Bonobos and chimps equally love meat

APRIL 30, 2019

by Jim Barlow, University of Oregon

In an African forest where leopards and poisonous mamba dwell, a University of Oregon team once had to flee charging boar. But it was a brief detour in research that adds to the idea that bonobos are neither hippies nor vegans.

For six months in 2017, the team, including local guides and colleagues from Northern Kentucky University, hiked a 9-square-mile area of the Lomako Forest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Their goal was to solidify the idea that bonobos, a female-dominated ape species, eat meat more often than previously believed.

The research effort—funded by the Leakey Foundation and National Geographic Society—paid off.

"Bonobos are a type of chimpanzee, and we are continuing to assess the differences between these different species," said UO doctoral student Colin Brand. "We are finding a lot of similarities and some key differences. Meat-eating seems to be a similar behavior of both species in terms of the rate at which they do it."

Chimps have a broad range in Africa, but bonobos live only in the forest along the big bend of the Congo, the world's ninth-longest river.

While bonobos are known to eat monkeys, some birds and hyrax, their preferred food in the region studied was Weyn's duikers – small antelope easily carried along the ground and up onto tree branches.

In the journal Folia Primatologica, the team documented that bonobos capture and consume meat at the same frequency as male-dominated chimpanzees. They also found that females control the duiker carcasses and get aggressive when other bonobos, especially males, reach for a handout but that they also show tolerance and will share with subadult males.

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