Bonobo

Appearance

It has a black face with pink lips, small ears, wide nostrils, and long hair on its head that forms a parting. Bonobos are distinguished from common chimpanzees by relatively long limbs, pinker lips, a darker face, a tail-tuft through adulthood, and longer, parted hair on their heads.

The Bonobo, also historically called the pygmy chimpanzee (less often the dwarf chimpanzee or gracile chimpanzee), is the smallest species of great ape and one of the two making up the genus Pan (the other being the common chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes).

Although large male chimpanzees can exceed any Bonobo in bulk and weight, the two species broadly overlap in body size. Body mass ranges from 34 to 60 kg (75 to 132 lb) with an average weight of 45 kilograms (99 lb) in males against an average of 33 kg (73 lb) in females.

Published measurements include mass about 43.

Range and habitat

Bonobos are found only south of the Congo River and north of the Kasai River (a tributary of the Congo), in the humid forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Ernst Schwarz's 1927 paper "Le Chimpanzé de la Rive Gauche du Congo", announcing his discovery, has been read as an association between the Parisian Left Bank and the left bank of the Congo River. The bohemian culture in Paris, and an unconventional ape in the Congo. The ranges of bonobos and chimpanzees are separated by the Congo River, with bonobos living to its south and chimpanzees to the north.

In 2002, the Bonobo Conservation Initiative initiated the Bonobo Peace Forest Project (supported by the Global Conservation Fund of Conservation International), in cooperation with national institutions, local NGOs, and local communities. The Peace Forest Project works with local communities to establish a linked constellation of community-based reserves managed by local and indigenous people. Some have suggested that a reserve be established in a more stable part of Africa, or on an island in a place such as Indonesia.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

In crisis

Bonobos typically live 40 years in captivity. Their lifespan in the wild is unknown, but it is almost certainly much shorter. There are no concrete figures regarding population, but the estimate is between 29,500 and 50,000 individuals. The species is listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List and is most threatened by habitat destruction, human population growth and movement (as well as ongoing civil unrest and political infighting), with commercial poaching being, by far, the most prominent threat.

The IUCN Red List classifies bonobos as an endangered species, with conservative population estimates ranging from 29,500 to 50,000 individuals. Major threats to Bonobo populations include habitat loss and hunting for bushmeat, the latter activity having increased dramatically during the first and second Congo Wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo, due to the presence of heavily armed militias (even in remote, "protected" areas such as Salonga National Park).

CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.

Bonobo is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.

Sources

Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Bonobo, Wikidata item Q19537. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.