You might be misusing the term "not seldom" (both here, and in a more recent post). That means "often," but it's an odd phrase that leaves one wondering if that's your intended meaning.
In the photo with that caption, my knowledge of anatomy leaves me struggling to imagine that the bald bonobo could be the female. Are you certain that in that photo the female of the couple is the bald one?
No, I might be spreading misinformation. It is not self-evident. But I concluded that the visible genital swelling looks like it belongs to the balder ape.
I think you have a solid thesis in the idea that we have used sex for social bonding, and that especially women may have used it for risk reduction and protection, by having sex with the men that would otherwise pose the biggest risk (thus giving rise to the attraction of "bad boys").
Bonobo's seems to have taken this to next level, using the social bonding effect of sex as a general approach to reduce conflict.
The question is how this applies to humans. According to Frans De Wall:
> "the most successful reconstruction of our past will be based on a broad, triangular comparison of chimpanzees, bonobos, ad ourselves within this larger evolutionary context"
I've mentioned the Pirahãs before:
> "The Pirahãs all seem to be intimate friends, no matter what village they come from. Pirahãs talk as though they know every other Pirahã extremely well. I suspect this may be related to their physical connections. Given the lack of stigma attached to and the relative frequency of divorce, promiscuousness associated with dancing and singing, and post- and prepubescent sexual experimentation, it isn't far of the mark to conjecture that many Pirahãs have had sex with a big percentage of other Pirahãs. This alone means that their relationships will be based on an intimacy unfamiliar to larger societies (the community that sleeps together stays together?), Imagine if you'd had sex with a sizeable percentage of the residents of your neighbourhood and that this fact was judged by the entire society as neither good or bad, just a fact about life - like saying you had tasted many kinds of food" - "Don't sleep, there are snakes", by Daniel Everett
In a triangular evolutionary setup, this sounds closer to Bonobos than Chimps to me.
If we have the potential for both, I guess the real question is what we would want our society to be like. Would we be better served being like Bonobos or like Chimps?
I have read that Piraha book now! At least the juicier parts of it (I think that half-reading books is a great thing to do). Very interesting people, on many levels. I found their eating habits even more fascinating than their sexual habits.
I like Frans de Waal's ape research a lot, but sometimes I get a bit skeptic of his theoretical reasoning. Was the common ancestor of deer, hippopotamuses and dolphins a little bit like a deer, a little bit like a hippopotamus and a little bit like a dolphin? It looks more like a deer than like a hippopotamus and a dolphin to me.
Since dolphins came to occupy such a different niche from its ancestors, it very much took its own path.
I think the same can be said of humans, chimpanzees and bonobos. Two of the three can easily be break-away populations while one just stayed in the original habitat and evolved little. We know that humans are a break-away population in a special niche and there are reasons to believe bonobos are (although it is much less obvious than in the case of humans).
I thought the Pirahas were a bit chimpanzee-like too when they killed their hardworking and peaceful neighbor Joaquim just because they thought his group shouldn't be on their territory. I also doubt whether the bonobo is actually more hetero-promiscuous than the chimpanzees: Male reproductive success seem to be more even in chimpanzees. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5568700/
It's a really good book. It is mostly about their unique language and culture and does not go into too much detail on the sexual parts (the author was a missionary after all), but the parts that are there are very interesting.
Another book I can recommend that goes much deeper into the social bonding role of sex in amazonian tribes (and is written by an actual anthropologist) is "The Candela" by William H. Crocker. He encountered the tribe before they got too influenced by missionaries, and describe how much dances, ritual exchange of partners, and sequential sex (where the same woman has multiple partners in one session), contributed to the social coherence and happiness of the tribe.
Especially I found it strange that the author mentioned that his wife had witness a gang rape of a teenage girl among the Piraha. And then he didn't write any more details about it. Like if it wasn't important or something.
Than you for the tip, I will look for that one too.
