Save the Bonobo

Bonobos exhibit some of the highest levels of cooperation found in nature, yet their lives are threatened by war and habitat loss. You can help protect them by supporting WWF’s conservation work.

Bonobos use sexual behavior to manage tension and maintain competing interests, and also use their limbs to regulate emotions, such as whimpering.

Social Behavior

Bonobos stand out among great apes when it comes to social behaviors: female-centered, egalitarian and inherently peaceful creatures who prefer sexual over aggressive interactions. In the wild, bonobos spend 35-61% of their time foraging and 13-37% relaxing; their nests consist of living branches woven together and intertwined to form large, comfortable beds made of branches that twist together forming large bedlike nests made up of twisting living branches interwoven to form large beds; bonobos use leaves or bark to camouflage their nests making them virtually invisible from predators such as leopards and others.

Researchers have also discovered that bonobos are eager to share food, even helping strangers to obtain it from containers. And just like humans, bonobos show signs of empathy–an Italian study revealed that when one bonobo yawned, others also did as an expression of solidarity.

Bonobos live in large communities in the wild, while chimpanzees tend to live alone or with close family members. Bonobos devote more of their time and attention to social activities; moreover, they tend to tolerate non-related dyads more easily than chimpanzees.

Nest Building

Bonobos, like other great apes, construct elevated nests composed of branches and foliage to sleep in at night. Measuring these nests allows researchers to estimate the population at different geographical scales as well as determine individual number.

However, factors such as rainfall, group and sex all impact nest construction and decay rates; there may also be significant variations between sites as to when and how this behavior occurs.

Comparisons of data from two separate sites in the Congo showed that female bonobos built day nests more frequently and in larger trees than their male counterparts, suggesting they are adapting better to the habitat in which they reside. Females also used the nest more often for social grooming than their counterparts did; when encounters did arise they usually fled from these potential threats quickly. Bonobos rarely show aggression towards members from other communities but when encounters do arise they generally escape quickly as an escape mechanism.

Juvenile Development

Bonobos are social mammals who form strong bonds with members of their party, particularly females. When conflicts arise they use affiliative behavior such as grooming and consoling to diffuse them and engage in same-sex behaviors to bond further and enjoy themselves; territories are rarely established thus eliminating fights altogether.

Young bonobos spend much of their time close to their mothers. Until they are strong enough to join her party, both male and female juvenile bonobos cling tightly to their mothers’ chests as they explore their environment.

Researchers conducted one study which demonstrated that juvenile bonobos play more often and for longer than their chimpanzee counterparts, showing an increased degree of empathy-related responses compared to chimps; this could be attributed to differences between infancy and juvenility that occur due to different developmental shifts between age 1 and 2.

Sexual Selection

Bonobos’ strong sexual interest may seem odd given that they do not form nuclear families like humans do; instead they prefer male-male relationships over female-female ones; food or cardboard boxes often spark male-male acts of pseudocopulation where one male will hang from a branch while rubbing his scrotum against anothers buttocks, while penis-fencing involves two men standing back-to-back and briefly rubbing their penises together before switching places again.

Bonobos use sexual interaction to strengthen group bonds and manage conflicts within communities. When new females arrive, they approach one or more senior residents and attempt to establish close ties through frequent genital rubbing and grooming sessions; if this relationship develops reciprocally, she gains entry gradually into the group – an approach which in natural settings protects infanticide prevention and allows those of higher rank females to defend their territories against male attackers.