Bonobos Quotes

Both bonobos and common chimps are as close to humans as foxes are to dogs. I don't know about you, but that's closer than I feel to some of my human relatives. ~ Susan Block

Bonobo discipline involves being schooled in a gentler, more playful fashion. ~ Susan Block

In Bonoboville, the females gently but firmly rule the roost, keeping the males gentle and firm ~ Susan Block

Being both more systematically brutal than chimps and more empathetic than
bonobos, we are by far the most bipolar ape. Our societies are never completely peaceful, never completely competitive, never ruled by sheer selfishness, and never perfectly moral. ~ Frans De Waal

Who would you rather live with, a bunch of bonobos feeling good? Or chimpanzees eating each other's babies? Or humans waterboarding each other and destroying the planet? ~ Francine Prose

How thoroughly the chimps and bonobos have erased the list of purported human distinctions!-self-awareness, language, ideas and their association, reason, trade, play, choice, courage, love and altruism, laughter, concealed ovulation, kissing, face-to-face sex, female orgasm, division of labor, cannibalism, art, music, politics, and featherless bipedalism, besides tool using, tool making, and much else. Philosophers and scientists confidently offer up traits said to be uniquely human, and the apes casually knock them down--toppling the pretension that humans constitute some sort of biological aristocracy among the beings of Earth. Instead, we are more like the nouveau riche, incompletely accommodated to our recent exalted state, insecure about who we are, and trying to put as much distance as possible between us and our humble origins. It's as if our nearest relatives, by their very existence, refute all our explanations and justifications. So as counterweights to human arrogance and pride, it is good for us that there are still apes on Earth. ~ Carl Sagan

It's important to remember that we evolved. Now, I know that's a dirty word for some people, but we evolved from common ancestors with the gorillas, the chimpanzee and also the bonobos. We have a common past, and we have a common future. ~ Louise Leakey

In a world divided by chimpophiles and bonobophiles, we all had a good laugh when Stephen peeled his banana. (62) ~ Frans De Waal

We have a lot to learn from [bonobos], because they're a very egalitarian society and they're a very empathetic society. Sexual behavior is not confined to one aspect of their life that they set aside. It permeates their entire life. ~ Sue Savage-Rumbaugh

MILFs rule Bonoboville ~ Susan Block

Female bonobos form a strong sisterhood. They rule through female solidarity. ~ Frans De Waal

Researchers like Vanessa believe that the key to [bonobos] pacifism and remarkable group tolerance and cooperation is a matriarchal society: Whenever a male starts to bully or attack a female, she cries out and other females band together and discipline the males, re-establishing calm and cooperation. ~ Ashley Judd

Superstition, she said. Soup with a bonobo finger in it is supposed to make a pregnant woman give birth to a strong baby. Putting another finger in the bathwater keeps the baby strong. "I hope the stupid polio", I said, and surprised myself by even sort of meaning it. I kissed the top of the bonobo's head. I imagined him in his crate, crying against the bars, someone lifting him out only to chop off a finger. Plunging him back into the crate, then pulling him out a few days later to take another ... ~ Eliot Schrefer

Chimps cannot tell us anything about peaceful relations, because chimps have only different degrees of hostility between communities. Whereas bonobos do tell us something; they tell us about the possibility of having peaceful relationships. ~ Frans De Waal

Since the bigger gorillas leave chimps only a fraction of the quantity of food bonobos get, each chimp must fight ferociously to survive, including killing other chimpanzees ~ Eliot Schrefer

Most men probably wouldn't want to live the lives of bonobos. They're constantly clinging to their mothers' apron strings. They lack the ability to make decisions about their own fates, something that we and male chimpanzees practically consider our birthright. ~ Frans De Waal

Mommy, Daddy, what are they doing?" a little girl asked, watching the bonobos play. Her forehead and palms were pressed against the glass, as if she thought she could break on through to the other side and join them if only she pushed hard enough.

"Looks like they need private time!" her father barked back, steering the girl away from the window as her mother brightly proposed, "Let's go see the hippos!"

Not everybody is quite ready for the Bonobo Way, and far be it from me to push it on anyone, especially some stressed-out parents at the zoo.

