Humans have a capacity for cooperation and tolerance that is rare in the animal kingdom despite our long history of war. How did we end up like that?
bonobos may serve as an evolutionary model, according to scientists. Chimpanzees share 99% of their genes with humans and have a reputation for being peace-loving and sexually active. Chimpanzees are thought to be more violent than their social group counterparts.
There is a lack of detail on how these groups work and how they separate. Some of the blanks may be filled in by a new study on the social structure of bonobo.
The research shows that four neighboring groups of bonobo are part of a distinct social group that interacts regularly and peacefully with each other.
The paper's lead author said it was a necessary first step. Even though bonobo populations spend a lot of time together, they still have their own distinct groups, which is something that is potentially the building block or the state upon which humans evolved our way of more complex.
Three years of observing the bonobo community in the reserve resulted in the study. There is evidence that the bonobo formed four separate groups that crossed paths to interact, groom each other, and share meals. What hasn't been clear is the extent to which the behavior of these bonobo groups resembles that of a subgroup of the chimp population.
Chimp subgroup are hostile to those in different communities and are referred to as neighborhoods by primatologists. The members of the subgroup don't spend all their time together as part of a large group but are still part of it, and they don't fight each other when they meet.
Due to political instability and logistical challenges, bonobo are less studied than Chimpanzees, the only place where the primate are found. It has been difficult to study relationships among and between Bonobo groups because of the fact that subgroup overlaps with some regularity.
Samuni said there weren't behavioral indications that allowed them to distinguish group A and group B. The way they act with their own group members is the same. People are wondering how we know these are different groups. Maybe instead of being two different groups, these groups are just one large group of people that don't spend a lot of time together.
At least two observers from the reserve followed each bonobo group daily from dawn to dusk, recording behavioral and location data that was then analyzed.
The researchers focused on how much time individual bonobos spent with each other. The researchers used this to perform a statistical method. This method groups data points in a cluster so that points from the same group are in close proximity to each other on a plot.
They were able to draw distinctions between what bonobos were part of the same group and when they were interacting with their neighbors.
The data was collected on 104 Chimpanzees in Uganda's Kibale National Park.
The groups of bonobo were more stable than the groups of Chimpanzees. This shows that the bonobos in each cluster preferred one another over the Chimpanzees.
The researchers were able to confirm the four groups and come up with a way to predict which one.
The paper's senior author, an assistant professor in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, says the results show that bonobo are capable of complicated relationships outside their immediate core network.
The researchers want to dig further into what cooperation and trade look like between these groups and whether it can represent what it looked like in our ancestors. It would help explain how humans overcame antagonism between different groups.
The window for gaining insights is closing as bonobo are near extinction.
He said there were very few left. If things continue the way they are, we may not be able to get this information anymore.
More information: Liran Samuni et al, Characterization of Pan social systems reveals in-group/out-group distinction and out-group tolerance in bonobos, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2201122119 Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencesThe story was published in the Harvard Gazette. Visit Harvard.edu for more information.
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