Did bonobos actually tame themselves? Scientists find that the African apes evolved to become gentler creatures

26/01/2012

Did bonobos actually tame themselves? Scientists find that the African apes evolved to become gentler creatures

Daily Mail | Jan 2012

Bonobo monkeys are the 'nicer' cousins of the chimpanzee. The African apes are less aggressive, and have shorter canine teeth than their evolutionary cousins.

But between one and two million years ago, bonobos and chimps had one common evolutionary ancestor - and bonobos appear to have evolved to become gentler, nicer creatures.

Scientists say that the differences between the aggressive chimps and their more playful, less violent cousins are very similar to the changes we 'breed into' tame animals.

Bonobos spend more time playing with each other and having sex.

The differences between the two make it seem as if bonobos are a tamed version of chimpanzees.

And the only candidate for having tamed them is the apes themselves, according to anthropologist Brian Hare of Duke University.

'Bonobo traits echo those of domesticated animals,' he writes in a paper published in Animal Behaviour.

'Self-domestication provides a plausible account of the origin of numerous differences between bonobos and chimpanzees.

The widespread differences between the two puzzle researchers, because the two populations were only separated by the Congo river a relatively short time ago in evolutionary terms.

Hare says that that evolution to become less aggressive can actually make sense - the bonobos were in an environment so different they 'might as well have been on a different planet,' he told Scientific American.

Life was violent for the creatures that would eventually become chimps. Cut off by the river, they were under constant attack from gorillas.

Violent, aggressive animals would have competed with each other for food and mates - and the most aggressive individuals would have fathered the most children.

'In bonobo-land in the south, the story was different,' says Hare. 'The river would have protected the ancestors of bonobos from gorillas.'

Freed from environmental pressures, female apes would have formed larger groups, and been able to pick and choose mates - and animals who opted to make alliances rather than fight would have been the evolutionary victors.

Over hundreds of thousands of years, the apes evolved to become nicer.

'These results raise the possibility that self-domestication has been a widespread process in evolution,' says Hare.

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