I'd like to register an official request that there be no more hardcore bonobo pornography at Wood From Eden. Also:
> Bonobos are less violent than chimpanzees, at least in captivity.
> But they are still much more violent than humans are to their in-group members.
Poor bonobos! Nobody ever taught them how to discuss things peaceably. Language helps to provide an outlet for aggressive communication. Without language, people are left to communicate defiance, warnings, and anger violently, and it isn't surprising that bonobos are still violent; when humans have difficulty expressing themselves, they are, too:
"expressive language deficits were more prevalent in the highly aggressive children. Highly aggressive children were significantly more deficient in reading ability and more often required speech-language services."
That makes a lot of sense. With language, individuals can engage in aggression without physical damage. If I had the time, I'd work out a theory of the evolutionary advantage of sorting out dominance relations (and consequent access to resources!) without physically damaging each other (and risk of being damage one's self).
Your links made me think of something I wondered a very long time ago. Before I knew anything about apes, I once posed the question: Can human beings have a mental retardation that makes them behave like apes? I tried to search for any such knowledge on Google. Only result: Apparently, people use the phrase "retarded ape" as an insult.
After I started reading about apes, I wouldn't ask that question again. Apes are clearly not low-IQ humans. They have instincts we don't have and lack instincts we have. I'm not even sure that apes are bad at communicating. If one could ask them, I think they would say that they can communicate everything they need to say to each other. (I don't remember exactly where I read it, maybe Demonic Males by Richard Wrangham, but when apes learn human language they don't communicate like humans. For example, they never ask questions. They just use the wonders of language to order a banana.)
"Koko is said to have understood nouns, verbs, and adjectives, including abstract concepts like "good" and "fake", and was able to ask simple questions. It is generally accepted that she did not use syntax or grammar, and that her use of language did not exceed that of a young human child.[13][14][15][16][17] However, she scored between 70 and 90 on various infant IQ scales, and some experts, including Mary Lee Jensvold, claim that Koko "[used] language the same way people do".[18][19][20]"
I'm not presenting this as definitive. Wikipedia is sort of the bargain basement of the soft sciences, but, everywhere I've ever read about my favorite gorilla she always seemed a lot like a cuddly, scary strong toddler.
I'm definitely not confident that apes and human infants are that different. Actually, I see such a likeness that every infant in this family goes under the honorary title "the ape" and different varieties of that ("the adorable ape", "cutest ape in town" and other highly sophisticated remarks). Since humans are neotenous, especially at the infant stage we are very similar to apes.
Still, I think the social instincts of apes and humans differ a lot. Or, rather, the social instincts of different hominids differ a lot. My zookeeper informant said that orangutans are the most technically ingenious apes while chimpanzees are more socially clever, for example. https://woodfromeden.substack.com/p/the-life-and-works-of-the-apefant
And when human infants are instructed to perform a task they copy obviously unnecessary steps, while chimpanzees only copy the technically necessary steps.
Most of all, I think humans are less spontaneously aggressive and that is the key to building a more complex society. Chimpanzee can create power alliances of a few individuals, humans can create power alliances of millions. I think that is a question of temperament just as much as intelligence.
My claim is smaller than that - it would be foolish to think that such enormous changes took place in terms of intelligence without any changes in temperament. But when you write that apes don't ask questions, it rubs against my sense of Koko. For good reason, evidently, according to this transcript:
Patterson: I would say, yes, definitely. So much so, that in terms of the passing of [her kitten] All Ball—even 15 years later, whenever she encountered a picture of a kitten that looked like All Ball, she would sign, “Sad. Cry.” and point to the picture. She was still mourning after many years.
Morin: I read that she met Robin Williams once and had a similar reaction when she learned about his death.
Patterson: She actually wasn't told that he passed away. I was with her and we started getting phone calls when the news broke. She was right next to me and could hear the conversation and knew that something was wrong. She asked me to tell her what it was. So I did. It was upsetting to everybody.
