For the past few decades the African apes called bonobos have been the favorite animal of the social liberals. The reason is that bonobos are regarded as peace-loving, love-making animals. At the Bonobo Conservation Institute they describe bonobos as "hippie" chimps who "make love, not war." Supposedly bonobos are bisexual apes who engage in incessant and indiscriminate sexual activity as an alternative to power struggles and male wars of domination. I'm surprised the Democratic Party hasn't changed its symbol from the donkey to the bonobo.
Well, maybe the liberals should put their bonobsession on hold for a while...
The July 30 issue of the New Yorker has a fascinating article on the work of the German anthropologist Gottfried Hohmann, who is considered the world's leading authority on bonobos in the wild. The key term here is "in the wild." Most of the research on bonobos to date has been done by the Dutch anthropologist Frans de Waal. Studying bonobos in cages, de Waal discovered that bonobos seem to have sex a lot: oral sex, anal sex, all kinds of sex. In de Waal's famous portrait, the bonobo emerges as a creature much more interested in sex than in work or power or anything else. In other words, de Waal's bonobos bore a startling similarity to the Dutch.
Hohmann's work shows that de Waal got it mostly wrong. Yes, bonobos act a bit weird in captivity, but what would you do if you were stuck in a cage? What else is there to do except look for unoccupied orifices? Just as people in prisons engage in all kinds of strange behavior, so too bonobos that are locked up behave in unnatural ways. "Unnatural" here means anti-Darwinian. Hohman's suspicions about de Waal's work were aroused by his recognition that the peace-loving promiscuous bonobo would not make sense under Darwin's theory of evolution. Darwin posits a struggle for existence and throughout nature this means a struggle for survival, reproduction and power. So how could bonobos be different?
Turns out they aren't. Observe bonobos in the wild for long periods of time, and they don't act much different from other kinds of apes. De Waal's famous contrast between the bonobo and the chimpanzee turns out to be largely illusory. Bonobos too have power struggles. There is patriarchy among bonobos, just as with other apes. "It was so easy for Frans to charm everyone," Hohmann says. "He had the big stories. We don't have the big stories." What Hohmann is leaving out here is the human tendency to distort evidence to suit our prejudices. Libertines and other social liberals loved Margaret Mead's now-discredited accounts of promiscuity in Samoa because they made the Samoans into libertines. Once the Samoans were shown not to conform to the liberal expectation, bonobos were fashioned into the new Samoans.
Now the liberals have to look for another mascot. Who will it be: the Andalusian ant? The New Zealand platypus? Perhaps these fellows should stick with the donkey.
Reader Comments ( Page 3 of 4)
31. Does he seriously think that all liberally minded people are promiscuous? I'm definitely liberally minded in most areas. If people want to do it and it's not hurting or involving me or involving another person without their consent, they can have at it. That definitely doesn't mean I'll be involved, because I won't if it has anything to do with promiscuity!
But I would rather people around me honest about who and what they are, that way I know where they stand. I don't like people to hide themselves and pretend to be like me, I hate that!!
Quit lumping people together!
Amanda at 8:11PM on Aug 3rd 2007
32. Most homo sapiens live neither in cages nor in the jungle.
Joe Bob at 8:23PM on Aug 3rd 2007
33. I thought bonobos madde turkish taffy? Mmmmmmmmmm. turkish taffy.
Charles Almon at 10:41PM on Aug 3rd 2007
34. We can learn a lot from monkeys in captivity. I frequently meet people, all day, I'd like to throw feces at.
Charles Almon at 10:46PM on Aug 3rd 2007
35. Hello? The real story is not about bonobos so much as about the people who write about them. A lot of so-called scholarship is not subject to any meaningful peer review, let alone verification; it's just passed along to an undiscriminating media and a gullable public. DD may like to jab the Democrats while he's at it, but the take-home news is about people, not apes. Sheesh! A Real Liberal could give him a vigorous fight on fair terms, but he's got nothing to fear from this bunch. And no material, either.
