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Language: English with bilingual chapter abstracts and figure legends in French
Along with the chimpanzee, the bonobo is one of our two closest living relatives. Their relatively narrow geographic range (south of the Congo River in the Democratic Republic of Congo) combined with the political instability of that region, has made their scientific study extremely difficult. In contrast, there are dozens of wild and captive sites where research has been conducted for decades with chimpanzees. Because data on bonobos has been so hard to obtain and so few high-quality publications have existed, the majority of researchers have treated chimpanzee data as being representative of both species. However, this misconception is now rapidly changing.
With the end of the major conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo and a growing community of bonobos living in zoos and sanctuaries, there has been an explosion of scientific interest in the bonobo with dozens of high impact publications focusing on this fascinating species. This research has revealed exactly how unique bonobos are in their brains and behaviour, and reminds us why it is so important that we redouble our efforts to protect the few remaining wild populations of this iconic and highly endangered great ape species.
Foreword, Frans B. M. de Waal
1: Minding the bonobo mind, Brian Hare and Shinya Yamamoto
2: Female contributions to the peaceful nature of bonobo society, Takeshi Furuichi
3: Affiliations, aggressions and an adoption: male-male relationships in wild bonobos, Martin Surbeck and Gottfried Hohmann
4: Bonobo baby dominance: did female defense of offspring lead to reduced male aggression?, Kara Walker and Brian Hare
5: Pan paniscus or Pan ludens? Bonobos, playful attitude and social tolerance, Elisabetta Palagi and Elisa Demuru
6: Does the bonobo have a (chimpanzee-like) theory of mind?, Christopher Krupenye, Evan L. MacLean, and Brian Hare
7: What did we learn from the ape language studies?, Michael Tomasello
8: Natural communication in bonobos: insights into social awareness and the evolution of language, Zanna Clay and Emilie Genty
9: Courtesy food sharing characterized by begging for social bonds in wild bonobos, Shinya Yamamoto and Takeshi Furuichi
10: Prosociality among non-kin in bonobos and chimpanzees compared, Jingzhi Tan and Brian Hare
11: Ecological variation in cognition: insights from bonobos and chimpanzees, Alexandra G. Rosati
12: Bonobos, chimpanzees and tools: integrating species-specific psychological biases and socio-ecology, Josep Call
13: Bonobo personality: age and sex effects and links with behavior and dominance, Nicky Staes, Marcel Eens, Alexander Weiss, and Jeroen M.G. Stevens
14: Social cognition and brain organization in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and bonobos (Pan paniscus), William D. Hopkins, Cheryl D. Stimpson, and Chet C. Sherwood
15: Cognitive comparisons of genus Pan support bonobo self-domestication, Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods
16: The formation of Congo river and the origin of bonobos: a new hypothesis, Hiroyuki Takemoto, Yoshi Kawamoto, and Takeshi Furuichi
17: Geospatial information informs bonobo conservation efforts, J. Nackoney, J. Hickey, D. Williams, C. Facheux, T. Furuichi, and J. Dupain
18: Bonobo population dynamics: past patterns and future predictions for the Lola ya Bonobo population using demographic modeling, Lisa J. Faust, Claudine André, Raphaël Belais, Fanny Minesi, Zjef Pereboom, Kerri Rodriguez, and Brian Hare
Afterword, Richard Wrangham
Dr Brian Hare is an associate professor of Evolutionary Anthropology and a member of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University in the United States. Since 2007, he has published over two dozen peer-reviewed empirical papers on the cognition, behavior, physiology, morphology, and evolution of the bonobo. He has studied bonobos in zoos, African sanctuaries and in the wild. His research focuses on identifying unique cognitive traits as well as understanding evolutionary processes that produce them.
Dr Shinya Yamamoto is an associate professor at Kobe University in Japan. He has published research on both wild and captive chimpanzees. More recently he began studying the behavior of wild bonobos at the Wamba field site in the Democratic Republic of Congo. His research concentrates on the evolution of cooperation, culture, and understanding others.