Morin, R. (2015). A conversation with Koko the gorilla. The Atlantic, 28.
That was a very interesting text about "Queen Koko". I have read little about research on ape psychology and a lot about observations of apes. I must say that everything Patterson said about Koko sounds very plausible compared to what I have read about primatological observations. Apes in the wild also give every impression to understand death and to mourn. I don't know, but I would guess they have ways to signal mourning in their own language. I would also be very surprised if it turned out that apes lack a theory of mind. The social cognition of animals seem to be much more advanced than their ability for pure abstraction. Not only primates, but also a horse like Clever Hans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans
However, the interview with Patterson clearly states that Koko didn't like the concept of questions:
"Patterson cautioned me earlier to refrain from asking Koko questions. I was to let the gorilla take the lead. “She has that royal air about her,” the researcher explained, “and she doesn't entertain questions. Just like you wouldn’t question the queen—Koko is the same way. She’ll disengage.” "
Seems they are interested in the 'actual' rather than in 'possibility'. This could be an emergent property of the larger human brain (drawing an analogy from the emergent properties of LLMs (Large Language Models) as they scale up in parameter numbers (analogous to neuron connections).
I think LLMs are very different from primate brains. They build on statistics and humans are usually bad to very bad at statistics. Nonetheless, it is interesting to watch how a statistics-based computer can use written language more correctly than most humans do after 12 years of schooling. Like if we created a system that we don't fully master ourselves.
You might be misusing the term "not seldom" (both here, and in a more recent post). That means "often," but it's an odd phrase that leaves one wondering if that's your intended meaning.
Thank you. I will bear that in mind.
So are female bonobos seldom bald, or not seldom bald?
They are not seldom bald! Some of them look very interesting because they have very little hair. Like humans with weird proportions.
In the photo with that caption, my knowledge of anatomy leaves me struggling to imagine that the bald bonobo could be the female. Are you certain that in that photo the female of the couple is the bald one?
No, I might be spreading misinformation. It is not self-evident. But I concluded that the visible genital swelling looks like it belongs to the balder ape.
I think you have a solid thesis in the idea that we have used sex for social bonding, and that especially women may have used it for risk reduction and protection, by having sex with the men that would otherwise pose the biggest risk (thus giving rise to the attraction of "bad boys").
Bonobo's seems to have taken this to next level, using the social bonding effect of sex as a general approach to reduce conflict.
The question is how this applies to humans. According to Frans De Wall:
> "the most successful reconstruction of our past will be based on a broad, triangular comparison of chimpanzees, bonobos, ad ourselves within this larger evolutionary context"
I've mentioned the Pirahãs before:
> "The Pirahãs all seem to be intimate friends, no matter what village they come from. Pirahãs talk as though they know every other Pirahã extremely well. I suspect this may be related to their physical connections. Given the lack of stigma attached to and the relative frequency of divorce, promiscuousness associated with dancing and singing, and post- and prepubescent sexual experimentation, it isn't far of the mark to conjecture that many Pirahãs have had sex with a big percentage of other Pirahãs. This alone means that their relationships will be based on an intimacy unfamiliar to larger societies (the community that sleeps together stays together?), Imagine if you'd had sex with a sizeable percentage of the residents of your neighbourhood and that this fact was judged by the entire society as neither good or bad, just a fact about life - like saying you had tasted many kinds of food" - "Don't sleep, there are snakes", by Daniel Everett
In a triangular evolutionary setup, this sounds closer to Bonobos than Chimps to me.
If we have the potential for both, I guess the real question is what we would want our society to be like. Would we be better served being like Bonobos or like Chimps?
I have read that Piraha book now! At least the juicier parts of it (I think that half-reading books is a great thing to do). Very interesting people, on many levels. I found their eating habits even more fascinating than their sexual habits.
