Bonobos have a reputation as being the calmest, most peaceful of the Great Apes.

I saw like two bowl of fur running in the trees one after the other and the other one was screaming

crying and I was like what is going on and the field assistant were not surprised

they're like oh they're just fighting that's an aggression.

New research involving thousands of hours of observation shows that chill reputation may not always hold true.

It's Thursday, May 2nd, and you're listening to Science Friday.

Bonobos are a species of grade ape along with guerrillas, orangutans, and chimpanzees.

Recent work published in the journal Current Biology

finds male bonobos may be just as aggressive

as male chimpanzees, if not more so.

Guest host Ariel Dumas talks with Dr. Maude Mujino, postdoctoral associate in the Department of Anthropology

at Boston University about that work.

Welcome to Science Friday.

Thank you.

Thank you for the invitation.

Thank you so much for coming on the show.

So for listeners who might not have all their great apes straight,

who are the bonobos and where are they found?

Bonobos are one of our closest living relatives with chimpanzees.

They can be found in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

So we say that they're an endemic species, which means they can only be found there. And there is around 15,000 left.

When we look at a tree, we have humans, and right next to them we have a branch, which is what we call the pan-branch, which group bonobos and chimpanzees.

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