Taylor Brown in The New York Times:
Bonobos have long had a reputation as the hippies of the ape world. Famously nonaggressive, their matriarchal societies, strong female friendships and largely vegetarian diets have stood in stark contrast to the macho bloodlust of their two closest relatives — chimpanzees and humans. Until now.
New research published in Current Biology upends a deep-seated understanding about bonobos and, as a result, could change our understanding of how early humans lived, worked and ate. Female bonobos, it turns out, aren’t just fruit-eating pacifists, but vicious hunters. Bonobos are as closely related to humans as chimps. New evidence that female apes are the primary hunters in their troops could radically alter the prevailing model of early human societies, in which men felled big game like bison and antelope, while women engaged in less risky tasks like gathering berries and nuts. “It really does challenge this idea of the male warrior — that the male hunter is the ancestral model that we should be leaning on,” said Jake Brooker, a primatologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, who was not involved in the work.
More here.
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