Posts Tagged ‘abortion’
other primates -some names and habits
This drill monkey carefully tended and groomed her stillborn offspring for some time after giving birth, then started to eat it
So considering that I’m feeling a little bruised by the lunacy of the USA situation, and sorry in particular for the female voters, who deserve better than this, I’ve decided to look for comfort among the bonobos and other primates. So this is largely a self-informing and self-reminding piece.
The term ‘bonobo’ has been described as meaningless, or at least accidental, because it probably comes from a shipping crate bound for Bolobo, in the DRC. This makes me wonder about other names, such as chimpanzee, gorilla and gibbon.
So – chimpanzee comes from one or both Bantu languages, Vili (ci-mpenze) and Luba-Kasai (chimpenze), the second of which is the national language of the DRC. And since they definitively refer to an ape or ‘mock-man’, they have a more authentic ring to them than the name for bonobos, though ‘pygmy chimp’ or even ‘gracile chimp’ seem to go a little far in distinguishing between the two species, which I must say I have trouble doing myself (I tend to look for the head hair parted in the middle).
The name for gorilla is particularly interesting and relatively ancient. The Carthaginian explorer-adventurer Hanno, sailing down the west coast of Africa some 2500 years ago, was told the name by the locals. It apparently means ‘hairy person’, and it has endured to this day.
So what about the most exotic and problematic (pronunciation-wise) ape name of all? Orang-Utans or orangutans are named from two different words, one Malay, ‘orang’, meaning human, the other Indonesian ‘hutan’, meaning ‘forest’. It’s interesting that the humans who lived their lives close to these other primates recognised them almost as family, and of course they were right, probably more right than European-type humans tended to be, until recently.
So, to gibbons – but I’ll interrupt myself to remind myself of the so-called scientific names of all these beasties. Our heroic bonobos are one of two species of the Pan genus, i.e Pan paniscus. Chimps (Pan troglodytes – of which there are four confirmed subspecies, and a fifth yet to be confirmed) are rather more numerous, having ranges extending from the east to the west coast of sub-saharan Africa. Gorillas come in two species, eastern and western. The eastern gorillas (Gorilla beringei) are critically endangered, and the world’s largest living primate. They’re subdivided into lowland and mountain gorillas, the second of which are far less numerous. The western gorillas (Gorilla gorilla – must’ve been the first ones named?) are also subdivided, into the western lowland and the Cross River subspecies. They’re all critically endangered, naturellement. Orangs are classed in the genus Pongo – nothing to do with odour – and they were only recently considered a single species, but now there are three, P abelii, P pygmaeus and P tapanuliensis.
And so, to gibbons, of the family Hylobatidae, which, like the orangutans, are Asian apes. As of today, they’re divided into four genera and twenty species. They’re the great brachiators of the ape world. Here in Adelaide’s zoo we have a very large siamang enclosure – siamangs are the largest of the gibbons – and to watch them swing and hear them hoot is quite spine-tingling.
So I’ve just covered the ‘great apes’, apart from H sapiens. In fact there are five types – humans, bonobos, chimps, gorillas and orangutans. Gibbons are described as ‘lesser apes’, and less related to humans. But I’m particularly interested in male-female relations in all these species, and in other primates, such as female-dominated lemurs (of which there are an extraordinary 108 species). Scientific American has an interesting little online article, posted earlier this year, entitled ‘Females dominate males in many primate species’, which starts with the generally accepted claim that lemurs are outliers in the primate world, with ‘the vast majority of other primates thought to be male-dominated’. It goes on…
But a recent study in Animals calls this assumption into question. Though male power is more common overall among primate species, it’s by no means the default social dynamic. In fact, in 42 percent of the species examined in the study, primates lived in groups in which females were either dominant or on a level playing field with males.
This doesn’t strike me as surprising, for we humans have different fields in which one gender dominates over the other, and this varies within human cultures. It also doesn’t surprise me that we’ve only recently noted the value and power of females in other primate species, since we’re still being awakened to that power and value in humans. The study looked at different features that might contribute to dominance, such as sexual dimorphism, canine teeth size, and number of females simultaneously in heat, and amount of time spent in that state. Sexual dimorphism seems, however, to be the most clear-cut factor, and a little difference, as with chimps v bonobos, can make for a lot of difference. Among humans this dimorphism still exists, but in the context of massive variation, due to hugely varied diets, income levels, and the mechanisation of work. The machismo activity of hunting is going out of fashion, and male child-minding is coming into fashion, though male breast-feeding is still a way into the future, the genetic transformations required being painfully slow*.
Of course, in the vast majority if not all mammalian species, childcare both inside and immediately outside the womb is female business, which brings me to the supposedly vexed issue of abortion. The MSD Veterinary Manual defines abortion thus:
Abortion is the artificial termination of pregnancy after organogenesis is complete but before the fetus is viable. If pregnancy ends naturally before organogenesis, this is called early embryonic death.
This is a rather important distinction, as it seems that some states in the USA (e.g. Texas) have ordered that all pregnancies must be carried to term even if it is clear that there is a serious problem with organogenesis, thus endangering the mother of an already-doomed infant. It’s hard to imagine such an insanely cruel piece of legislation – it brings to mind the good old religious concept of evil. It’s unlikely though that these laws will last long – and I’m thinking in evolutionary time. Even the USA, the most religious nation in the WEIRD world, is becoming less so. They might even have a female President within the next 1000 years or so, and then in another 1000 years they might have progressed enough to have thrown out their shithouse Presidential system entirely. But I dream…
It’s probably fair to say, or at least it’s arguable, that other species don’t abort their offspring, especially if you define abortion as a very deliberate act, for other mammals aren’t deliberate in that way, but not only do they sometimes bring about an early, unviable birth due their own pregnancy sufferings, but they often abandon the runt or runts of the litter in favour of the most viable. It makes evolutionary sense, of course. But the poor, weak, barely viable siblings don’t necessarily live their life in vain, as they often serve as a delicious meal for their stronger brothers and sisters.
