Back to bonobos, and remembering Kanzi
Here’s looking at you, kid
So, back to bonobos, and the question, how/why did they become female dominant? My guess, which I think is a reasonable one, has always been that they managed, after their separation from chimps due to the formation of the Congo River a couple of million years ago, to find themselves in a region of abundance, in terms of fruit and nuts and small game, so that physical strength wasn’t such an advantage for basic survival (a situation that the WEIRD world finds itself in today, just saying). They seemed to huddle together more, which led to a discovery of erogenous zones, adding to a sense of fellow-feeling. Mmmm. A situation that the WEIRD world does not find itself in today, what with the boxes we live in and the clothes we wear. And our consequent sense of privacy. And all that religious indoctrination, re Sodom and Gomorrah, etc .
So, that fellow-feeling seems to have made bonobos less murderously violent – though they are violent, generally in a protective way, females ganging up against obstreperous males, since the males are still on average the weightiest gender, though that’s apparently reducing. And they’re pretty strong on rough-and-tumble play like chimps, and us, when we’re allowed to be.
A quick bit of research on the reasons for the differences chimes with what I’ve just written – abundance and closeness makes for less work and greater intimacy. And maybe there’s something about females being more of a sisterhood – and that may be because physical, genito-genital rubbing is more pleasurable between females than between males, or between males and females. I suspect that exploring this sexual side – this sexual explanation for the ultimate female supremacy of bonobos – has not been taken very far because of our own sexual coyness. We prefer to think of it as just a matter of hanging out, of females preferring each others’ company in a natural, non-sexual way, or because they share the joys and labours of motherhood….
But I’ve been neglecting my job, and ignoring research findings. From Medical News Today (strangely enough) way back in 2019:
Recently, researchers from various academic institutions — including the Leibniz Institute for Farm Animal Biology in Dummerstorf, Germany, Harvard University in Cambridge, MA, and the University of Zurich in Switzerland — have been looking into why female bonobos display same-sex sexual behaviors. The researchers’ interest in female bonobos in particular arose from the fact that in the wild, all adult females engage in genito-genital rubbing (rubbing the genitals together) on a frequent basis. Although males also engage in same-sex sexual behavior, they do so with less frequency, making the females’ behavior even more remarkable by contrast.
So, there you go, but I must say I don’t find the bonobos’ female-female stuff remarkable. Girl-girl frottage in humans is much more common than the male variety, surely? Or am I just fantasising?
But this above-quoted article has really got me hooked. A key to it all is oxytocin:
After sexual interactions with other females, female bonobos also displayed higher levels of oxytocin in the urine. The same, however, did not occur after they had mated with males. Female bonobos, it seems, derive more pleasure from sexual engagement with other females. This may also allow them to establish themselves as equal to the males in the community — by sticking together.
Not just equal, but superior through force of numbers. Sisterhood is powerful, and female humans take note – more of the genito-genital stuff! More sex and less offspring, surely not such a bad idea. But then, there’s so much non-sexual stuff to deal with – the precise rate of expansion of the universe, and is our universe the only one, and just why is there something rather than nothing, and are such questionings worthwhile, shouldn’t we just shut up and calculate?
All of which makes me wonder – does too much sex, re bonobos, make you stupid? Should we be proud of our ability to sublimate (in the Freudian sense)? Is knowledge more important than kindness? Hmmm. Here’s a quote from the abstract of a 2010 study entitled ‘Differences in the Cognitive Skills of Bonobos and Chimpanzees’:
We compared both species on a wide range of cognitive problems testing their understanding of the physical and social world. Bonobos were more skilled at solving tasks related to theory of mind or an understanding of social causality, while chimpanzees were more skilled at tasks requiring the use of tools and an understanding of physical causality. These species differences support the role of ecological and socio-ecological pressures in shaping cognitive skills over relatively short periods of evolutionary time.
Hardly a surprising finding, though I’m not quite sure what ‘social causality’ means. And quite apart from these social findings, there’s a famous individual example – Kanzi, dubbed, rather ridiculously in my view, ‘the smartest ape that ever lived’ in a video referenced below. Whoever wrote that title seemed not to realise that humans are 100% ape, and also that many of the skills Kanzi learned from his human masters had little to do with the kind of intelligence required to survive and thrive in the bonobo world, not the human one.
Nevertheless, the Kanzi story is fascinating, and it’s unlikely that he was particularly exceptional, though the few bonobos that were also taught similar skills didn’t perform as well. Not only did he come to understand quite a lot of human language, but displayed a ‘theory of mind’, a recognition of others’ mental states as different from one’s own (though this concept seems a bit dicey – even a dog recognises when her master is angry or upset). His ability to chip away at rocks to make effective stone tools was particularly noteworthy and thought-provoking, though it’s likely that the spark for this would’ve come from human minders, and there’s an obvious question about whether he found such tools useful for his own survival, as he spent his life in captivity, without ever having to fend for himself.
Overall, though, Kanzi, who died last year in his mid-forties, has been something of a bridge-builder between human apes and our closest ape relatives. His ability to communicate effectively with humans raises lots of fascinating questions and hopes, especially as he was only a male, too stupid to lord it over the females of his own species. And writing this reminds me of a young, intelligent woman who I befriended at university back in the 90s. She, too, fell for the view that men were more naturally intelligent than women, on average. Such is the legacy of patriarchy.
References
https://www.bonobos.org/blog/bonobos-and-chimps-the-story-of-the-great-divide/
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