Over the years man has been learning from animals, especially in the field of defense, the stealth bomber gets it looks from the stingray, martial arts like the Shaolin Kung Fu was developed by watching the way animals engage each other.

Throughout history we are learning from animals, but its the choice of animals that man chooses to learn from. All along we have been learning to push boundaries to develop better weaponry to exterminate each other. Here’s one animal that you would have possibly never heard of, even though it could teach us a lot at this point of time, let me introduce you to the Bonobos.

What is a Bonobo?A Bonobo (Pan paniscus) is called the left bank chimpanzees and also known as pygmy chimpanzees, they were the last ape species to be identified late in 1926, nearly three centuries after the other apes were known to science.

The Chimpanzee family is broken into two sections, one is the common chimpanzee which we all know, the big strong aggressive chimps and the other is the Bonobo. The Bobono genes are more than 98% similar to that of the DNA structure of man, which makes it the closest species to homosapiens.

Their hair is parted, have pink lips, they also have facial features that make each one of them look unique just like us. The sad part is they are an endangered species that live in Congo.

Bonobo Behaviour:

Bonobos are different from chimpanzees, so far no lethal aggression has been detected among Bonobos, perhaps because they have not been studied enough in the wild but even the ones in the zoo. Apart from that, their societies are dominated by the female rather than the male species.

These chimps like man have sex for pleasure and whats even more interesting is that like humans, bonobos participate in a variety of sexual exchanges and some interesting reasons for sexual exchanges. Bonobos are thought to be the only non-human apes to have been observed engaging in all of the following sexual activities: face-to-face genital sex (most frequently female-female, then male-female and male-male), tongue kissing, and oral sex.

Learning from Bonobos:

This could teach society to be open towards people who have different sexual preferences. I’m not sure if this is something we need to learn from but, Bonobos do not form permanent relationships with individual partners.

Sexual intercourse plays a major role in Bonobo society, being used as a greeting, a means of conflict resolution and post-conflict reconciliation, and as favors traded by the females in exchange for food. When Bonobos come upon a new food source or feeding ground, the increased excitement will usually lead to communal sexual activity, presumably decreasing tension and allowing for peaceful feeding.

These sexual activities before feeding help the Bonobos share their food with each other rather than fighting over food like the common chimpanzee. When you put today’s state of affairs where the world is in turmoil fighting over oil, we all need to learn from the Bonobos that its so much more fun to share!

Male dominance in our society, has led to a loss of emotion in the system which lacks sensitivity, this has been spoken about in Frijof Capra’s the Turning Point as well, do hope we all can learn something from these loving chimpanzees!

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Tags: Animals, Bonobos, Nature, Pan paniscus, War