12/10/2023 0 Comments Bonobo vs chimpanzee aggression"Later, when we developed the family system, the use of sex for this sort of purpose became more limited, mainly occurring within families. "Ancestral humans behaved like this," proposes Frans de Waal, an ethologist at the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center at Emory University. They seem to treat sex as a pleasurable activity, and they rely on it as a sort of social glue, to make or break all sorts of relationships. Like humans but unlike chimps and most other animals, bonobos separate sex from reproduction. Females presumably prefer face-to-face contact because it feels better. "And then she'll stop, and of course he's really excited, and then she continues face-to-face." Primatologists assume the female preference is dictated by her anatomy: her enlarged clitoris and sexual swellings are oriented far forward. "Sometimes the female will let a male start to mount from behind," says Amy Parish, a graduate student at the University of California at Davis who's been watching female bonobo sexual behavior in several zoo colonies around the world. Males usually mount females from behind, but females seem to prefer sex face-to-face. Males and females frequently copulate face-to-face, which is an uncommon position in animals other than humans. In some ways their sexual behavior seems more human as well, suggesting that in the sexual arena, at least, bonobos are the more appropriate ancestral model. On the ground, moving from fruit tree to fruit tree, bonobos often stand and walk on two legs-behavior that makes them seem more like humans than chimps. But bonobos are more delicate in build, and their arms and legs are long and slender. The largest males are as big as chimps, and the females of the two species are the same size. They were first identified, on the basis of skeletal material, in the 1920s, but it wasn't until the 1970s that their behavior in the wild was studied, and then only sporadically.īonobos, also known as pygmy chimpanzees, are not really pygmies but welterweights. They live only on a small patch of land in Zaire, in central Africa. Bonobos have been less studied than chimps for the simple reason that they are difficult to find. The assumption has been that chimp behavior today may be similar to the behavior of human ancestors.īonobo behavior, however, offers another window on the past because they, too, shared our 5-million-year-old ancestor, diverging from chimps just 2 million years ago. Only about 5 million years ago human beings and chimps shared a common ancestor, and we still have much behavior in common: namely, a long period of infant dependency, a reliance on learning what to eat and how to obtain food, social bonds that persist over generations, and the need to deal as a group with many everyday conflicts. In reconstructing how early man and woman behaved, researchers have generally looked not to bonobos but to common chimpanzees. Primatologists are beginning to study the bonobos' unrestrained sexual behavior for tantalizing clues to the origins of our own sexuality. Lana, Maiko, and Lina are bonobos, a rare species of chimplike ape in which frequent couplings and casual sex play characterize every social relationship-between males and females, members of the same sex, closely related animals, and total strangers. It doesn't even involve people-or rather, it involves them only as observers. This is no orgy staged for an X-rated movie. The two females rub their genitals together, grinning and screaming in pleasure. As he moves away, Lina enfolds Lana in her arms, and they roll over so that Lana is now on top. Lina, a friend of Lana's, approaches from the right and taps Maiko on the back, nudging him to finish. Maiko is on top, and Lana's arms and legs are wrapped tightly around his waist.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |