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Bonobos use sex the way other species use diplomacy

Food arrives, tension rises, and the tension is resolved sexually.

Bonobos use sex the way other species use diplomacy
Photo: Hans Hillewaert · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

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.

Sources

de Waal, Scientific American (1995); Furuichi, Evolutionary Anthropology (2011)

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