Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

  Unlike chimp females, among whom estrus is advertised and is a time of pronounced sexual receptivity, bonobo females display genital swellings about half the time; and they’re nearly always attractive to the adult males. We recall that common chimps, Pan troglodytes, like almost all animals, have sex with the male entering the female’s vagina from behind, his front against her back. But in bonobos, about a quarter of the time, the matings are face-to-face. This is the position the females seem to prefer, probably because their clitorises are large and positioned far forward compared to chimps. Bonobos indicate their mutual attraction by prolonged gazing into one another’s eyes, a practice which precedes almost all their matings, and which is unknown among common chimps. The initiation of sexual activity among the bonobos is mutual, unlike the chimps, where it is peremptory and nearly always by the males. While in general, especially in larger social contexts, male bonobos dominate females, this is not always the case, especially when they’re alone together. At night, in the forest canopy, a male and a female will sometimes snuggle up together in the same nest of leaves. Adult chimps never do.

  The sexual activity of common chimps, which by human standards seems obsessive to the point of mania, is almost puritanical by bonobo standards. The average number of penile thrusts in an average copulation—a measure of sexual intensity that primatologists are drawn to, in part because it can be quantified—is around forty-five for bonobos, compared to less than ten for chimps. The number of copulations per hour is 2½ times greater for bonobos than for chimps—although these observations are for bonobos in captivity, where they may have more time on their hands or more need for mutual comfort than when they are free. Less than a year after giving birth, bonobo females are ready to resume their lives of sexual abandon; it takes three to six years for chimp females.20

  Bonobos use sexual stimulation in everyday life for many purposes besides mere satisfaction of the erotic impulse—for quieting infants (a practice said once to have flourished also among Chinese grandmothers), as a means of resolving conflict among adults of the same sex, as barter for food, and as a generic, all-purpose approach to social bonding and community organization. Less than a third of the sexual contacts among bonobos involve adults of opposite sexes. Males will rub rumps together or engage in oral sex in ways unheard of among the more prudish chimps; females will rub their genitalia together, and sometimes prefer it to heterosexual contacts. Females characteristically engage in genital rubbing just before they’re about to compete for food or for attractive males; it seems to be a way of reducing tension. In times of stress, a bonobo male will spread his legs and present his penis to his adversary in a friendly gesture.

  Despite these differences in nuance, bonobos are still chimpanzees. There’s a male dominance hierarchy, although not nearly as pronounced as among common chimps; dominant males have preferential access to females, although males do not always dominate females; there are submissive gestures and greetings; the size of groups is about the same as with chimps, a few dozen; adolescent females wander over to adjacent groups; the males preferentially hunt animal prey, although apparently not in hunting parties; males are proportionately larger than the females by about the same ratio as among chimps; and encounters between groups sometimes become violent—although groups may also on encountering one another, behave very peaceably and laid-back. Infanticide and all other killing of bonobo by bonobo are, so far, unknown. Their standard initial response on meeting unfamiliar humans, as we ourselves experienced, is a very chimp-like, and adequately intimidating, charging display.

  Grooming is most frequent between males and females and least common between males and males, the reverse of chimp practice. The grin serves not mainly as a gesture of submission, but performs a range of functions similar to those of the human smile. Male bonding is much weaker than in chimp society, and the social position of females much stronger. Certain mothers and sons associate closely until the son becomes an adult; among chimps the relationship tends more often to be broken off when the young male reaches adolescence. Social skills for resolving conflicts are much more highly developed among the bonobos than among the chimps, and dominant individuals are much more generous in making peace with their adversaries.

  If we feel a certain revulsion at having hamadryas baboons as relatives, we may take some comfort from our connection with the gibbons and the bonobos. Indeed, we’re far more closely related to the apes than to the monkeys. Chimps and bonobos are certainly members of the same genus and, according to some taxonomic classifications, even the same species. Given that, it’s startling how different they are from one another. Perhaps many of the distinctions between the two—ranging from the frequency, increased variety, and social utility of sex to the relatively higher status of females—are due to the evolution in the bonobos of a new step: abandoning the monthly badge of ovulation, graduating from estrus. Perhaps when ovulation is not evident at a glance or a sniff, females can be viewed as more than sexual property.

  The primates are so rich in potential that even a small change in anatomy or physiology may provide an aperture to a universe never dreamt of in the rude sleeping pallets made each night in the low branches of the once-vast tropical forests.

