by LAST September, deep in the swamp forest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nahoko Tokuyama of Kyoto University in Japan heard a scream. It came from a male bonobo whose hand was trapped in a snare. What happened next shows that bonobos (Pan paniscus) don't forget their lost friends, and will travel long distances to find them. This caring behaviour may be down to the species' female leadership.
The snares are set to catch other species, says Tokuyama's colleague Takeshi Furuichi. Injured animals almost always get left behind and die.
Not so for bonobos. As soon as the other group members realised the male was trapped, they gathered around him. One untangled the snare from woody ground vines, enabling the male to move. Another tried and failed to remove the wire. Later in the day, the bonobos returned to the dry forest to sleep. The injured male could not follow.
The next morning, to the researchers' surprise, the bonobos travelled almost 2 kilometres back to where they had last seen their injured friend. The animals had already ruled out the area as a good source of fruit, suggesting they went back just to find him. He had moved on, but rejoined the group six weeks later .
Full article.
That bonobos are a more gentile species than their chimpanzee cousins is a widely know fact. And the theory that they are like this because they society is female dominated seems rather believable to me.