HM at 1:38AM on Aug 4th 2007
36. dinesh comes off as a petulant, snotty and very articulate child, but this piece was pretty funny. I bet coulter sleeps w/a picture of this guy under her pillow.
I do remember reading a couple free love-ape stories. I thought at the time the subject was politicised. but dinesh, was the sex ape really such an insidous, crypto-liberal weapon of propaganda?
well, I guess we probably can't be too careful these days regarding information being manipulated for ideological purposes, can we? we might find ourselves setting up camp in tehran...
geisler at 2:06AM on Aug 4th 2007
37. The perfect liberal is a cross between donkey, snake, and monkey. . . stubborn, deceptive, and perverted. You kind of feel sorry for them in a way because their guilt laden demanding shrieks are just ways to hide thier lack of intelligence. They cannot stand intelligence superior to their own. This motivates their devouring passion to aspire and bring the more fortunante down. It is the strategy of envy.
robert decell at 4:22PM on Aug 4th 2007
38. .... then it dawned on me... Dinesh D'Souza is trying to be funny!!!
(..think I'm gonna throw up now...)
pboyfloyd at 7:19PM on Aug 4th 2007
39.
"THIER" lack of intelligence ?
You know - anyone can make a mistake or two - but how many times do we see this type of thing from "superior" intellects discussing the "lack of intelligence" from others ? As far as being more FORTUNANTE goes - I really don't think that there are many out there who envy your "superior intelligence."
max at 3:47PM on Aug 5th 2007
40. Well at least now the Left will stop politicizing these poor monkeys.
Now lets see, which other animal will they turn to now?
Ken Berg at 1:05PM on Aug 6th 2007
41. D'Souza arguments are the typical strawman trash rightists use and distorting the facts, another rightwing tactic. He tries to impose a moral system (hypocritical Victorianism no doubt) on chimps by calling their behavoir promiscuous and the same goes for the Samoans. Meade never claims the Samoans were promiscuous, she just observed they like all the Polynesian cultures enjoyed a variety of sexual experimentation before settling into monogamous relationships (far more stable than any rightwing marriage), before the corruption by Christian missionaries. This is an offshoot of the minimal sexual shaming in their culture. Conservatism is wholly shame-based thus the greatest source of human suffering. The greatest crime to a conservative is thinking different from them, which is why they accept murder of others so readily.
All the apes and monkeys who live in groups have a peeking order as to mating with the dominate male either getting first shot as a female goes into heat (gorillas) or simply hording all the eligible females (many species).
He takes a swipe at the Dutch for legalized prostitution while ignoring the fact the clients of the Dutch prostitutes are mostly foreign businessmen, the same group who keep the trade in 12 y/o girls flourishing in SE asia (Neil Bush for one) and who fund the modern conservative movement AKA Nazis.
I have yet to hear or read a conservative argument was logical, factual, or wasn't a clear appeal to the irrational.
Larry at 8:38PM on Aug 6th 2007
42. The real reason why Bonobos may be promiscuous in captivity may have to do more with instinct than boredom. While humans might seek to use sex as a form of 'entertainment', primates' sex drives are based on the successful prorogation of the species.Consider that apes that engage in group sex (i.e., multiple males taking turns at intercourse with one female) are not participating in a drunken fraternity party
but, it turns out, have very low sperm counts necessitating that practice in order to maintain a viable population.
Obviously, these apes could not understand this intellectually but, nevertheless, the instinctive drive compensated for what by human standards would be thought of as a deficiency.
Likewise, the Bonobos would feel a certain stress in captivity brought about by being placed in a finite environment, with a limited number of their own kind. Were they to make this decision intellectually, they might come to the conclusion that their own individual survival would be best served by the conservation of resources (i.e., humans under stress have a harder time conceiving), but unable to process the problem intellectually, instinct tells them to behave in a way that has always guaranteed the survival of their species--increase their number.
