Animal: Bonobo

Scientific Name: Pan Paniscus

Animal Type: Mammal

Habitats: Tropical Rain Forest

The Bonobo:

The Bonobo, also known as the Pygmy Chimpanzee, is one of the smartest apes. Many scientists consider Bonobo's to be the closest relative to humans.

Physical Characteristics:

The Bonobo is smaller and slighter than the Common Chimpanzee. It has a black face with pink lips, small ears, wide nostrils, and long hair on its head. Females have slightly more prominent breasts in contrast to the flat breasts of other female apes, though not as prominent as those of humans. The Bonobo also has a slim upper body, narrow shoulders, thin neck, and long legs compared with the Common Chimpanzee. The Bonobo walks upright about 25% of the time during ground locomotion.

These characteristics, and its posture, gives the Bonobo a more human-like appearance than that of the Common Chimpanzee. Moreover, the Bonobo has highly individuated facial features, as humans do, so that one individual can look significantly different from another, adapted for visual recognition in social interaction.

The Bonobo lives in different areas from the more aggressive Common Chimpanzee. Neither of the species swims, and they sometimes inhabit ranges on opposite sides of the great Congo River. It has been hypothesized that Bonobos are able to live a more peaceful lifestyle in part because of an abundance of nutritious vegetation in their natural habitat, allowing them to travel and forage in large parties.

Food Chain:

Bonobos primarily eat fruit and fruit juices, but are also known to eat leaves and small invertebrates such as insects. They are also capable of using simple tools such as sticks and twigs to aid their search for food. Ants, for example, are much easier to herd onto a stick and eat.

Habitat features:

These intelligent creatures are restricted to the rain forest. Around 10,000 Bonobos are found only south of the Congo River and north of the Kasai River (a tributary of the Congo), in the humid forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo of central Africa. They are an endangered species, due to both habitat loss and local hunting practices. Today, at most several thousand Bonobos remain.