[thechat] King Preaches Abstinence to Parading Bonobos

[Plunkett, Matt]

>> Bonobos!  Woohoo!
>>
>> Ha ha, now that I got my bonobo frenzy out of the way...
>
> Here's an interesting angle based on this excerpt from
> http://songweaver.com/info/bonobos.html

Hrm, this article is dangerous.  Without bringing too much reality into this
fantastic discussion, let me just note that _good_ biological
anthropologists don't really bandy about comparisons between nonhuman ape
and human cultures.  Sure, there are interesting things to talk about, but
the way this article begins is very...inflammatory.  "Man the Hunter" was
debunked long before 1995, and using bonobo culture as some kind of
"feminist ammunition" is fanciful.  Heh, even talking about whether animals
have culture could spark a discussion. :)

To me, and the article goes into this a bit later on, the interesting thing
about bonobos is how different their social structure is than chimpanzees.
Both species have very complex social structures with little if any
similarities, despite their morphological similarities.

> Suppose we're descendants of different primate stock, i.e we all look
> the same, can intermarry etc but have a dominant characteristic derived
> from our ancestry.
>
> What ancestor would you claim?  I think I might have been an
> orangutan...

I'm sure we can all agree that gibbons are the coolest. :)  Small, graceful,
fully bipedal apes that spend more than half of their time brachiating.
What's more fun than that?