Friday, May 07, 2004
Loving Chimpanzees in Congo Endangered by War
New York Times "Kinshasa Journal: The Gentlest of Beasts, Making Love, Ravaged by War"
Genetically, humans and bonobos, a species of chimpanzee, are more than 98 percent similar. Socially, it is another matter. Matriarchal as a rule, bonobos eschew conflict. They do not fight over territory. They do not kill. Any small friction they resolve through sexual contact: a playful rub, oral sex, full intercourse.
...
Fishing and farming all but ground to a halt during the war, which officially ended last year. Civilians and soldiers alike turned to the forest to fill their bellies.
More and more, the bonobos turned up as supper. Their smoked remains showed up at riverine markets. Babies were orphaned, which is to say they were more or less destined to die: the bonobo infant, accustomed to staying on its mother's back for the first several years of life, has great trouble making it on its own.
...
Environmentalists fear that the logging could also endanger the habitat of the Pygmy people, who have eked out a living in the forest for centuries. The bonobos are sometimes called Pygmy chimpanzees, because Pygmies too are averse to conflict; they too prefer to hunt and forage in the forest rather than fight one another for territory. United Nations investigators suspect that some of them had been eaten during the war too.
New York Times "Kinshasa Journal: The Gentlest of Beasts, Making Love, Ravaged by War"
Genetically, humans and bonobos, a species of chimpanzee, are more than 98 percent similar. Socially, it is another matter. Matriarchal as a rule, bonobos eschew conflict. They do not fight over territory. They do not kill. Any small friction they resolve through sexual contact: a playful rub, oral sex, full intercourse.
...
Fishing and farming all but ground to a halt during the war, which officially ended last year. Civilians and soldiers alike turned to the forest to fill their bellies.
More and more, the bonobos turned up as supper. Their smoked remains showed up at riverine markets. Babies were orphaned, which is to say they were more or less destined to die: the bonobo infant, accustomed to staying on its mother's back for the first several years of life, has great trouble making it on its own.
...
Environmentalists fear that the logging could also endanger the habitat of the Pygmy people, who have eked out a living in the forest for centuries. The bonobos are sometimes called Pygmy chimpanzees, because Pygmies too are averse to conflict; they too prefer to hunt and forage in the forest rather than fight one another for territory. United Nations investigators suspect that some of them had been eaten during the war too.
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