a bonobo humanity?

Time to focus on, and keep focussing on, how a mammal so close to us – no mammal closer, genetically – a highly social mammal like us, with a similar sexual dimorphism to us (though with humans, the individual variations in size and strength are ‘all over the shop’ to use a technical term), became female dominant in the 1.5 million to 2 million years since it became a species apart from its chimp neighbours.

So, first, are bonobos really a species apart? I’ve heard that bonobos and chimps have inter-bred successfully, as did Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis back in the day. A New Scientist article from 10 years ago reports:

The genetic evidence shows that a little less than 1 per cent of the chimpanzee genome came from bonobos, from one contact between 200,000 and 550,000 years ago and another, more recent one less than 200,000 years ago…. It’s not yet clear whether the two episodes of gene flow happened at low levels over a long time or in discrete pulses.

Clearly, then, being separate species isn’t always a barrier, but I suspect genetic disparity is. For example, can a human successfully breed with a chimp or a bonobo? I’m here to ask the tough questions. The answer, sadly, is no, but they’re free to have deeply loving relationships. Okay, humans have 23 chromosome pairs, chimps and bonobos have 24, end of story, at least until we can work out a way…

But getting back to the big issue, female dominance. An article published in Communications Biology in April 2025 has just the title for me: Drivers of female power in bonobos. In the abstract, the authors found… well, let me quote:

Here we test three main hypotheses explaining intersexual power relationships, namely the self-reinforcing effects of winning and losing conflicts, the strength of mate competition, and female coalition formation. We test these for bonobos (Pan paniscus), one of our closest living relatives, where females have high status relative to males despite male-biased size dimorphism. We compiled demographic and behavioural data of 30 years and 6 wild living communities. Our results only support predictions of the female coalition hypothesis (my emphasis).

So, this study makes clear that female coalitions are absolutely central to female dominance in bonobos. And would be absolutely central, IMHO, to female dominance in humans. A bonobo sisterhood indeed. And I should add that this study – a godsend to me – explores gender-based dominance in many mammalian species, with coalitions being generally key to female dominance where it exists.

This is so important. As I’ve written previously, I get push-back from women who say that this female Prime Minister X, or that female boss Y, or my horrible mother Z is somehow proof that women are, at the very least, no better than men, in terms of leadership. I try to suppress my annoyance at this totally irrelevant response. In an environment of male dominance, it’s not surprising that some women will behave ‘more manlier than men’, in order to gain prominence. Indeed, they may feel that they have no other choice. Again I’ll quote the simple remark made by the African-American novelist Toni Morrison: ‘the problem isn’t men, the problem is patriarchy’, to which I respond, ‘the solution isn’t women, it’s matriarchy. It’s sisterhood.’

So my new resolution, to focus more or less exclusively on this issue (a very tough one to keep to, I admit), has made me decide to reread Diane Rosenfeld’s book, referenced below. The book begins with the problem of male domestic violence in the USA. She’s a lawyer, and has dealt with many domestic violence and domestic abuse cases. So, interestingly, I looked up statistics on male domestic violence in the USA, and was shocked to find a listing of male victims of domestic violence in that country. I twice rephrased my enquiry, and both times it gave me the same men-as-victims results. Conspiracy theories anyone? I would generally not entertain such ideas, but in Frumpistan, tout est possible. When I keep trying, I find the statistics are all over the place, but of course women are more often the victims, especially of the more extreme forms of violence, including, unsurprisingly, murder. In February 2026, the FBI released a report on DV over a five-year period, 2020 to 2024:

Over the five-year period studied, the percentage of violent crimes within domestic relationships increased. Law enforcement reported more than 11,000 domestic violence murder victims and an additional 1.1 million victims of domestic violence. Nearly 75 percent of the victims were female.

Again, I would think it most reasonable to assume that if the violence was extreme, or ended in murder, the perpetrator would be male in far more than 75% of cases.

So this post is a statement of intent. To explore and encourage female coalitions – such as those I’ve read about between Palestinian and Israeli women. Women in difficult and male-dominated regions such as Iran, the Arabic world, China, Turkiye, Russia, and presumably many parts of Africa. I’m making guesses here, to some degree, and hopefully, in researching these countries further, I’ll find some silver linings. I don’t think I’ll be looking at the USA in the near future, at least until Frumpistan is no more.

References

Chimps and bonobos interbred and exchanged genes

https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-025-07900-8

Diane L Rosenfeld, The Bonobo Sisterhood: revolution through female alliance, 2022