  SOME SKETCHES FROM LIFE

  Monkeys:

  Monkeys are liable to many of the same non-contagious diseases as we are … Medicines produced the same effect on them as on us. Many kinds of monkeys have a strong taste for tea, coffee, and spirituous liquors: they will also, as I have myself seen, smoke tobacco with pleasure. Brehm asserts that the natives of north-eastern Africa catch the wild baboons by exposing vessels with strong beer, by which they are made drunk. He has seen some of these animals, which he kept in confinement, in this state; and he gives a laughable account of their behaviour and strange grimaces. On the following morning they were very cross and dismal; they held their aching heads with both hands, and wore a most pitiable expression: when beer or wine was offered them, they turned away with disgust, but relished the juice of lemons. An American monkey, an Ateles, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus was wiser than many men. These trifling facts prove how similar the nerves of taste must be in monkeys and man, and how similarly their whole nervous system is affected.21

  Eastern Mountain Gorillas:

  When two animals meet on a narrow trail the subordinate gives the right-of-way; subordinates also yield their sitting place if approached by superiors. Sometimes the dominant animal intimidates the subordinate by starting at it. At most it snaps its mouth or taps the body of the other animal with the back of its hand.22

  Monkeys:

  [P]hallic threatening, derived from a sexual domination gesture (mounting), … has been described among many monkey species in both the Old World and the New. Among guenons and baboons, a few males always sit with their back to the group keeping guard, displaying their strikingly colored penis and their sometimes similarly strikingly colored testicles. If a stranger to the group approaches too closely, the guards actually have an erection; so-called “rage copulations” also take place.23

  Squirrel monkeys:

  The displaying monkey vocalizes, spreads one thigh, and directs the fully erect penis toward the head or chest of the other animal. The display is seen in its most dramatic form when a new male is introduced into an established colony of squirrel monkeys … Within seconds all males begin to display to the strange monkey, and if the new male does not remain quiet with its head bowed, it will be viciously attacked.24

  Brown capuchin monkeys:

  An estrous female will shadow the dominant male for days. At frequent intervals she approaches him closely, grimaces at him while giving a distinctive vocalization, pushes him on the rump, and shakes branches at him. When she is ready to copulate, she charges him, he runs away, she follows, and when he stops running, they mate.25

  Orangutans:

  At midcycle, a female orangutan will seek out the dominant male in her vicinity. At othe
r times during her cycle, young males and subordinate males will sometimes cluster around her and it appears that she is being forced to mate with them. She resists, she screams, she fights, but they mate with her anyway. It is either a good act, or it’s the equivalent to rape. Primatologists try not to use that term. People tend to get upset.26

  Lemurs:

  In Lemur catta, the incidence of aggression within groups is high, particularly between males. Aggression takes the form of-chasing, cuffing, scent marking, and, in males, stink fighting … Acts of submission include retreat or cowering as a dominant animal approaches, and low-ranking males habitually walk with lowered head and tail carriage, lagging behind the group and generally avoiding other animals. Females are much less frequently aggressive than males, and the female dominance hierarchy is less easy to detect, although the few agonistic encounters observed suggest that it is stable. Yet, “at any time … a female may casually supplant any male or irritably cuff him over the nose and take a tamarind pod from his hand.”27

  Monkeys:

  In most monkeys with multimale groups, tolerant or cooperative relationships among males are rare or unknown. Male-male grooming, for example, is virtually nonexistent in rhesus monkeys … [I]f grooming ever occurs, it is given entirely by subordinates to dominant males …, unlike the more reciprocal system in chimpanzees. As another example, Watanabe … studied alliance formation among Japanese macaques. Out of 905 cases only 4 alliances were between adult males. Relationships between males in these groups are thus primarily competitive.28

  Stumptail monkeys:

  The two newcomer adult females … were thus repeatedly mounted as well as bullied by the three subadult males and the higher ranking juvenile male throughout their stay. This forced mounting might be considered as rape, in the sense that the female was obviously unreceptive and unwilling. She kept crouching while the male forcibly lifted her hindquarters, shook and even bit her, and ignored her screams and dismount signals.29

  Stumptail monkeys:

  At the very moment that the round-mouthed expression appeared on the female’s face and the hoarse vocalizations were uttered, the equipment registered a sudden acceleration of her heart rate, from 186 to 210 beats per minute, and intense uterine contractions.

  Actually, this experiment concerned reassurance behavior. The female’s partners were other females … [It] can be demonstrated that the sexual posture that stumptails often adopt during reconciliation is accompanied by physiological signs of orgasm. This is not to say that sexual climax is achieved during every reconciliation.… [Nature] has provided stumptails with a built-in incentive for making up with their enemies.30

  Colobine monkeys:

  [I]nfants are often passed around to other females from soon after birth. This pattern may continue for the first few months of life. In particular contrast to some macaques and baboons, every colobine infant has free access to every other infant, and females of all ranks have free access to all infants. Swapping of infants may be one of the roots of the [comparatively] nonaggressive colobine society …

  A very interesting feature of colobine intertroop encounters is the fact that they have readily available means of avoiding such contact. As arboreal animals occupying upper story vegetation which provides a relatively unobstructed view of surroundings, and as possessors of loud, sonorous vocalizations, colobine groups could rather easily avoid contact. Nevertheless, contact is frequent. Colobines maintain troop separation by one or a combination of the following: variable movement patterns, the male whoop vocalization, and male vigilance behavior.

