I find the Bonobos (Pan paniscus) more fascinating. Like the Chimps (Pan troglodytes), they share 98% of our (Homo sapiens) DNA; so close, in fact, that some investigators are suggesting that it’s not even correct to move both species into our genus Homo but it would be better taxonomy for us to be called Pan sapiens. It’s probably only our pretentious snobbery that has prevented this from actually happening.
The Bonobos, apart from similar DNA, also exhibit “virtues” previously attributed only to (I say some of) humanity: compassion, altruism, empathy and kindness. (One story related by one researcher is of how one of them took a fallen bird, climbed up to the top of the tree, spread the bird’s wings and released it to freedom. Aaaawww…) How’s that for further complicating – perhaps upending – and stressing the contingency of all our ethics philosophies from Socrates to Aquinas to Kant to Benedick the infinity? Not to mention how more gaga that would make the already gagacious creationists – more like mythologists. Hehe. Too, unlike the Chimps, these bewitching creatures, oddly, are matriarchal (think Meryl Steep as Anna Wintour; that’s all), non-violent and highly sexual. They use sex in all its forms and “perversions” (yes, even that kinky thought) to facilitate everything from conflict resolution to simple chika-chika. I’d love to know what more we could learn from them!
It IS supreme irony that the main barricade to more research (within their natural habitat) into these extremely captivating cousins of ours is WAR and all the “human” activities that conspicuously lack all the virtues we arrogantly and improperly attribute only to ourselves.
It does not necessarily trump what is currently the widely held hypothesis about the creatures but it PROVES how much we urgently need more studies to better understand not merely them but ultimately ourselves. The last quotation from the researcher was particularly telling in its concomitant optimism and grimness:
“…the biological past is revealed only in the present. “What makes humans and nonhuman primates different?†Hohmann said. “To nail this down, you have to know how these nonhuman primates behave. We have to measure what we can see today. We can use this as a reference for the time that has passed. There will be no other way to do this. And this is what puts urgency into it: because there is no doubt that, in a hundred years, there won’t be great apes in the wild. It would be blind to look away from that. In a hundred years, the forest will be gone. We have to do it now. This forest is the very, very last stronghold. This is all we have.”
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Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>More
July 16th, 2007 at 15:58
I read Congo and I thought it was the Confederation of Non-Governmental Organizations. I did see some chimps there.
But Congo the country?
This is a very interesting read. Seriously.
July 16th, 2007 at 18:46
Edgar Rice Burroughs. Prophet?
July 19th, 2007 at 08:54
I find the Bonobos (Pan paniscus) more fascinating. Like the Chimps (Pan troglodytes), they share 98% of our (Homo sapiens) DNA; so close, in fact, that some investigators are suggesting that it’s not even correct to move both species into our genus Homo but it would be better taxonomy for us to be called Pan sapiens. It’s probably only our pretentious snobbery that has prevented this from actually happening.
The Bonobos, apart from similar DNA, also exhibit “virtues” previously attributed only to (I say some of) humanity: compassion, altruism, empathy and kindness. (One story related by one researcher is of how one of them took a fallen bird, climbed up to the top of the tree, spread the bird’s wings and released it to freedom. Aaaawww…) How’s that for further complicating – perhaps upending – and stressing the contingency of all our ethics philosophies from Socrates to Aquinas to Kant to Benedick the infinity? Not to mention how more gaga that would make the already gagacious creationists – more like mythologists. Hehe. Too, unlike the Chimps, these bewitching creatures, oddly, are matriarchal (think Meryl Steep as Anna Wintour; that’s all), non-violent and highly sexual. They use sex in all its forms and “perversions” (yes, even that kinky thought) to facilitate everything from conflict resolution to simple chika-chika. I’d love to know what more we could learn from them!
It IS supreme irony that the main barricade to more research (within their natural habitat) into these extremely captivating cousins of ours is WAR and all the “human” activities that conspicuously lack all the virtues we arrogantly and improperly attribute only to ourselves.
July 28th, 2007 at 08:21
New article on the Bonobos from The New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/07/30/070730fa_fact_parker?printable=true
It does not necessarily trump what is currently the widely held hypothesis about the creatures but it PROVES how much we urgently need more studies to better understand not merely them but ultimately ourselves. The last quotation from the researcher was particularly telling in its concomitant optimism and grimness:
“…the biological past is revealed only in the present. “What makes humans and nonhuman primates different?†Hohmann said. “To nail this down, you have to know how these nonhuman primates behave. We have to measure what we can see today. We can use this as a reference for the time that has passed. There will be no other way to do this. And this is what puts urgency into it: because there is no doubt that, in a hundred years, there won’t be great apes in the wild. It would be blind to look away from that. In a hundred years, the forest will be gone. We have to do it now. This forest is the very, very last stronghold. This is all we have.”