BONOBO
(Pan paniscus)Male vs. Female
| HOME |
| GENERAL |
| HABITAT & DIET |
| SOCIETY |
| MATING SYSTEM |
| MALE vs. FEMALE |
| PREDATION |
| COMMUNICATION |
Photo courtesy www.daveliggett.com |
The roles of the males and females are quite different in the bonobos than most animals. The females are dominant over the males, which give the females priority to food resources. The females are also the ones that will leave a emigrate to a new group at an early age (Idani, 1991), which is not common in the animal kingdom. When a female leaves one group and enters another, she is accepted into that new group depending on her being permitted to groom her "senior specific female" (SSF). An SSF is a resident female that the emigrant female adopts when entering a group that will determine her acceptance into the group (Idani 1991). This action forms very strong female-female bonds that are the basis of the bonobo society (White, 1992). Males, on the other hand, are used for protection (mostly of young) from predators and hunting. They are philopatric, which means that they do not leave the group, and stay with their mother (Pygmy Chimpanzee, 2002). The males are most likely to have an aggressive encounter, however aggression as a whole is highly reduced (The Bonobo, 1996).
Because females are dominant in bonobo society, they will, along with the males, have a dominance hierarchy, or "pecking order" within their group. In the female groups, dominance is based on age, and the alpha female is dominant over the alpha male. The male dominance hierarchy, becuase they are philopatric, depends on the mothers rank. Each male will assume the rank of his mother within the female hierarchy (Pygmy Chimpanzee, 2000).
As mentioned before, the level of aggression within the bonobo society is greatly reduced. This is due to many reasons, mostly attributed to their high level of male/female interactions, such as grooming, intercourse, GG-rubbing, and signs of affection (Blount, 1990).
This page was created for an Animal Behavior course for Biology spring semester 2003
Davidson College
Literature Cited
Contact me at: mebryant@davidson.edu