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The animal kingdom
Bonobos use sex the way other species use diplomacy
Food arrives, tension rises, and the tension is resolved sexually.
Photo:
Hans Hillewaert
· CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
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Bonobos share as much DNA with humans as chimpanzees do, and behave nothing like them. Where a chimpanzee troop settles a dispute with violence, a bonobo troop settles it sexually: between males and females, between females and females, between adults and adolescents, in almost every combination, and usually for a few seconds at a time.
Most of it has nothing to do with reproduction. It happens when a food source is discovered, when two groups meet, when an individual is anxious. Female bonobos form coalitions through this contact, and those coalitions are why bonobo society is female-led — the only great ape society that is.
Did you know
Bonobos were classified as a separate species only in 1929, and much of what is now known about them was not published until the 1990s. For most of the 20th century, our closest relatives were understood entirely through the more violent of the two.
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