NEXT ON NOVA: "THE LAST GREAT APE"NOVA
http://www.pbs.org/nova/bonobos
Broadcast: February 13, 2007 at 8 p.m. ET/PT (NOVA airs Tuesdays on PBS at 8p.m. Check your local listings as dates and times may vary. Broadcast inHigh Definition where available.)
With its intelligent gaze, humanlike posture, and peaceful nature, it's nowonder the bonobo, one of five great apes, reminds us of ourselves. Butwhile we share a common hominoid ancestor with bonobos as well as 98 percentof our DNA, this unique primate has been largely overlooked by all but a fewscientists. Bonobos live in a region that has been consumed by war, whichthreatens their habitat and survival. Can we learn more about theseintriguing, intelligent apes before it's too late? By interviewing leadingexperts and traveling into the field, NOVA shines a spotlight on theextraordinary behavior of the endangered bonobo
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THE BONOBO IN ALL OF US
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bonobos/dewaal.html
"Bonobos help us to see ourselves more in the round," says Frans de Waal, aprimatologist at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta. Inparticular, he says, we can learn as much about human evolution and behaviorby studying the sensitive, peace-loving bonobo as by studying the moreviolent chimpanzee -- both of which share more than 98 percent of our DNA.In this interview, de Waal explains what the ape he calls the"make-love-not-war" primate can teach us about who we are -- and why, forthis reason alone, it's vital to protect this highly endangered closerelative of ours.
YIN AND YANG APES
Q: Can you recall your first encounter with bonobos? What was it like?
De Waal: I first saw them in 1978. At the time, I knew a lot about chimps,because I had been studying them. I saw the bonobos at a zoo in Holland, andI thought immediately, they're totally different. The sense you get lookingthem in the eyes is that they're more sensitive, more sensual, notnecessarily more intelligent, but there's a high emotional awareness, so tospeak, of each other and also of people who look at them.
Q: What made you decide to study them?
De Waal: At the time, I was interested in reconciliation after fights, and Iwanted to know how bonobos did it compared to chimpanzees. Very soon Idiscovered that they were much more sexual in everything they did, and thatinterested me -- not so much for the sex part, even though that became avery hot topic, the peacemaking-through-sex thing -- but much more how theyhave such a peaceful society, because they are much less violent thanchimpanzees.
Q: You were initially entranced by chimpanzees as the model for humanancestry. So just how seismic were the revelations that came out of Gombe[the Tanzanian national park where Jane Goodall has studied chimpanzeessince the 1960s] that they engaged in murder and infanticide?
De Waal: The first news about the Gombe murders -- basically chimpanzeesinvading the territory of other chimps and killing them off -- was veryspectacular, because at that time there was a big debate about aggression inhumans. One school claimed that we were inborn killer apes, and anotherschool claimed, "Yes, maybe that's true, but look at the apes, they're allvery peaceful." So, when Jane Goodall came along with her stories of chimpsnot being so peaceful, that overshadowed that whole view, and we ended upwith one coherent view of: Chimps are aggressive, we are aggressive, ourancestors must have been aggressive, and so we are basically killer apes.That was the story, and it's still the story today for many scientists.
Q: It's a pretty negative view, isn't it?
De Waal: Yes, we tend to have a negative view of ourselves. Or let me say itthis way: Everything we do negatively is associated with our biology; weblame that all on biology. And everything we do that is nice, or when we'realtruistic and empathetic, and so on, we don't blame that on anything, weclaim that as our own unique human nature. So, the stories out of Gombe onthe chimpanzees confirmed that negative biological view that we have ofourselves as purely competitive, purely aggressive. And when the bonoboscame along later, they didn't fit that view.
Q: Yes, in the early 1970s there was this revelation from Wamba in the Congothat bonobo neighbors had met and after initial wariness had acted quitepeaceably together. Just how momentous was that discovery?