I like Frans de Waal's ape research a lot, but sometimes I get a bit skeptic of his theoretical reasoning. Was the common ancestor of deer, hippopotamuses and dolphins a little bit like a deer, a little bit like a hippopotamus and a little bit like a dolphin? It looks more like a deer than like a hippopotamus and a dolphin to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_cetaceans
Since dolphins came to occupy such a different niche from its ancestors, it very much took its own path.
I think the same can be said of humans, chimpanzees and bonobos. Two of the three can easily be break-away populations while one just stayed in the original habitat and evolved little. We know that humans are a break-away population in a special niche and there are reasons to believe bonobos are (although it is much less obvious than in the case of humans).
I thought the Pirahas were a bit chimpanzee-like too when they killed their hardworking and peaceful neighbor Joaquim just because they thought his group shouldn't be on their territory. I also doubt whether the bonobo is actually more hetero-promiscuous than the chimpanzees: Male reproductive success seem to be more even in chimpanzees. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5568700/
It's a really good book. It is mostly about their unique language and culture and does not go into too much detail on the sexual parts (the author was a missionary after all), but the parts that are there are very interesting.
Another book I can recommend that goes much deeper into the social bonding role of sex in amazonian tribes (and is written by an actual anthropologist) is "The Candela" by William H. Crocker. He encountered the tribe before they got too influenced by missionaries, and describe how much dances, ritual exchange of partners, and sequential sex (where the same woman has multiple partners in one session), contributed to the social coherence and happiness of the tribe.
Especially I found it strange that the author mentioned that his wife had witness a gang rape of a teenage girl among the Piraha. And then he didn't write any more details about it. Like if it wasn't important or something.
Than you for the tip, I will look for that one too.
I'd like to register an official request that there be no more hardcore bonobo pornography at Wood From Eden. Also:
> Bonobos are less violent than chimpanzees, at least in captivity.
> But they are still much more violent than humans are to their in-group members.
Poor bonobos! Nobody ever taught them how to discuss things peaceably. Language helps to provide an outlet for aggressive communication. Without language, people are left to communicate defiance, warnings, and anger violently, and it isn't surprising that bonobos are still violent; when humans have difficulty expressing themselves, they are, too:
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1977-31428-001
"findings support the interpretation that some deficit in mediational use of verbal ability may be present in aggressive boys"
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/B:JACP.0000030297.91759.74
"Clinic and forensic studies have reported high rates of language impairments in conduct disordered and incarcerated youth."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0890856709653922
"expressive language deficits were more prevalent in the highly aggressive children. Highly aggressive children were significantly more deficient in reading ability and more often required speech-language services."
That makes a lot of sense. With language, individuals can engage in aggression without physical damage. If I had the time, I'd work out a theory of the evolutionary advantage of sorting out dominance relations (and consequent access to resources!) without physically damaging each other (and risk of being damage one's self).
Perhaps our gracile form (compared to Neandertal and, likely, Denisovian) is a product of our facility with language!
Your links made me think of something I wondered a very long time ago. Before I knew anything about apes, I once posed the question: Can human beings have a mental retardation that makes them behave like apes? I tried to search for any such knowledge on Google. Only result: Apparently, people use the phrase "retarded ape" as an insult.
After I started reading about apes, I wouldn't ask that question again. Apes are clearly not low-IQ humans. They have instincts we don't have and lack instincts we have. I'm not even sure that apes are bad at communicating. If one could ask them, I think they would say that they can communicate everything they need to say to each other. (I don't remember exactly where I read it, maybe Demonic Males by Richard Wrangham, but when apes learn human language they don't communicate like humans. For example, they never ask questions. They just use the wonders of language to order a banana.)
Are you confident humans and apes are really that different? Wikipedia claims:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koko_%28gorilla%29
"Koko is said to have understood nouns, verbs, and adjectives, including abstract concepts like "good" and "fake", and was able to ask simple questions. It is generally accepted that she did not use syntax or grammar, and that her use of language did not exceed that of a young human child.[13][14][15][16][17] However, she scored between 70 and 90 on various infant IQ scales, and some experts, including Mary Lee Jensvold, claim that Koko "[used] language the same way people do".[18][19][20]"
I'm not presenting this as definitive. Wikipedia is sort of the bargain basement of the soft sciences, but, everywhere I've ever read about my favorite gorilla she always seemed a lot like a cuddly, scary strong toddler.
