Unaware of any taxonomic distinction with the common chimpanzee, American psychologist and primatologist Robert Yerkes had already noticed an unexpected major behavioural difference in the 1920's. Major behavioural differences between bonobos and chimpanzees were first discussed in detail by Tratz and Heck in the early 1950s. In 1933, American anatomist Harold Coolidge elevated it to species status. Schwarz published his findings in 1929, classifying the bonobo as a subspecies of chimpanzee, Pan satyrus paniscus. The bonobo was first recognised as a distinct taxon in 1928 by German anatomist Ernst Schwarz, based on a skull in the Tervuren Museum in Belgium which had previously been classified as a juvenile chimpanzee ( Pan troglodytes). The name is thought to derive from a misspelling on a shipping crate from the town of Bolobo on the Congo River near the location from which the first bonobo specimens were collected in the 1920s. The name "bonobo" first appeared in 1954, when Austrian zoologist Eduard Paul Tratz and German biologist Heinz Heck proposed it as a new and separate generic term for pygmy chimpanzees. The name "pygmy" was given by the German zoologist Ernst Schwarz in 1929, who classified the species on the basis of a previously mislabeled bonobo cranium, noting its diminutive size compared to chimpanzee skulls. Etymologyįormerly the bonobo was known as the "pygmy chimpanzee", despite the bonobo having a similar body size to the common chimpanzee. Bonobos typically live 40 years in captivity their lifespan in the wild is unknown, but it is almost certainly much shorter. The species is listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List and is most threatened by habitat destruction, human population growth and movement (as well as ongoing civil unrest and political infighting), with commercial poaching being, by far, the most prominent threat.
There are no concrete figures regarding population, but the estimate is between 29,500 and 50,000 individuals. Bonobos live south of the river, and thereby were separated from the ancestors of the common chimpanzee, which live north of the river. As the two species are not proficient swimmers, the natural formation of the Congo River (around 1.5–2 million years ago) possibly led to the isolation and speciation of the bonobo. Īlong with the common chimpanzee, the bonobo is the closest extant relative to humans. Because of political instability in the region, and the general timidity of bonobos, there has been relatively little field work done observing the species in its natural habitat.Īccording to studies published in 2017 by researchers at The George Washington University, the ancestors of the genus Pan split from the human line about 8 million years ago moreover, bonobos split from the common chimpanzee line about 2 million years ago. The bonobo inhabits primary and secondary forest, including seasonally inundated swamp forest. The species is predominantly frugivorous, compared to the often highly omnivorous diets and hunting of small monkeys, duiker and other antelope exhibited by common chimpanzees. The bonobo is found in a 500,000 km 2 (190,000 sq mi) area within the Congo Basin of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Central Africa. Some individuals have sparser, thin hair over parts of their bodies.
īonobos are distinguished from common chimpanzees by relatively long limbs, pinker lips, a darker face, a tail-tuft through adulthood, and parted, longer hair on its head.
Taxonomically, the members of the chimpanzee/bonobo subtribe Panina-composed entirely by the genus Pan-are collectively termed panins. While bonobos are, today, recognized as a distinct species in their own right, they were initially thought to be a subspecies of Pan troglodytes, due to the physical similarities between the two species. The bonobo ( / b ə ˈ n oʊ b oʊ, ˈ b ɒ n ə b oʊ/ Pan paniscus), also historically called the pygmy chimpanzee (less often the dwarf chimpanzee or gracile chimpanzee), is an endangered great ape and one of the two species making up the genus Pan (the other being the common chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes).
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