Duke research team will help return 17 of the primates to Congo's jungle.
Bonobos, members of the ape family, can live as long as 60 years, stand up to 5 feet tall and weigh as much as 150 pounds. In general, they are slightly smaller and far more passive than chimpanzees.
DURHAM Brian Hare wants you to care about the bonobo, a saucy, endangered primate that needs a better publicist.
For generations, bonobos have lived just outside the limelight, even as their far more well-known cousin, the common chimpanzee, became a cause célèbre, largely through the good works of famed anthropologist Jane Goodall.
“(For Bonobos), there was no beautiful girl on the cover of National Geographic,” said Hare, an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University. “They have a serious marketing problem.”
Hare has spent much of the last several years studying primates in Africa. Later this month, he'll take a small research team there to monitor the first release of bonobos from a sanctuary into the wild.
Hare seeks academic discovery in these intellectually advanced creatures. Chimps and bonobos are the species closest in makeup to humans, sharing 98 percent of our DNA. Their actions and tendencies in the wild may lead Hare to conclusions about human evolution and behavior.
And bonobos have personality. Females are dominant in this species, which settles disputes with sex rather than aggression. If they were human, they'd be like TV's “Desperate Housewives.”
Bonobos exist in the wild in just one country, the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire, in central Africa. Experts estimate there are between 5,000 and 50,000 remaining in the wild. To get a more precise estimate you'd have to tromp through dense jungle while avoiding tribal rebels, deadly snakes and tropical diseases.
“That is the extreme of what field researchers have to endure,” Hare said.
Bonobos to be released, then watched
Young bonobos usually end up at the Congolese sanctuary – the only one of its kind in the world – after their mother, to whom they cling for the first several years of life, is killed. Hunters routinely kill adult bonobos for food and to sell infants, illegally, as pets.
Hare's team includes a Duke student, a Congolese student and a Harvard researcher and student. They will watch what happens as 17 bonobos are released into a 50,000-acre section of Congo where the locals have agreed not to hunt them. They'll follow them around to see how they eat, sleep and interact with other animals.
Though Hare studies chimpanzees and other primates, as well as dogs, he clearly has a soft spot for the bonobo. On his Duke Web page, the spot where his headshot photo is supposed to go is instead occupied by a closely cropped picture of a bonobo, complete with ruffled brow and a slight grin.
There are no bonobos in North Carolina. While several U.S. zoos display them, including those in San Diego and Milwaukee, the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro has never had any. It does have 14 common chimpanzees.
Bonobos are a type of ape, along with common chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans.
Bonobos are slowly gaining some recognition, said Rich Bergl, the N.C. Zoo's curator of conservation and research. Over the last decade or so, a couple of books have been written on them, perhaps prompted by their dwindling numbers. They offer much to academia, Bergl said, since their genetic makeup is so similar to that of humans.
“They really give an insight into what makes people people,” Bergl said. “They allow us to see large similarities between us and our closest neighbors, and the differences.”
The bonobo difference: Girl power
While chimpanzees can be aggressive and dangerous, bonobos are lovers. Females dictate the terms in bonobo society, so much so that if a male picks on a female, all the other ladies in the area will gang up and beat him up.
“It's total girl power,” Hare said.
It gets naughtier.
“If they meet [bonobo] strangers, there might be some vocalization, and they might just have sex,” Hare said. “When bonobos get anxious, they want to have sex. It makes them feel better. In my mind, they're the most intelligent species on the planet.”
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