Don鈥檛 be fooled by their reputation for altruism and free love 鈥� bonobos hunt and kill monkeys just like their more vicious chimpanzees cousins, according to new research.
鈥淏onobos are merciless,鈥� says , a behavioural ecologist at Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. He witnessed several monkey hunts among bonobos living in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and says, 鈥渢hey catch it and start eating it. They don鈥檛 bother to kill it鈥�.
Yet unlike chimps, bonobos live in female-centred societies where sex, not aggression, settles differences and enforces social order.
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Hunt strategies
Fruit makes up much of their diet, but the primates aren鈥檛 herbivores. Small ungulates called forest antelopes, or duikers, often fall prey to the apes.
These hunts tend to be fairly simple, with a single bonobo cornering a duiker then quickly feasting on the still-living animal as more apes hurried to the scene. Hohmann says he has witnessed a duiker 鈥渟till vocally blurting as the bonobos opened the stomach and intestines.鈥�
In three successful monkey hunts that Hohmann and Max Planck colleague witnessed in the , bonobos took a more cautious team approach once they spotted monkeys in a nearby tree.
鈥淭hey fall silent, and they try to go underneath the monkey group, of course remaining undetected,鈥� he says. 鈥淭hen it鈥檚 a sudden rush. Two, three, four bonobos climb up into the trees and try to catch a monkey.鈥� The researchers saw the bonobos successfully nab a redtail monkey and and two .
鈥楽till peaceful鈥�
Males and females hunt together, and females tended to share their spoils, which included the young of two species of monkeys.
The discovery casts doubt on claims that social aggression and hunting go hand in hand, Hohmann says. Some anthropologists suggest that in the million or so years that separate bonobos from chimps, bonobos lost their appetite for violence.
鈥淲hat a great discovery,鈥� says , a primatologist at Emory University in Atlanta.
鈥淭he chimpanzee literature sometimes depicts bonobos as the less interesting, less human-like, less cultured, less cooperative branch of the family tree,鈥� he says, 鈥渁nd I am not sure this characterisation can be maintained for much longer with this kind of observation coming out.鈥�
However, de Waal notes that predation and aggression are distinct behaviours, pointing out aggressive herbivores such as bison and sociable carnivores such as lionesses as examples. 鈥淔or me, this finding does very little to change the idea of bonobos as relatively peaceful primates.鈥�
Journal reference: (DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2008.08.040)
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