Lessons from the PEACEFUL PRIMATE
Text: Sarah Borchert. Photographs: Martin Harvey. Article from the November 2013 issue of Africa Geographic Magazine.
With perhaps as few as 5 000 individuals left in the wild (although we’re really not sure), bonobos Pan paniscus face the very real threat of extinction. Found only in the Democratic Republic of Congo where their forest homes are being fragmented through logging activities, they are actively hunted for bushmeat and the babies that survive are sold into the pet trade.
It was in response to the last threat that Claudine André established Lola ya Bonobo, the world’s only sanctuary dedicated to the species. Sarah Borchert recently caught up with Vanessa Woods, a research scientist at Duke University who serves on the board of Friends of the Bonobos.
Sarah Borchert Take us through the beginning of the sanctuary. How did it all start?
Vanessa Woods It’s a beautiful story. Claudine André received her first orphaned bonobo in 1993 when she was a volunteer at the Kinshasa Zoo. The zoo director at the time said, ‘Don’t bother, we get bonobos and they always die. The orphans are very, very fragile.’ But Claudine took the infant home and, with the help of a nurse, she coaxed it back to health. Word got around that there was this woman who could heal bonobos and so all these orphans started arriving. She had to find somewhere to put them and started in the American School in Kinshasa, but her needs quickly outgrew the space there, so she founded Lola ya Bonobo, which is about 100 hectares. Lying south of the capital, it’s a sanctuary in the true sense of the word – it really is a haven.
SB Where do the bonobos come from, and how do they find their way to you?
VW The ones that come to us are usually very young, between one and two years old. Because there’s virtually no agriculture in Congo, any meat that the Congolese get – and they eat more meat than the French, which is impressive – they have to shoot. Bonobos are very popular with bushmeat hunters because they live in large communities. If you find one, you’ve probably found 30 that you can kill at the same time. The females usually have infants clinging to them and, although the babies don’t have a lot of meat on their bones, there is a black market trade in infant apes and they are sold. It is illegal to kill, eat or sell bonobos in Congo. It’s completely against the law (which is better than in the US, where you can buy and sell endangered species quite legally). So when hunters are arrested or someone informs the authorities about a small bonobo for sale, they need somewhere to take that bonobo. And Claudine’s sanctuary is the only safe place for them.
SB What happens to those young, pre-sumably traumatised bonobos when they arrive? How are they rehabilitated?
VW Claudine found out very quickly that if the infants don’t have human contact and constant love and care, they die. They just give up. So there are four substitute mothers in the nursery who bathe them, rub coconut oil into their hair, then play with them all day. We do a lot of cognitive research with them to find out how their minds work and we were very interested in the impact of this trauma. But studies have shown that if orphaned apes are raised with other orphans, they grow up to be normal, healthy, happy individuals.
SB What role can sanctuaries play in the conservation of a species?
VW Reintroduction is hugely important. In 2009, for the first time, Claudine released bonobos back into their natural habitat. And it’s been wonderful. Two babies, which were conceived at the sanctuary, have been born, and all the bonobos are doing great.
Claudine did something that I think was very smart. Instead of trying to proclaim a national park and then defending it with guns, she went to the people who owned the land and asked them to be bonobo guardians. In exchange, she’s brought them education material for schools (they specifically requested that), and we’ve shipped thousands of dollars in medical supplies to their women’s centre and pharmacy. So bonobos are really important to these people. In one of the villages, someone has spray-painted on the wall, ‘We protect bonobos and bonobos will save us’.
Education is another really large aspect. We have 35 000 people going through Lola every year and most of them are schoolchildren. If you want to educate the next generation about not killing and eating bonobos, then there really is no better way to do it.
Lola has just over 60 bonobos now, so it’s also an important gene pool. We’ve done tons of research there, and researchers come from all over the world to the sanctuary. In educating the global population about these apes, you need ongoing research to supply new information about how they are useful and important to us.
SB Is it true that, of the great apes, bonobos are the most like us?
VW Actually, I think the most interesting thing about bonobos is not how similar they are to us, it’s what we can learn from them. Of all the great apes, they are the only ones that don’t kill one another. It’s the one thing we humans, for all our intelligence, gadgets and devices, haven’t been able to do – live without war and live without killing each other.
SB We’re much more like chimps in that respect, aren’t we?
VW Chimps kill each other a lot. If you’re a male chimpanzee, you’re more likely to die at the hands of another chimpanzee than you are by anything else. They are quite a murderous species. But bonobos just aren’t. They have found the answer to all our prayers, which is world peace.
SB Their conflict resolution methods [bonobos use sex to dissipate tension] are slightly different, though, aren’t they?
VW Yes, but the important thing is that they have a conflict resolution method and, while I don’t think that our conflict resolution is going to be socio-sexual activity, I think we can learn a lot from the mechanism and how they use it.
Bonobos are really important because they could solve this question that we’ve struggled with since the dawn of time. We kill each other, we know it’s bad and yet we can’t stop. So what is it that bonobos can teach us about that? No bonobo has ever been seen to kill another bonobo – they’re sometimes called the ‘hippie apes’.
It’s important to mention that there is violence in bonobo society, but it’s very different to violence in human and chimpanzee societies. Humans and chimpanzees usually use violence to assert dominance and maintain control; bonobos use it to keep the peace. So we’re interested in the mechanisms that they use to maintain a peaceful society. Imagine if we could solve that!
SB It’s fascinating that bonobos have evolved to value peace so highly.
VW It’s interesting that they are female dominated, because that’s very rare as well. The dominant individual in a bonobo group is always a female, so you can draw all sorts of conclusions from that. If our society were dominated by women, if women were in charge, would there be as much war and murder? These seem to be particularly male tendencies (just as they are in chimpanzees). So, bonobos are female dominated, they use socio-sexual activity to solve conflict and they don’t kill each other, all of which make them, I think, the most important species that we can protect.
How to help
Lola ya Bonobo survives entirely on donations and grants, and with each bonobo costing US$415 per month to care for and rehabilitate, it’s vital that this goodwill keeps flowing. If you would like to find out more about how to support the sanctuary and the important work it does, go to www.friends ofbonobos.org
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