Go Go Bonobo!

First time mom, Jo-T, with her nine-month-old son Lukuru (Luke) by Paige Anderson

 Everyone who knows me well knows I can't get enough of apes and monkeys. Long before I had the luck to write for NatGeo I tried to work ape and monkey stories into the pages of the Orlando Weekly and the Toronto Sun. If one of them was ever seen wearing a Kate Spade dress I'd have tried to write about them for Glamour.

Below, Akili, the older man by Paige Anderson)



Of all the apes and monkeys bonobos have always had a special place in my heart. It's not just because they are the hyper-sexed apes you've heard about but because of their gentleness and their matriarchal society (though they can be tough customers, too). I was fascinated with the notion primatologists wrote about that, had we known about the sweeter nature of these apes, who share as much DNA with us as chimps do, we might not have had such an aggressive image of ourselves, going only by our chimp relatives.

Years later - this year in fact - when I found out there were bonobos at Jacksonville Zoo I couldn't wait to go see them.

( Neely Ann, Luke and Jo'T by Paige Anderson)


Lucky for me a reader wrote into NatGeo with a question about them and a study came out about them in tandem so I had a hook to go on. I grabbed Paige Anderson who took these terrific photos of the Jacksonville bonobos. These are the ones I write about in Bonobo BabyTalk Reveals Roots of Human Language on National Geographic's website.


Poor Paige - I dragged her around Jax for six hours in the 99 degree heat but I wanted to see everything and frankly I could have stared at the bonobos all day long. They're so much fun to watch, so like us and having supervisor of mammals Tracy Fenn there to tell us who was who and what their relationships were, it was like watching a snippet of a soap opera. Paige and I used to watch All My Children together; this was even better.

(Luke getting tickled by his mama by Paige Anderson)































 I hope to have more opportunities to get out and see these mesmerizing animals; hopefully you'll get to see them for yourself one day.

Nothing like a vacation to visit the relatives, especially the kind you don't actually have to talk to.


(Above, Neely Ann snacking, by Paige Anderson)


(The beautiful and famous Kuni, by Paige Anderson)


(Goofy Luke rolling around in the grass with Jo-T, by Paige Anderson)

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