  … Excitement is high during this stage, which includes tremendous leaping and running through the tree tops, as is evidenced by frequent defecation and urination. Another indication of high excitement and/or tension is the fact that males may have penile erections …

  The most common dominant signals include grinning, staring, biting air, slapping the ground, lunging, chasing, bobbing the head, and mounting another animal. Submissive gestures include presenting the hindquarters, looking away, running away, turning one’s back to another animal, and being mounted … The higher the animal’s position in the dominance hierarchy, the wider the personal space it controls which a less dominant animal may not enter without first clarifying its intent.31

  Monkeys:

  [A]s long as the infant monkey should be riding on its mother, whether it is injured or even dead, its mother will continue to carry it. If she stops carrying it, an adult male is likely to go to her and to bark at her and in this sense make it clear to her that she should continue carrying the infant. We had one case in our small colony at Berkeley where a mother carried her dead infant for two days and dropped it, and then the dominant adult male of the troop picked the infant up and carried it for two more days before discarding it.32

  Vervet monkeys:

  In 1967, T. T. Struhsaker reported that East African vervet monkeys gave different-sounding alarm calls to at least three different predators: leopards, eagles, and snakes. Each alarm elicited a different, apparently adaptive response from other vervets nearby. Struhsaker’s observations were important because they suggested that nonhuman primates might in some cases use different sounds to designate different objects or types of danger in the external world …

  Seyfarth, Cheney, and Marler … began by tape-recording alarm calls given by vervets in actual encounters with leopards, eagles, and snakes. Then they played tape-recordings of alarm calls in the absence of predators and filmed the monkeys’ responses.

  [W]hile adult vervet monkeys restrict their eagle alarm calls to a small number of genuine avian predators, infants give alarm calls to many different species, some of which present no danger. Eagle alarms given by infants, however, are not entirely random and are restricted to objects flying in the air … From a very early age, therefore, infants seem predisposed to divide external stimuli into different classes of danger. This general predisposition is then sharpened with experience, as infants learn which of the many birds they encounter daily pose a threat to them …

  [But] … experiments offer no proof that primates in the wild recognize the relationship between a vocalization and its referent.33

  Squirrel monkeys:

  The Gothic variety of the male squirrel monkey provides a most graphic example. He signals 1) his aim to dominate another male, 2) his intention to assault him, and 3) his amorous ideas about a female—all three—by shoving his erect phallus into the face of the other monkey while grinding his teeth. The courtship display is identical to the aggressive display. Ethologists have found this crossed-wire phenomenon in numerous reptilian and lower forms.34

  Hamadryas baboons:

  [Y]oung males … present in situations which provoke fear. They employ sexual approach in obtaining access to each other and to entice a fellow for play. They masturbate and mount each other. They mount and are mounted by adult males and by adult females, their heterosexual activities not provoking aggressive responses from the overlords. They engage in manual, oral and olfactory ano-genital examination with animals of their own age and with adults of both sexes. They frequently end a sexual act by biting the animal with whom they have been in contact. This end to sexual activity, which is not usually seen in the behaviour of adults, often appears to be playful.35

  Baboons:

  Sir Andrew Smith, a zoologist whose scrupulous accuracy was known to many persons, told me the following story of which he was himself an eye-witness; at the Cape of Good Hope an officer had often plagued a certain baboon, and the animal, seeing him approaching one Sunday for parade, poured water into a hole and hastily made some thick mud, which he skilfully dashed over the officer as he passed by, to the amusement of many bystanders. For long afterwards the baboon rejoiced and triumphed whenever he saw his victim.36

  Baboons:

  In Abyssinia, Brehm encountered a great troop of baboons who were crossing a valley: some had already ascended the opposite mountain, and some were still in the valley:
the latter were attacked by the dogs, but the old males immediately hurried down from the rocks, and with mouths widely opened, roared so fearfully, that the dogs quickly drew back. They were again encouraged to attack; but by this time all the baboons had reascended the heights, excepting a young one, about six months old, who, loudly calling for aid, climbed on a block of rock, and was surrounded. Now one of the largest males, a true hero, came down again from the mountain, slowly went to the young one, coaxed him, and triumphantly led him away—the dogs being too much astonished to make an attack.37

  Titis and other small monkeys:

  Hidden among the tangled branches and vines of the Neotropical forests are the most paternal of primate fathers. The monogamously mated males of the small titi (Callicebus sp.) and night monkeys and the tiny Callimiconidae and Callitrichidae are unique in the intensity and duration of their relations with infants … Males of these species share all parental duties except nursing, and although the extent of participation is quite variable within species, they are generally the major caretakers of infants …

  Males in these species are often strongly attracted to infants. Immediately after birth, they have been observed trying to sniff, touch, or hold the still-bloody newborn, and they sometimes even lick off the covering birth fluids … Within hours of birth, males carry infants on their backs, groom them, and protect them … Large portions of a male’s day are devoted to infant care, and the most devoted fathers return their infants to the mother only to suckle …