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slaveboyforyou -> RE: Daschunds or Gaurd Dogs? (6/19/2007 5:03:42 PM)
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If you are going to make analogies to animals when it comes to sub males, I would look at the differences between Chimpanzees and Bonobos. Here is an interesting article on it at http://www.2think.org/bonobo.shtml
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS writes -- Call them the sexy apes. Or the feminist apes. Or the gentle apes.
But for some scientists, they can be downright inconvenient apes -- because the little-known bonobo is hurting theories that human behavior evolved from warlike, male-dominated chimps.
Bonobos are just as related to people as are chimps. But the females are clearly in charge. They're peaceful. More intriguing: They have sex all the time, not to procreate but to settle conflict or get to know each other -- and unlike other animals, they have it face-to-face with some French kissing thrown in.
"We may be more bonobo-like than we want to admit," says Frans de Waal, a primatologist at the Yerkes Regional Primate Center whose new book, Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape, is one of the first major works on the rare species.
De Waal sees the roots of cognition in a bonobo named Kakowet, who spotted zookeepers turning on water valves and realized they would flood a nearby moat where infant apes were playing. Kakowet warned the zookeeper and helped rescue the babies.
The ability to view the world from someone else's perspective -- in this case, to realize the babies would be in the path of rushing water and cannot swim -- is advanced thinking once thought unique to humans, de Waal said.
The nation's largest primate research center is bringing together neuroscientists, geneticists and behavior experts to shed new light on human evolution: Using our closest living relatives -- the apes -- to explain how human cognition and behavior evolved.
"By understanding chimps, maybe we'll understand ourselves a wee bit better," explained Tom Insel, chief of the Yerkes Regional Primate Center, which is setting up the Living Links project on human evolution.
One chief project will be identifying ape genes to match with the neurologic and behavior findings. Human DNA is 98.4 percent identical to the DNA of chimps and bonobos.
"What is it in that other 1.6 percent that makes us different from them? That's the critical question," said de Waal.
Bonobos live in just one remote corner of the world, the deep rainforests of Congo. Scientists didn't begin seriously studying them until the 1970s. Fewer than 100 are in captivity. There's no word yet on how well they survived last year's bloody civil war in Congo -- Japanese experts only recently ventured back into the bush.
Bonobos have smaller heads, slimmer necks and longer legs than chimps, and a more humanlike posture. They're rather stylish, with red lips and distinctive black hair parted down the middle.
Females are only 85 percent as big as males, yet they band together to take charge. Females leave their original group when they're grown, migrating into new bonobo societies where they bond with other females to establish a spot in the hierarchy.
Unlike chimps, female bonobos control choice food: Males hang around the periphery until they're offered a bite. A male's rank depends on his mother's social standing.
Chimps often fight viciously, especially with strangers, even taking over territory by killing the adult males. Bonobos rarely fight. Videos of groups meeting in the wild show them nervous and shrieking but not physically attacking. Gradually, the females approach each other and initiate cautious sexual contact.
And sex among bonobos is reminiscent of the Kamasutra. It's not just male-female -- they have same-gender sex, oral sex, masturbation, group sex. Like humans, they have face-to-face intercourse, making scientists wonder if they're more emotionally intimate than other animals. In zoos, the average bonobo initiates sexual contact every 1 1/2 hours.
Why? De Waal says Bonobos basically resolve power issues with sex: It eases conflict, signals friendliness and calms stressful situations.
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