If you’ve paid any attention to chimpanzees in the news recently, you’ve probably noticed that they have a PR problem. On the 16th of February in Stamford, Connecticut, a chimp named Travis was shot dead by police after attacking a friend of his owner, causing serious injuries to her face, neck, and hands. The day after that story hit the papers, the New York Post ran a cartoon depicting two policemen standing over the body of a chimpanzee they had just shot, with one commenting to the other that: “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.” Due to President Obama’s key role in the stimulus debate, this has been widely interpreted to mean that the chimpanzee in the cartoon represents him, which would carry racist implications.
The relationship between chimpanzees and humans over the years has been a troubled one. They’ve been treated as pets, sure, but they’ve also been movie stars, performing for laughs by imitating human behaviors like dancing, riding bicycles, and perhaps most importantly, wearing clothes. Chimpanzees are funny because they’re almost like us—but not quite. After being exposed to countless images of chimpanzees as funny, lighthearted animals that are a joy to be around, it comes as a shock whenever the news reports an incident of chimp violence. In the wild, chimpanzee troops raid other troops for territory, which often results in bloody conflict. After Travis’ attack, primatologist Jane Goodall noted that as friendly as chimpanzees can seem, they “can never be totally domesticated.”
The lesson would, therefore, appear to be simple: As endearing as chimpanzees can be, we should always remember that they are much stronger than they look—stronger, in fact, than many adult male humans—and that there exists the potential for truly terrifying incidents. Pretty cut and dried, right? Not if you consider the lesson about evolution that some have apparently been taking from these incidents: Namely, that it is wrong. After all, chimpanzees must not be very much like us if they can act so dangerously that they become killer pets; therefore Darwin had it wrong.
The human-chimp connection has been lampooned since the very introduction of the idea that humans and apes are descended from a common ancestor. Just seven months after the publication of The Origin of Species, in fact, a famous debate took place at Oxford, pitting Archbishop Samuel Wilberforce against Thomas Henry Huxley (“Darwin’s bulldog”). When the archbishop asked Huxley whether he was descended from apes on his grandmother’s side or his grandfather’s Huxley recalls his response:
If then, said I, the question is put to me would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessed of great means of influence and yet who employs these faculties and that influence for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion, I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape.
This most recent chimpanzee attack reveals that this Huxley-era debate is still very much alive. As Sean McDowell writes on the Christian news commentary site Worldview Times, the blame for Travis’ attack can be placed squarely on Darwin:
Ideas do not exist in a vacuum. In fact, there is one culprit for the idea that human beings and chimps are really not that different and should be treated that way: Darwinism. The Judeo-Christian tradition has always taught that humans and chimps are different in terms of kind (Genesis 1-2). While animals are a good part of God’s creation, it is uniquely humans who bear the image of God. Many animals are wild and should be kept that way. On the other hand, Darwin propagated the idea that humans and chimps have a common ancestor and only differ in terms of degree (See Darwin’s The Descent of Man). If humans and chimps are really not that different, then why not expect chimps to act civilly? After all, ideas have consequences. (Emphasis in original)
Ideas most certainly have consequences, but is the consequence of evolutionary theory that we should expect chimpanzees to “behave civilly?” Genetically, chimpanzees and humans share over 98% of their genes, leading some to argue that chimpanzees should be scientifically reclassified as human, or conversely as science writer Jared Diamond put it, that humans should be considered “the third chimpanzee.”
But who is the second chimpanzee?
The bonobo is a far lesser-known species closely related to the chimpanzee, but less populous; rare enough to be considered extremely endangered. They’re found living in the wild only in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and compared to the numbers of chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans, very few bonobos live in zoos. As closely related to humans as chimpanzees, bonobos are slighter of build, with large ears and prominent brow ridges. They also differ from chimps in that they have a reputation for being a much more peaceful species, which appears to be due mainly to two things: their diet is almost exclusively vegetarian (chimpanzees, by contrast, eat monkeys and occasionally each other’s babies, as well as vegetation), and bonobos prefer to handle conflict through sex.
Bonobo society is matriarchal, making them something of a feminist emblem, as has been noted by primatologist Frans de Waal in an article for Skeptic magazine, “Bonobos, Left & Right.” They have been portrayed as living a kind of hippie lifestyle, practicing free love in all of its possible forms—including frequent and vigorous homosexual pairings—as a means of solidifying group relations and, apparently, for the sheer pleasure of it. This does not mean that there are never cases of attacks or bullying, but rather that when conflict does arise, bonobos are more likely to resolve it through sexual means than violent ones. “When first writing about their behavior,” deWaal notes, “I spoke of ‘sex for peace’ precisely because bonobos had plenty of conflicts. There would obviously be no need for peacemaking if they lived in perfect harmony.” Bonobos have also exhibited a markedly better ability than chimpanzees to solve problems that require cooperation.
Why all the talk of bonobos here? Because, while they are just as related to us as chimps, they’re also quite different. And yet both species have so much in common with humankind, which proves precisely the opposite of McDowell’s point.
Do humans wage bloody battles against each other? Do they murder rivals? Do they sometimes even cannibalize their own children? Yes, and so do chimpanzees.
Do humans practice promiscuous sex? Do they cooperate to solve problems? Do they take care of each other? Yes, and so do bonobos.
This is of course not to say that chimpanzees are all hopelessly violent creatures who care nothing for each other—that has been shown to be false, time and time again. It’s also false to say that bonobos necessarily live an idyllic existence we should strive to emulate—well, not in every respect, perhaps. Rather, it shows exactly how continuous human culture is with the culture of our ape cousins. Yes, they are very much like humans—and that is precisely why it is a bad idea to keep them as pets. Would McDowell advocate that we should keep pet humans? I certainly hope not.