De Waal: Well, in the context of us being territorial and chimps beingterritorial and everyone believing that we are killer apes, when theJapanese scientists [led by Takayoshi Kano] came along with the story thatbonobo groups just mingle -- and not only do they mingle, but they have sextogether, the kids play with each other, they groom each other afterwards,they travel together sometimes -- all this was absolutely shocking anddidn't fit the image that we had of where we came from.And it was totally ignored. It's very interesting: when something doesn'tfit your thinking, the best way to deal with it is to shove it out thewindow and ignore it, and that's what the scientific community did for about20 years.
Q: But given our propensity for war and violence, aren't we much more likethe chimpanzee in our behavior?
De Waal: If you look at human society, it is very easy, of course, tocompare our warfare and territoriality with the chimpanzee. But that's onlyone side of what we do. We also trade, we intermarry, we allow each other totravel through our territory. There's an enormous amount of cooperation.Indeed, among hunter-gatherers, peace is common 90 percent of the time, andwar takes place only a small part of the time. Chimps cannot tell usanything about peaceful relations, because chimps have only differentdegrees of hostility between communities. Whereas bonobos do tell ussomething; they tell us about the possibility of having peacefulrelationships.
WE'RE A LITTLE OF BOTH
Q: Yet chimps are not all bad and bonobos all good, of course. You've saidthat chimpanzees are from Mars and bonobos are from Venus, but it's not thatclear-cut, is it?
De Waal: Yeah, sometimes I say that, and that's, of course, a bigstereotyping of the two species. It is true that the chimpanzee isdominance-oriented, violent, territorial. But it's also cooperative in manyways, and so that side is sometimes forgotten. The bonobo is sensual,sensitive, sexual, a peacemaker, but also can have a nasty side, and that'ssometimes forgotten. So both species are sort of the ends of the spectrum,and we fall somewhere in between. Clearly, we have both of these sides inus, and that's why I sometimes call us "the bipolar apes."
Q: So do you think we're more bonobo or more chimp?
De Waal: Uh, I usually say that we're both. Is that a good answer? No, youwant a choice!
Q: Well, if you had to make a choice.
De Waal: I would say there are people in this world who like hierarchies,they like to keep people in their place, they like law enforcement, and theyprobably have a lot in common, let's say, with the chimpanzee. And then youhave other people in this world who root for the underdog, they give to thepoor, they feel the need to be good, and they maybe have more of this kinderbonobo side to them. Our societies are constructed around the interfacebetween those two, so we need both actually.
THE EMPATHIC APE
Q: I've heard some great anecdotes about certain bonobos having behavedquite extraordinarily, like the bonobo that helped an injured bird that flewinto its cage.
De Waal: Yes, there was a bonobo at a zoo in England who found a littlebird, a starling, that had hit the window of the bonobo's enclosure. Thestarling was stunned, and she picked it up. She took it in her hand, and sheclimbed to the highest point of her enclosure, the highest tree. She wrappedher feet across the tree so that she had her hands free, and she unfoldedthe bird like a little toy airplane, and she sent it out, which I think isamazing, because it's not something she would do to a bonobo; that would bestupid to do that. But for a bird, that seemed to be the appropriate help.The bird didn't survive the treatment, I think, but the intentions were verygood. The bonobo put itself in the position of a totally different creature,an ability that we usually assume is uniquely human.
Q: And isn't there another story about bonobos and a moat?
De Waal: Yes, there was a case at the San Diego Zoo, where they were fillingup the water moat [in the bonobo enclosure]. The juveniles of the group wereplaying in the empty moat, and the caretakers had not noticed. When theywent to the kitchen to turn on the water, all of a sudden in front of thewindow they saw Kakowet, the old male of the group, and he was waving andscreaming at them to draw their attention. They looked at the moat and sawthe juveniles and then got them out of there in time, before the moat filledup.Now, that's very interesting, because Kakowet himself was not in trouble atall. It was purely that he perceived that water in the moat was not going tobe good for these young bonobos. So that's a case of perspective-taking, andthat is actually typical of bonobos, I think. Bonobos are particularly goodat that kind of thing.
Q: We're not very good at appreciating other types of intelligence, such asperspective-taking and empathy, are we?