Also, considering the stress of captivity, sex may be in part motivated by the 'reward' of endorphin release that accompanies orgasm. These endorphins create a sense of 'well-being' and thus a relief from the stress. Hence,like many humans, they become addicted to repeating the behavior.
Keith J. Mohrhoff at 8:11AM on Aug 7th 2007
43. When I first fell in love with bonobos in the early 1990’s, none of my acquaintances knew a bonobo from a bonsai tree. Now, these amazing apes, who swing with each other as well as from the trees, have become rather famous.
Of course, with fame comes defamation. So I wasn’t surprised to see Ian Parker gently but firmly attempting to deflate the bouyant, mystical aura of the bonobo in the esteemed pages of The New Yorker, subtly deriding the work of some of the bonobos’ best friends in the human world, and hinting ominously that his article would be debunking the central ideas of what I call “The Bonobo Way.” These include the notions that 1) bonobos engage in various, rather elaborate forms of pleasure sex, not just reproductive sex, 2) they do not seem to deliberately murder or make war on members of their own species like common chimps and humans do, and 3) females wield considerably more power than in other primate species.
Parker does provide a fascinating, sometimes breathtakingly descriptive look at the daily life of a bonobo researcher in the Congolese Rainforest, as well as a comprehensive overview of bonobo primatology politics. He is particularly telling when he writes “The challenges of bonobo research call for chimpanzee vigor, and this leads to animosities,” including, I would add, the strong, almost vicious desire to debunk one another.
But in the end, Parker’s article debunks nothing. He gives a few examples of bonobos committing acts of violence, but not murder, at least not with any real evidence. No one has ever said bonobos are angels, just that as primates, they are relatively peaceful. They have never been observed engaging in calculated murder or organized warfare such as has been observed in common chimps and, of course, humans. Parker’s piece doesn’t include anything even approaching a bonobo war party. Interestingly, almost all of the examples of violence mentioned in the article are perpetrated by females, buttressing the notion that females rule, at least in certain vital areas of life in Bonoboland.
Then there’s the sex. Most experts agree that bonobos tend to combine food-sharing and sex. This is one reason why Japanese Primatologist Takayoshi Kano got to observe so much sex and sensuality among bonobos in the wild: he fed them. Gottfried Hohmann, the primatologist “star” of Parker’s piece who takes him into the Heart of Darkness, doesn’t feed the bonobos. Both approaches seem to be legitimate ways to gather information, each having its pros and cons. When you feed or “provision” bonobos, they’re a lot more likely to hang around you, engaging in intimate activities. When you don’t feed them, you’re not influencing their behavior so much. But they’re also not so inclined to get near you, let alone have sex in front of you.
They’re also more likely to catch and kill their own food. After all, they’re hungry! Wild bonobos must be especially famished since their rainforest home has been decimated by constant human warfare, bushmeat poaching and the logging industry. The stress of all this ecological devastation and the reduction of their normal food supply, as well as constantly seeing their family members and friends being violently slaughtered by hunters, must have a traumatizing effect on the bonobos still left in the jungle, just as polar bears have lately been turning to cannibalism because longer seasons without ice keep them from getting to their natural food. It will be illuminating to hear from Hohman when he finally publishes papers on his recent discoveries in the wilds of war-riddled, ecologically damaged Lui Kotal. But the observations he has made thus far do not negate the earlier, pre-war findings of Kano and others.
By the way, I had never heard from any of the experts that bonobos were vegetarians. Kano had reported that bonobos occasionally eat meat of other species, like we do (actually, a lot less than we do).
Hohmann’s oddest observation is about female bonobo “g-g rubbing,” genito-genital rubbing, “hoka-hoka,” or what Parker refers to as “frottage,” when one female rubs her swollen vulva against the vulva of another. Hohman and his team have observed this numerous times, as have many other primatologists. “But does it have anything to do with sex?” Hohman asks and then answers himself, “Probably not.”
Since when is rubbing engorged genitalia against your partner’s engorged genitalia, often while embracing, French-kissing and/or having what looks like an orgasm, not “sex”? Is Hohmann limiting his definition of “sex” only to intercourse? That is hardly appropriate for a creature that is known for engaging in sex for pleasure (including what we might call “bisexuality”) more than reproduction.