Anyway, more on abortion and infanticide in other primates next time, perhaps.
*That was a joke – however some human male breasts can actually produce milk
References
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/females-dominate-males-in-many-primate-species/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orangutan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hylobates
Cat Bohannon, Eve: how the female body drove 200 million years of human evolution, 2023
a bonobo world, and other impossibilities 13
macho macho clan
Chinese culture – not so bonobo
I heard recently that the all-controlling Chinese government provides no sex education for its young citizens, and that the abortion rate is astronomically high there. The government as we know had a one-child policy, starting in the late seventies, and firming into law in 1980. It was abandoned in October 2015. Unsurprisingly, this involved forced abortions, even though abortion was made illegal there in the early 1950s. Anti-abortion law was gradually watered down in ensuing decades. The government in its wisdom, especially under Mao, saw population growth as the key to economic success. Deng Xiaoping, who became China’s numero uno in 1978, saw things differently as China’s population soared.
Journalist Mei Fong, who wrote a book about the one-child policy, points out that, among many other negative effects, the policy led to widespread abortions of female infants, since in China as in most other countries, male offspring are more highly valued. Not the case, of course, for bonobos.
Humans are the only apes who are capable of aborting the not-yet-born. They have also, throughout their history, engaged in infanticide, as have other animals. But of course another, rather recent development has had a powerful influence on our reproductive behaviour, that of contraception. Religious organisations, such as the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church, frown upon the practice, though their holy scriptures are of course mute on the matter, and practising Catholics worldwide have largely ignored church teachings, preferring pleasure to abstinence. Other Christian denominations, and Islamic and Hindu religious leaders tend to be more accepting, though there are no doubt conservative naysayers.
Bonobos are highly sexual, though of course not as much as many humans, but they eschew contraception, and yet their birth rate is low, and infanticide has never been observed among them, unlike among chimps. Of course their genito-genital frottage is most often used to relieve tension, and generally among females – and more power to that – but more importantly, bonobos present themselves in estrus even when they can’t conceive. Their all-round availability to males – when they’re in the mood (males have occasionally had the tips of their penises bitten off by disgruntled females – and more power to that) means there’s less competition between male bonobos than there is between male chimps. The low birth rate is presumably explained by the fact that full-blown in-out-in-out is no more common among bonobos than it is among chimps. It’s also likely that year-round availability means that total rumpy-pumpy is spread out over the year and isn’t concentrated only in the fertile period. With bonobos, not every sperm is sacred.
Getting back to China and abortions, obviously if you have no way of discovering, through normal educational channels, the biological facts of pregnancy, and your family and local community, wedded to Confucian or other traditions of sexual modesty and general avoidance of discussing this all-too-basic animal instinct, that instinct might just get the better of you before you become aware of the consequences. So the Chinese authorities appear to have used abortion as an easy solution to the problem. With their peculiar top-down administration (peculiar to we in liberal democratic countries, but China’s communist party has essentially taken over the role of the all-powerful Manchu administration of previous centuries, so they’re used to it), the Chinese seem to have been persuaded in toto that abortion isn’t a moral issue. But of course there’s an exception – whereas in previous decades it was a duty to limit your offspring, now it’s becoming a duty to refuse sexually selected abortion, in favour of boys. This male-female imbalance has become a serious issue, brought about by a patriarchal administration blind to the problems created by the patriarchy that it continues to uphold. The Chinese Communist Party is of course no more communist than the strife-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo or the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea are democratic. It is a complex, multi-faceted, circumlocutory organisation, but its most important decision-making office is the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC), which consists of a handful of the most powerful political figures in the country, including the General Secretary (currently Xi Jinping). Since its full establishment in the 1950s, the PSC has had 57 members, of which 57 have been male. The CCP has in recent decades promoted capitalism, which it now calls, inter alia, Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. Whatever that means, it definitely does not allow for bourgeois liberalisation, a term deliberately singled out. Long story short, no sex education in schools – or very little, often too late. Homosexuality, in particular, is a touchy matter – and more power to that – which neither the government nor parents are particularly willing to confront. However, it’s probably fair to assume that, as far as attitudes can change, they will do so in the right direction – towards a bonobo world, rather than away from it.
Meanwhile, the impact of all this conservatism weighs more heavily on girls and young women, of course. And it’s not just in the matter of sex and pregnancy that Chinese females are getting a raw deal. Women in China have recently demonstrated, in small numbers, about such matters as the dearth of female public toilet facilities, and the very high rate of domestic violence in the country. And they’ve been punished for it, imprisoned, harassed, and belittled by government thugs, who also harass their families and workplaces into keeping them in line. Some of these women have become heroes of the international feminist movement, but are unknown in their own country due to the CCP’s stranglehold on the social media network. And yet, reform will gradually come. The mighty male Chinese government hates to be humiliated by protesting ‘little girls’, so it silences them and then, knowing full well the justice of the women’s cause, makes a few changes in the right direction. And maybe if they, the women, are lucky, the next General Secretary, though surely another male, will be a little more of a bonobo, and there will be just a little more free love and a little less domestic warfare in the land.
References
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Chinese-Communist-Party
https://bonobohumanity.blog/wp-admin/post.php?post=8955&action=edit