These Apes Are Matriarchal, but It Doesn’t Mean They’re Peaceful

Science|These Apes Are Matriarchal, but It Doesn’t Mean They’re Peaceful

Male domination is the natural order of things, some people say. But bonobos, primates with whom we share nearly 99 percent of our DNA, beg to differ.

Bonobos are great apes that live in female-dominated societies, a relative rarity among mammals, especially in species where males are the larger sex. While females are smaller than their male counterparts, they reign supreme in bonobo societies.

Scientists have long wondered how female bonobos maintain their matriarchies. In a study, published Thursday in the journal Communications Biology, researchers who tracked six bonobo communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo over nearly 30 years provided the first evidence-based explanation for how female bonobos gain and sustain dominance over the males within their communities. Females, they found, form coalitions against males to tip the balance of power in their favor.

When a male bonobo steps out of line, nearby females will band together to attack or intimidate him. Males who cower in the face of such conflicts lose social rank, while their female adversaries gain it, affording them better access to food, and mates for their sons.

Bonobos and chimpanzees are our closest living relatives. They were once thought to be a slightly smaller and darker-skinned subspecies of chimpanzee, but scientists determined nearly a century ago that they are separate species. These endangered apes, found only in the Democratic Republic of Congo, are difficult to study in the wild.

To conduct this study, Martin Surbeck, a behavioral ecologist at Harvard University, and other scientists spent thousands of hours trudging through dense jungles.