On the other hand, maybe they're more ready than they realize. Ready or not, its moment has come. The time is now for human beings to step up to the plate and protect our kissing cousins from extinction, as well as learn as much as we can from them about our noblest and kinkiest characteristics, our capacity for peace (even world peace) through pleasure, more satisfying relationships, better communication, hotter sex and deeper love. ~ Susan Block

Bonobos are unique among great apes because they are not dominated by males. ~ Claudine Andre

Don't fall in love with a bonobo, because it's gonna die. ~ Anderson Cooper

Peace through Pleasure ~ Susan Block

Bonobos really violate a rule of nature where usually if you're bigger, you're going to be dominant. But here, females are actually smaller. But they're still not dominated by males because they work together. ~ Claudine Andre

My family tree spreads wide as well. I am a great ape, and you are a great ape, and so are chimpanzees and orangutans and bonobos, all of us distant and distrustful cousins.
I know this is troubling.
I too find it hard to believe there is a connection across time and space, linking me to a race of ill-mannered clowns.
Chimps. There's no excuse for them. ~ Katherine Applegate

Winning the love of a higher-status person is a widespread strategy for stimulating serotonin. Of course, we don't consciously equate love with status. But when a highstatus person of the right gender notices you, your brain lights up. Your neurochemistry screams "Go toward this. It is very good for your survival. " Even bonobos, the apes known for their sexual dynamism, compete vigorously for high-status partners ~ Anonymous

Bonobos don't really have that darker side. So that's where they could really help us is how could it be that a species that has a brain a third of the size of ours can do something that with all our technological prowess we can't accomplish? Which is to not kill each other. ~ Claudine Andre

Bonobos are... ambassadors from a primordial world of peace through pleasure, inviting us in one kiss at a time. ~ Susan Block

Puritans, like poachers, shoot to kill your inner bonobo ~ Susan Block

Bonobos may have a brain that's a third the size of ours, but they're remarkably intelligent. ~ Claudine Andre

Though bonobos tend to be a lot hairier than us - and they don't build houses or churches or Pentagons like we do - these primates look and act remarkably human. They often even go beyond the merely "human," and enter the realm of the truly "humane. ~ Susan Block

What might happen if we could somehow reorient ourselves toward our more loving, bonobo side rather than our inner mad chimpanzee? ~ Susan Block

Deep in the heart of the hot, wet African rainforest, there lives a tribe of peacemakers who share a multiplicity of pleasures and make a very special kind of love. South of the sprawling Congo River, in the midst of war-ravaged territory, some 2,000 miles from the arid Ethiopian desert where the oldest human fossils have been found, lies this lush and steamy jungle paradise, the only natural habitat of the bonobo. ~ Susan Block

Using information about animal behavior to justify social or political ideology is wrong . . . People need to be able to make decisions about their lives without having to worry about keeping up with the bonobos. ~ Marlene Zuk

Male bonobos really don't fit the human male ideal. ~ Frans De Waal

Bonobos, related to chimpanzees and native to the Congo, have been found to engage in French kissing. ~ Karen Shanor

I squinted through the big window, a portal to another world, trying to get a better view of the primal love scene before us. All I could see was a mass of wriggling fur and finger-like toes until my eyes focused in on one male and two females kissing, ear-tonguing and giving each other enthusiastic oral sex, punctuated with occasional somersaults, smacks and nibbles on fruit and leaves. Sometimes they interacted as a threesome. Other times, two would cavort together, while the third played with herself, alternating between fingering and using a red rubber ball as a kind of sex toy, rubbing and bouncing it vigorously against her large pink vulva. ~ Susan Block

[Professor Kinnerton] Has the fact that we have about 97 percent of our DNA in common with chimpanzees escaped you? How can you still argue we are special and have a soul when we are so obviously animals? ... [Al Gleeson] With due respect sir, the 97 percent is precisely the problem. Are chimpanzees 97 percent of the way to splitting the atom? Are they 97 percent of the way to writing their first sonnet? Someone tittered at the back of the room. Are bonobos 97 percent of the way to putting the first bonobo on the moon? Is there an orangutan somewhere with a simian Mona Lisa 97 percent finished? ~ Peter Kazmaier