Bonobo mothers meddle in their sons' sex lives, making them 3 times more likely to father children

[milestogo]

Dating is never easy, for any of us. Scenarios play over in our heads, classic questions and worries bombard us. Will she like me? Does he share the same interests? Will my mum be watching us have sex? Thankfully, that last question isn't actually one us humans have to deal with. But new research shows that for bonobos, sex really is often a family affair. What's more, rather than being an embarrassing hindrance, motherly presence greatly benefits bonobo sons during the deed.



Along with chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), bonobos (Pan paniscus) are our closest living relatives. Restricted to a 500,000 km² thickly-forested zone of the Congo Basin, these endangered great apes were only formally discovered in 1928, which until 2017 made them the most recently-described living great ape species. Operating in female-led social systems, bonobos are capable of showing a wide range of what were long held as human-specific feelings and emotions, such as sensitivity, patience, compassion, kindness, empathy and altruism.

They're also perhaps the most promiscuous non-human species on the planet. While chimpanzee sex is tied closely to reproduction, up to 75% of bonobo sexual behaviour is purely for pleasure. From saucy greetings and social bonding to conflict resolution and post-conflict make-up sex, sex serves hugely important functions in most aspects of bonobo social behaviour. Even the mere discovery of a new food source or feeding ground is enough to spark a wave of communal sexual activity.

It seems that the number of reasons for a bonobo to have sex is surpassed only by the number of forms in which they do it. Indiscriminate of sex and age, the only combination strictly off limits in bonobo society is between a mother and her mature son. In addition to standard penetrative encounters, they frequently engage in manual genital massage and oral sex. These positionally creative apes are also the only animal (other than us) to practice tongue-on-tongue kissing or face-to-face penetrative sex. The prominence of bonobos' sexual behaviour in social life has led researchers to brand bonobos as the "make-love-not-war apes".

https://phys.org/news/2019-05-bonobo-mothers-sons-sex-father.html

[dhill926]

1. please let me come back as a bonobo...

[dewsgirl]

2. LOL

[cstanleytech]

3. We could learn alot from them as far as our government goes like if we had more women

in power and I mean a hell of alot more I suspect our country would be far more successful.
For example I suspect with a female majority would see a defense budget thats not bloated to be more than the top 10 countries combined are spending not to mention I suspect our infrastructure would not be falling apart.