National Geographic: The New Chimpanzees Page #3

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adult males have worked together

that there is meat,

so it's something very special

for all group members

and there is a huge excitement

with that.

It's really a, a team work and it

works only if the team wants to work

and the team doesn't see each other,

it's too dense in this forest.

So, they are always anticipating

that the other one will come

and often they don't see if

they really did their job

and it works only

if everybody does their job.

This kind of work, on the long run,

only if meat is shared

according to the work

these hunters have been doing

You see, alpha male is not

the best hunter or is not hunting

and he doesn't get meat.

You have now an alpha male

who's fresh in this position,

that is young and he's not

always hunting

and he can really be there displaying

for minutes and not get

a tiny piece nothing at all.

This division of the spoils based

on right rather than might

reveals a different division of power.

Females, who are allies of the hunters

also gain access to the carcass

bringing their infants closer to the

meat than the blustering alpha male.

If this complex division of labor

and food seems almost human,

so does the chimp's love of play.

An infant chimp may seem secure

within the bosom of his group,

but this is not always true.

A male has stolen a baby chimp

from its frantic mother,

who follows in desperate pursuit.

In the Mahale Mountains,

south of Gombe,

researchers have recorded

this terrible event not once

but seven times and

are at a loss to explain it.

The alpha male is now in possession

of the screaming infant.

He actually beats back the mother

with her own baby.

Both mother and baby are members

of this male's group,

and the infant was presumably sired

by one of the group's members.

Males have been known to

kill babies sired by outsiders,

but this kidnapper could very well be

the baby's father.

The infant is killed by

a savage bite to the face.

Group members share in the macabre

feast just as if it were a monkey.

Infanticide and cannibalism

dark reflections of our common legacy.

But the mirror of our primal past

reflects light amidst the dark.

Aggressive impulses may be rooted

in our distant ancestry,

but so is our capacity

for peaceful coexistence.

It is in Africa's dark heart

the Congo basin that we find a gentler

tributary of our primate legacy.

Takayoshi Kano has led

the research here in Wamba,

Zaire, for the past 22 years.

He comes here in search of the second,

little known species of chimpanzee.

Sugarcane is a sweet lure used

to call down the elusive bonobo.

Dr. Kano, and his

associate Chie Hashimoto,

have discovered that bonobos

are quite distinct

from the chimps studied

by Goodall and Boesch.

At first glance they are different.

Although they've been called

pygmy chimps,

they're not smaller,

just more slightly built.

Hunted elsewhere in Zaire,

they're safe here but wary still.

The sugarcane buffet

proves irresistible.

At ease on two legs,

as well as on four,

they simply rise up and walk

so their hands are free

to carry the cane.

Eerily, their long,

shapely limbs and upright gait recall

our own prehistoric forbears.

And their natural two-legged gait

is only the first surprise they have

in store for us.

An impressively stern female enters

and snaps a young sapling.

Once she picks herself up,

she does something entirely surprising

for a female chimp.

She displays!

And the males give her sway.

For this is the confident stride

of the group's leader,

its alpha female,

whom Kano has named Haru.

Females play a very different role

in bonobo society than they

do among chimps.

The reins of power are shared equally

between male and female held

by a strongly bonded group of high

ranking mothers and their adult sons.

The son of a dominant female can take

great liberties.

High-ranking females cooperate

to dominate adult males

and support their sons

in social conflicts.

Though tough with other adults,

bonobo mothers almost never discipline

their babies even

when they steal the food right our

of their mouths.

Haku, an 11 year old adolescent male,

has lost the loving attention

of his mother.

As an orphan,

he has been forced out,

to the very fringes of his own community.

He's old enough now to begin

to make his mark but,

without a mother's help,

his chance of success is nil.

Males stay with their mothers

for their entire lives,

and rely upon their backing.

With no mother to back him up,

Haku must be wary of Ten,

the alpha male.

Ten was just about Haku's age

when he first rose to power.

Lately, Haku has begun trying

to assert himself.

But Ten had an advantage.

His mother was

the alpha female before Haru,

and he rose to power

on her apron strings.

He will not tolerate any display

from this "motherless child."

Haku has spirit but to no avail.

Ten's annoyance with this upstart

is soothed by one of the other high

ranking males in a surprising way.

Instead of fighting,

bonobos use sex to defuse aggression

in this genuine "make love,

not war" society.

Bonobos have largely divorced sex

from its reproductive role.

Sex is used by all bonobos,

regardless of gender or age,

to form bonds and mitigate tension.

So Haku is not likely

to suffer physical harm.

But without family backing,

his bid for status is probably doomed.

Adolescent females must face

a still greater challenge.

They leave the group of their birth,

and visit neighboring groups in search

of a new home for the rest

of their lives.

This female, called Shin,

has chosen Dr. Kano's group,

but she must first pass muster

with the formidable Haru.

Female bonobos also use sex to forge

strategic alliances with each other.

The males, including Ten,

readily mate with Shin.

But Shin must still win the approval

of Haru and the other females.

Finally, Shin is embraced

by a high-ranking female,

who will act as her sponsor

to the group.

Shin settles down to enjoy

the sugarcane within the circle

of her new community.

With equality between the sexes and

the substitution of sex for violence,

the social lives of bonobos

are very different

from that of

their sibling species the chimp.

While chimps may wage war.

The gentle lives of bonobos show

that violence,

although part of our primate

inheritance, is not inevitable.

Their social lives are fascinating

yet it is the mystery and

potential of the chimpanzees' inner

minds that intrigues us most.

How deep is the mind of the chimp?

Christophe and Hedwige Boesch

have been mapping the chimpanzee mind

through an extraordinary kind

of tool use.

There was this great day,

it was beginning of December

in seventy-nine.

I was following chimps

through unknown lands,

I didn't know where I was anymore,

they were drumming, screaming,

I followed with my compass, behind.

And, suddenly,

there was great excitement

and I was hiding under some vegetation

and there was a clearing

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