I'm definitely not confident that apes and human infants are that different. Actually, I see such a likeness that every infant in this family goes under the honorary title "the ape" and different varieties of that ("the adorable ape", "cutest ape in town" and other highly sophisticated remarks). Since humans are neotenous, especially at the infant stage we are very similar to apes.
Still, I think the social instincts of apes and humans differ a lot. Or, rather, the social instincts of different hominids differ a lot. My zookeeper informant said that orangutans are the most technically ingenious apes while chimpanzees are more socially clever, for example. https://woodfromeden.substack.com/p/the-life-and-works-of-the-apefant
And when human infants are instructed to perform a task they copy obviously unnecessary steps, while chimpanzees only copy the technically necessary steps.
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_imitation_is_at_the_heart_of_being_human
Like if they think better for themselves!
Most of all, I think humans are less spontaneously aggressive and that is the key to building a more complex society. Chimpanzee can create power alliances of a few individuals, humans can create power alliances of millions. I think that is a question of temperament just as much as intelligence.
My claim is smaller than that - it would be foolish to think that such enormous changes took place in terms of intelligence without any changes in temperament. But when you write that apes don't ask questions, it rubs against my sense of Koko. For good reason, evidently, according to this transcript:
https://www.ccusd93.org/cms/lib/AZ02204140/Centricity/Domain/875/1%20A%20Conversation%20With%20Koko%20the%20Gorilla.docx
Patterson: I would say, yes, definitely. So much so, that in terms of the passing of [her kitten] All Ball—even 15 years later, whenever she encountered a picture of a kitten that looked like All Ball, she would sign, “Sad. Cry.” and point to the picture. She was still mourning after many years.
Morin: I read that she met Robin Williams once and had a similar reaction when she learned about his death.
Patterson: She actually wasn't told that he passed away. I was with her and we started getting phone calls when the news broke. She was right next to me and could hear the conversation and knew that something was wrong. She asked me to tell her what it was. So I did. It was upsetting to everybody.
Morin, R. (2015). A conversation with Koko the gorilla. The Atlantic, 28.
That was a very interesting text about "Queen Koko". I have read little about research on ape psychology and a lot about observations of apes. I must say that everything Patterson said about Koko sounds very plausible compared to what I have read about primatological observations. Apes in the wild also give every impression to understand death and to mourn. I don't know, but I would guess they have ways to signal mourning in their own language. I would also be very surprised if it turned out that apes lack a theory of mind. The social cognition of animals seem to be much more advanced than their ability for pure abstraction. Not only primates, but also a horse like Clever Hans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans
However, the interview with Patterson clearly states that Koko didn't like the concept of questions:
"Patterson cautioned me earlier to refrain from asking Koko questions. I was to let the gorilla take the lead. “She has that royal air about her,” the researcher explained, “and she doesn't entertain questions. Just like you wouldn’t question the queen—Koko is the same way. She’ll disengage.” "
...I have no answer for that. But coincidentally, some guys at work showed me this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YWVB_xxQJs
"they never ask questions."
Seems they are interested in the 'actual' rather than in 'possibility'. This could be an emergent property of the larger human brain (drawing an analogy from the emergent properties of LLMs (Large Language Models) as they scale up in parameter numbers (analogous to neuron connections).
Wikipedia also states that apes don't ask questions, so apparently it is well known.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_ape_language
I think LLMs are very different from primate brains. They build on statistics and humans are usually bad to very bad at statistics. Nonetheless, it is interesting to watch how a statistics-based computer can use written language more correctly than most humans do after 12 years of schooling. Like if we created a system that we don't fully master ourselves.