View Full Forums : Bonobo Handshake: What Makes Our Chimp-like Cousins So Cooperative?


Panamah
09-05-2007, 01:06 PM
What’s it like to work with relatives who think sex is like a handshake, who organise orgies with the neighbours, and firmly believe females should be in charge of everything? (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070903142204.htm)

Bonobos, like chimpanzees, are related to humans by 98.7%. But in contrast to chimpanzees who live in male dominated societies, where infanticide and lethal aggression are observed, bonobos live in highly tolerant and peaceful societies due to female dominance that maintains group cohesion and regulates tensions through sexual behaviour.

‘We’re always comparing ourselves to chimpanzees, but they’re only half the picture. Bonobos and chimpanzees are so opposite in many ways, that we really need to understand bonobos if we’re ever going to understand ourselves.’

Aidon
09-05-2007, 05:28 PM
I have read that one of the suggested reasons for this difference between chimps and bonos is that bonobos lived in areas which have slightly fewer leopards (the primary natural predator for both species) and also had more vegetation close at hand. Chimpanzees have to range farther to find food and have to deal with slightly greater predatory threat, which is thought to have help affect their more militant social structure.

Which makes sense to me. In a society where the defense falls on the shoulders of the males, they will become more dominant for various reasons. In a society which has to spend more time "working" (hunting/gathering, defending, etc.) there is less time for sex, and thus it becomes a commodity of sorts. In a society where there is less food, the import of knowing who your offspring are becomes more important.

If there is less work needed to live and food enough for all, there's more time for frolicksome dalliances and the increased likelihood of survival for all children means that its less important to know which of the kids running around is yours, exactly, as they are all likely to survive and thus your genes will advance along the generational chain.

I suspect if you took two human societies, devolved them to 15,000 years ago and dumped them on opposite sides of an uncrossable divide with one side being a little bit more hospitible than the other, one would see a similar cultural evolution.

On that note: Dear Lord, please let us discover FTL space travel and a utopian edenic planet to colonize in my lifetime so that I may live in a society where its perfectly acceptable for me to wander up and do the fandango with any woman who catches my passing fancy.

Amen.

Fyyr Lu'Storm
09-05-2007, 06:34 PM
Mean time to orgasm is like 6 seconds with bonobos(males and females alike).

I don't know what chimps mean time is.

Tudamorf
09-05-2007, 10:57 PM
Mean time to orgasm is like 6 seconds with bonobos(males and females alike).

I don't know what chimps mean time is.Chimpanzees finish at least as quickly, a few thrusts at most. (Only a little bit quicker than the average human male the first time.)In a society where there is less food, the import of knowing who your offspring are becomes more important.Actually, female chimpanzees mate with the whole troop, as a strategy to get all the males to support them.

Madie of Wind Riders
09-06-2007, 03:30 AM
Mean time to orgasm is like 6 seconds with bonobos(males and females alike).

I don't know what chimps mean time is.

My question is... how do you even know the mean time to orgasm for Bonobos?

And good to see you again Aidon - missed you. Its gotten to be very boring listening to Fyyr and Tuda throw insults at each other - need to spice things up a bit with the Bitter Druids opinions ;)

Fyyr Lu'Storm
09-06-2007, 03:58 AM
My question is... how do you even know the mean time to orgasm for Bonobos?
Comparative analysis is important, if you are discussing behavior between apes and humans.

And good to see you again Aidon - missed you. Its gotten to be very boring listening to Fyyr and Tuda throw insults at each other - need to spice things up a bit with the Bitter Druids opinions ;)
/smile



Contrary to Tudamorf's conjecture, humans don't usually come in 6 seconds.

Tudamorf
09-06-2007, 04:20 AM
And you say I don't have a sense of humor.

Erianaiel
09-06-2007, 02:08 PM
Contrary to Tudamorf's conjecture, humans don't usually come in 6 seconds.

:nono: Of course not.

He was talking about average time.
For men...
:grin:


Eri

B_Delacroix
09-07-2007, 08:04 AM
Wow, you are hanging out with the wrong men....

Aidon
09-08-2007, 04:17 PM
...
....
.....

Oh lord.