Word: bonobos
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...latest research, however, shows that in one species of great ape, the bonobo, males engage in none of this barbarism. Bonobo society is one in which behavioral limits are set, the peace is generally kept, and transgressors are quickly punished. The reason for such order is simple: among bonobos it is the females that enforce the laws. The strategies used in the bonobo world might work in our own, according to Demonic Males (Houghton Mifflin; $24.95), a new book by anthropologist Richard Wrangham and science writer Dale Peterson...
...primatologists the bonobo did not exist at all until 1928, when researchers first noticed that the chimpanzee-like animal they had long been calling a pygmy chimp was in fact an entirely separate species. In the decades that followed, the physical differences between the newly recognized bonobo and its larger cousin were thought to be all that distinguished them. Then, in the 1970s, Japanese primatologist Takayoshi Kano began observing bonobos in the wild and noticed a key difference: in the bonobo culture, unlike the chimp or human culture, males were not the dominant gender...
...males with an aggressive bent, such a powerful simian sisterhood spells trouble. If a sexually mature bonobo male shows a female unwanted attention, she has merely to sound a distress call to bring an avenging group of females quickly to the scene. Males that misbehave in a nonsexual setting--say, at a feeding site, where they may try to hoard a cache of fruit and prevent other troop members from approaching--are similarly intimidated or chased off. Even males that reserve their aggression solely for one another find their behavior utterly unrewarded. The whole purpose of such mano a mano...
Through most of the experiment, Kanzi and Alia were neck and neck. At the end, however, Alia's language skills began to outpace the bonobo's, while Kanzi's grammatical comprehension topped out at the level of a 2 1/2-year-old. Though not impressive by human standards, even that toddler level implies vastly more sophisticated abilities than critics have acknowledged...
...instance, a one-way mirror prevented Kanzi and Alia from seeing who gave them commands, while those tracking what the ape and toddler did in response wore earphones to prevent them from hearing the requests. Each sentence was also utterly new to both ape and child. The young bonobo has thus helped break a two-decade deadlock during which language experimentation with animals was paralyzed by concerns that the animals were responding to cues from their trainers rather than demonstrating true abstract abilities...