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Primates

Lowland rainforest and swamp forest south of the Congo River

Bonobo

Pan paniscus

Status

Endangered

Habitat

Lowland rainforest and swamp forest south of the Congo River

Range

Africa

Group

Primates

The great ape where the females hold the power.

Female bonobos are individually smaller than males but coalitionally stronger. Unrelated females bond and back each other, and a male's standing derives largely from his mother's. The result is a society with markedly less lethal aggression than chimpanzees — no observed infanticide, no recorded intercommunity killing.

Their entire world range sits inside the arc of the Congo River, which they cannot cross. Roughly a tenth of that range has formal protection, and much of the rest is unsurveyed forest reachable only by river and foot. Almost everything known about wild bonobos comes from a handful of long-term field sites.

The open shelf

More frames of the bonobo

Streamed live from the Commons Quality Images archive, eighteen at a time. Tap any frame to study it — each remains its photographer’s.

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Where we photograph it

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