De Waal: Yeah, when people talk about intelligence, they like to talk aboutthings that they are very good at, such as language and tools. We're verytechnologically oriented, and so if chimpanzees are good with tools, we areamazed and we think that's absolutely wonderful. But I think in terms ofsocial intelligence and sensuality and being in tune with the emotions ofothers, bonobos are far superior to many other animals.
WHAT APES HAVE TAUGHT US
Q: We humans have also tended to put ourselves on a pedestal, separatingourselves from the animals. How have primate studies changed this?
De Waal: Yes, in the West we have ignored our connection with nature to alarge degree because we have no primates in Europe or the U.S. For 2,000years or longer we have been building up this idea of ourselves asdisconnected from the rest of Nature, and that's why, for example, Darwin'stheory was so shocking to the West, because it said there actually was aconnection, and we didn't want to hear about that.Now primate studies have filled that gap, and the reason we are obsessed byprimates and want to know more about them, even people who hate theconnection with primates, is because we know that we have been neglectingthat connection, which we obviously have with nature. We have eyes and nosesand livers and DNA, everything basically the same as any other mammal, andso that connection clearly exists.
Q: How differently might we have seen ourselves if bonobos had been studiedbefore chimps?
De Waal: That's a fun thought experiment. Imagine that we didn't know thechimpanzee, that all we knew were those bonobos who have sex all the timeand are peaceful and female-dominated and that people would say that this isour only close relative. I think we would have totally different theoriesabout ourselves and our background. But, of course, it didn't happen thatway.
Q: If we see ourselves as violent apes, do we become violent? To what degreeis that the case?
De Waal: Well, there's a long tradition in the West of looking at ourmorality, our human civilization so to speak, as conquering nature. Natureis bad, our human nature is all selfish genes, everything is bad about us,and if we work very hard, we can overcome that. I've called it Calvinistbiology, because it's based on this idea of original sin, and if we workhard enough we can become a little bit better -- the perfectibility ofhumankind and all that.
I think if we study the primates, we notice that a lot of these things thatwe value in ourselves, such as human morality, have a connection withprimate behavior. This completely changes the perspective: if you startthinking that actually we tap into our biological resources to become moralbeings. That gives a completely different view of ourselves than this nastyselfish-gene type view that has been promoted for the last 25 years.
SAVING THE GREAT APES
Q: Do you find it ironic that the war in Congo in the 1990s -- our violentchimpanzee side coming out -- threatened these very peaceful apes?
De Waal: Yeah, it's very sad. Bonobo studies started in the '70s and came tofruition in the '80s. Then in the '90s, all of a sudden, boom, they endedbecause of the warfare in the Congo. It was really bad for the bonobo andironic that people with their warfare were preventing us from studying thehippies of the primate world.
Q: What were your feelings when you first saw pictures of the war in Congoand the trade in bonobo meat?
De Waal: For a long time I personally was in denial. I thought well, youknow, they say that the bonobos are not there anymore, but there must beplenty, because some people had estimated 100,000 bonobos at one point,other people said it's maybe 25,000. But now we are down to maybe 10,000. Sonow I've become much more pessimistic, and all the graphs that I seenowadays of disappearing habitat, which is really the main threat for allanimals, are also very pessimistic. By 2040 or 2050, we may not have muchleft anymore.
Q: How important is it that bonobos survive?
De Waal: I think if we humans cannot protect our closest relatives, if eventhose have to go, so to speak, then we're in really desperate shape. Weshould certainly also protect the forest elephant and all sorts of otheranimals, but the bonobo and the chimp are very special for our understandingof ourselves and where we come from. We can use them as sort of timemachines, to go back in time and look under what kind of conditions weevolved and how the human mind was shaped by that original environment. Thefact that the apes exist and that we can study them is extremely importantand makes us reflect on ourselves and our human nature. In that sense alone,you need to protect the apes
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READ MY LIPS
See a slide show of bonobo gestures and facial expressions, and find outwhat they mean.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bonobos/read.html
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KANZI THE BONOBO
In this audio slide show, researcher Sue Savage-Rumbaugh describes oneextraordinarily linguistic ape.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bonobos/kanzi.html
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OUR FAMILY TREE
See (and hear) where you stand among the great apes in this audiovisualinteractive.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bonobos/primate.html
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