate, Jane Goodall replies that, ‘When I said no, there’s an instinctive element to it, I was heavily criticised. But I think it makes sense. How can you possibly look around the world and say that there is not an innate aggressive tendency in humans?’¹

Goodall’s reply is based upon the recognition that within chimpanzee society males show a tendency to use violence and to dominate female chimpanzees. This portrayal of chimpanzee behaviour has been tempered slightly in recent times, with the co-director of the Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, in the US, saying that aggression ‘only makes up a very small part of their daily activity,’ and that the trait has been overemphasised.

But what of the other cousins – the bonobos?

Research on bonobos living in their natural state has not been as long as that for chimpanzees. Bonobos tend to live in less accessible forest than do chimpanzees, plus their numbers are much less, making study of bonobos less easy than the study of chimpanzees.² However, we are able to discern differing behaviour between these two primates.

Bonobos tend to display contrasting behaviours to that of chimpanzees. They are less aggressive and females are the leaders of bonobo groups. It needs to be noted however, that (as with chimpanzees) this portrayal is also simplistic. Bonobos can be aggressive.

The aggressive behaviours of chimpanzees and bonobos, though, are markedly dissimilar. Chimpanzees show a proclivity towards ganging up on an opponent, whereas bonobo aggression is displayed in one-to-one combat. Significantly, chimpanzees will kill (murder) their opponent, whereas bonobos do not.  

Learning from Cousins

We might ask ourselves: Can Jane Goodall’s wondering about whether the behaviour of chimpanzees and that of our common ancestor suggest an innate tendency towards aggression in humans?

The answer has to be: not necessarily. The answer is nuanced and ambiguous.

When our cousins diverged from each other 2 million years ago, with one going north of the Congo River and the other heading south of it, then, presumably, they took with them the innate tendencies of the common ancestor of them and us from 6 million years ago.

Yet, their behaviours in natural settings today are very different, albeit (as noted above) their behaviours are not clear-cut. We have to conclude that chimpanzees and bonobos learnt differing behaviours. This suggests that they each adopted dissimilar cultures.

Since chimpanzees and bonobos are our closest cousins we could learn something from them.

If we could listen to Cousin Bonobo we might learn how to get along with each other without resorting to murder or warfare. We might also learn how to live in a more egalitarian society in which women bring their nurturing skills and values into the communal setting.

For us to listen to Cousin Bonobo however would mean we would need to give up our belief that we are superior to the “animals” and have nothing to learn from them

Au contraire. We have much to learn.

Notes:

1. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22585935/jane-goodall-chimpanzees-animal-intelligence-human-nature  accessed 20 August 2024.

2. Both chimpanzees and bonobos are endangered. Estimates for chimpanzee numbers in the wild vary from 170,000 to 300,000. Bonobo numbers are much less, estimated at between 30,000 and 50,000