The big news in the primatology community today is that bonobos have been found to hunt and kill other animals in an organized fashion, up to and including the young of other primates in the same fashion as chimpanzees.
What’s interesting in that to me is very much less that bonobos- a close relative of chimpanzees and slightly less close relative of humans ourselves- hunt, than that this is actually news. Chimps have been known to hunt, sometimes in some quite inventively nasty ways, for a long time, and we all know how the “third chimpanzee” (Jared Diamond’s name for hominids) feels about animals that can be readily transformed into tasty, tasty dinner. This is not exactly odd primate behavior; more and more apes and monkeys are being found to be opportunistic meat-eaters. It’s evolutionarily sensible behavior- meat contains all sorts of extremely valuable proteins and fats that are harder to get enough of from an exclusively vegan diet, especially for a relatively big-brained (brains are expensive) creature like a primate. Even the pacific gorilla, previously thought to be a mild-mannered browser, has been observed to happily eat meat when the chance arises- up to and including cannibalistic moments.
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Bonobos, you see, are the absolute darling of a certain sort of human- a sort that tends to be rather over-represented in anthropology- because unlike their nearest relatives, they have apparently exchanged a hierarchical male-dominated and violent society for a matriarchal one that uses sex to resolve conflicts rather than threats or assault. They really do appear to make love, rather than war. They have all sorts of other libertine traits; since the society is female-dominated, most conflicts are between females, and since they tend to defuse conflicts and tension with sexual contact, females can expect to have far more sexual encounters with other females than with males. They are also the only non-human apes that kiss, that have face-to-face sex, and that have oral sex.
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