The anomalous ape

There are two species of chimpanzees: the Common Chimpanzee and the Bonobo (or Pygmy Chimpanzee). While the common version can be aggressive, hunts, and is "patriarchal", the Bonobo is almost entirely peaceful, vegan and "matriarchal" (and bisexual, but that's another show). In a bizarre way, the two species are mirror images of each other. 

Since both species are closely related to humans, I liked to use the Bonobo as "evidence" that humans might have been peaceful in the distant past, and that we can become so again. (See other posts on this blog.)

Which - obviously - is not the case.

The Bonobo has sexual dimorphism, with the males being larger than the females. The males also have canine teeth. This makes no sense, evolutionarily speaking, for a peaceful matriarchal creature. It's therefore reasonable to assume that the Bonobo is derived from Common Chimpanzee stock, where these traits *do* make sense.

All Common Chimpanzees aren't brutal killer-apes, of course. New research suggests that chimpanzees can adopt a variety of strategies, probably dependent on available resources. In zoos, where food is no problem, the levels of aggression are lower than in the wild, and the "patriarchal" structure is replaced by two parallel hierarchies, one male, the other female. In the wild, aggression levels are different in different groups. However, the aggressive strategy is presumably always an option in relatively lean areas. The Bonobo could be an off-shot from some relatively peaceful group of common chimps, which took the peaceful strategy to its extreme. Natural selection changed their behavior, but not their physical appearence.

I assume the Bonobo is perfectly, and permanently, adapted to a situation of resource abundance. So why bother fighting? They don't even fight other Bonobo bands. Of course, this "hippie love summer" strategy doesn't seem to be working anymore. The Bonobo is on the verge of extinction, only living in a few areas of the Congo rain forest. Still, for millions of years, the Bonobo has existed as a weird anomaly in the outskirts of hominoid evolution.

Humans are much closer to the Common Chimpanzee. On the one hand, we are even more flexible. Not only can we live in peace if resources are abundant, we might even stop dominance behavior (while chimps sometimes "chimp out" even in a zoo, due to dominance issues). Our gender roles are more flexible than those of any ape. On the other hand, however, humans certainly have the capacity for aggression, violence, dominance and even outright evil - as seen from history, where these strategies are far more common (certainly towards out-groups) than peace, love and understanding...

Humans thus seem to be "clever common chimps" rather than Bonobos forever stuck in summerland. If that's good or some kind of evolutionary tragedy is of course an interesting question...