Although Bonobo’s males are stronger and more than females, they mark some of the great group decisions. Thus, it is they who decide when and with whom to mate and those who control the important resources -as fresh dams -and while they eat, they wait for their turn.
Biologically speaking, the relationship between females and bonobos males is at least unique and contrasts with the rest of the animal world, where power is determined by size or strength.
Until now no one knew why Bonobo’s females enjoy so much power and freedom on males but now, a study conducted with wild bonobos has discovered that the secret is in female solidarity.
The details of the study, led by Barbara Fruth, of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, and Martin Surbeck, of Harvard University, are published this Thursday in the magazine Communications Biology and provide the first empirical tests that explain how Bonobo’s females maintain their quota to be able to form alliances with other females.
The researchers discovered that females exceeded males forming bands or ‘coalitions’ in which the vast majority (85% of those observed) of the times attacked males, forcing them to submit and thus configuring the hierarchy of domination of the group.
“Let us know, this is the first proof that female solidarity can invest the structure of male power typical of many mammalian societies,” says Surbeck, the first author of the study.
Studying wild bonobos
To do the study, the authors collected 30 years of data from six wild bonobos communities in three places of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the only country where bonobos live in freedom, and gathered observations of 1,786 conflicts between males and females, 1,099 were won by them.
When analyzing and completing them with social and demographic data they discovered some clues about what determines the ‘female power’.
The result of coalition formation was a surprise. It turned out that adult females are unrelated immigrants from different communities that did not grow together, which makes their deep ties and cooperation even more unexpected.
In addition, Surbeck adds, which directs the Kokolopori Bonobos Research Station: “It is not usual to see this type of coalitions in nature.”
But when they form, they impress. The first signal are so unbearably high shouts that ‘you have to cover your ears’, according to Fruth.
Although scientists do not know what a coalition triggers, because it is formed within a few seconds of an event -as when a male tries to hurt a young -, the females, shouting, follow the male through the trees and sometimes they attack him causing mortal injuries.
“It is a fierce way to affirm power,” adds Fruth. “You understand why these males do not try to exceed limits.”
A high status, rather than indisputable domain
However, the study, which compared six communities of Bonobos, observed that although the females won 61% of the conflicts and exceeded 70% of the average males, this domain ‘was not at all the rule’.
Rather, the female domain varied in populations throughout a spectrum: “It is more accurate to say that, in bonobos societies, females enjoy a high status than of an indisputable domain,” says Fruth.
According to the authors, female coalitions are only one of the mechanisms that probably drive the empowerment of bonobos females, but new research is needed to determine them.
Even so, it is possible that many questions are left unanswered: “I still intrigue why, of all the animals, the bonobos were the ones who formed female alliances. Maybe we never know it, but it gives me a ray of hope that the females of our closest living relatives, in our evolutionary line, were allied to take the reins of power along with the males,” concludes Fruth.