Hohman goes on to wonder why “the males, the physically superior animals, do not dominate the females, the inferior animals?...It is not only different from chimpanzees but it violates the rules of social ecology.”
Well, it doesn’t violate The Bonobo Way. As Kano, Franz de Waal, Amy Parish and other primatologists have observed: bonobo males appear to be more docile than chimp males (or even than bonobo females), in part because they remain under the calming influence of their mothers until they die. And then there’s the fact that bonobo males get a lot of sex from those so-called “inferior” but sexually aggressive females. That's right: Peace through pleasure. Good sex diffuses tension. And you can’t very well fight a war while you’re having an orgasm.
Hohmann appears to be a meticulous scientist. But no matter how “objective” you try to be, the human personality still shines through the researcher’s conclusions. While Kano’s image is one of gentle collaboration, Hohmann’s is one of “chilliness,” being “very difficult to work with.” Parker writes about an incident where Hohman “loomed over” a local villager “wagging his finger. ‘It’s good to remind him now and then how short he is,’ Hohmann later said, smiling.” Folks who like to throw their physical weight around in the course of a verbal debate tend to find parallels for their own bullying tendencies in nature.
Well, primatologists aren’t angels either.
Parker’s report on Hohmann’s work is important, especially since Hohmann hasn’t published much himself lately. But the article’s implication that anyone who is inspired by the “Make Love Not War” chimps (both to save them from extinction, as Sally Coxe’s Bonobo Conservation Initiative is working hard to accomplish, and to understand and improve our own lives, as some of us try to do by following The Bonobo Way) is deluded is irresponsible and wrong. In classic New Yorker style, Parker’s critiques are measured and nuanced, even polite. His derision sneaks up on you like a quiet “chimp-bothering” primatologist. In the end, he brings no myth-shattering news that hasn't already been published. Though their lives in the wild are, of course, more violent than in captivity (and with the destruction being wreaked upon their environment, it would be hard to blame them for turning intoa new species of primate-psychopaths), the bonobos still seem to live, relative to other wild primates, by The Bonobo Way of Peace through Pleasure.
Nevertheless, many right-leaning bloggers, including the Wall Street Journal’s gleeful headline ”Bonobo Apes Might Not Be Politically Correct, After All” and Jack Rich’s “Shades of Margaret Mead,” are already picking up this highbrow critique of the “left-bank chimps” and running with it, referring to it as an official indictment of sexual freedom, women’s rights, environmentalism, communitarianism, ethical hedonism, the peace movement and liberal thinking in general, not to mention the bonobos themselves.
I appreciate Parker’s in-depth reporting on the primatology spats and evocative writing about the Congo. I know he worked hard on this piece; he spent an hour talking to me for the sake of just one sentence. I am also grateful for the excruciating fieldwork in which Hohmann is engaged. All research on bonobos - whether Kano studying them as they frolicked in his sugarcane field, De Waal reporting upon bonobo behavior in captivity, Richard Wrangham comparing bonobos with other great apes, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh communicating via computer with her primate “genius” Kanzi, Hohman running after the bonobos as they run away from him in the thick of the jungle, or Martin Surbeck catching tree-dwelling apes’ golden showers in a lacrosse stick-like container – are worthwhile. One observer’s findings have not discounted the others, at least for now.
Bonobos are no angels. But as far as we know, they still deserve the distinguished title of the Make Love Not War Chimpanzees. Hoka-Hoka! Bonobos Forever...
http://www.drsusanblock.com/blog
Dr. Susan Block at 7:58PM on Aug 7th 2007
44.
A Response to the New Yorker article by
primatologist Frans de Waal:
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/07-08-08.html
Edward T. Babinski at 10:35AM on Aug 8th 2007
45. Love/Peace/Left
War/Hate/Right
Go Chimps!
michael white at 11:11AM on Aug 8th 2007