ooo - i got this photo from Val when Noki just arrived at Lola. Val is a volunteer at Lola - and has been for 15 years. She works practically full time handling Lola's accounts - the sanctuary wouldn't run without her. She comes in to Lola almost every day, for no recognition or reward other than helping the bonobos. We love you Val! and look at little Noki and those huge black eyes.
and then here is Val helping Noki give birth - 10 years later!
we share so much with these bonobos, they become so much a part of our lives. Val has been sending photos like crazy - she is a very proud grandmother.
Ok back to Lola now and I'm a little behind on all the news - but Noki had a baby!!
Noki is one of the cat burglers at Lola - she is also a prolific tool user - which bonobos haven't been seen to do in the wild, fyi. once she used a long stick to steal my camera bag.
noki is also one of the smartest bonobos in all the experiments we do - she is so wildly interested in all the tests and sometimes we have trouble getting her out of the testing room!
now she has a baby!!
Fanny the vet was there for the whole thing, and so was Valerie, who was there when Noki was first rescued...
ooo, there are just baby bonobos everywhere, they make me so clucky!!
Bonobos are the Peter Pans of the jungle. The amiable apes hold onto their youthful ways far longer into adulthood than chimpanzees, while some childish traits never vanish, a new study shows.
This difference may explain why bonobos are less aggressive and more social than chimps, says Victoria Wobber, a primatologist at Harvard University...
ok, just one more pic of Lukaya being a good mom!! when bonobos spend too much time with humans, they tend to reject their young. we had that problem with Mimi, who lived with a human family for 15 years, and rejected every one of her babies.
we're not sure how much time Lukaya spent with humans before she made it to Lola, but it can't have been too long because she is a wonderful mother! Of course, she does have Etumbe to look up to!
Look at Lukaya shielding her baby from the sun! I can't help but feel proud of her...
| By Matt Walker Editor, Earth News |
| |
A wild bonobo has been seen cannibalising her own recently deceased two and a half-year-old infant
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8487000/8487138.stm
this result is amazing.
nothing like this has been ever been seen like this before, that I know of, but Gottfried's work is excellent, so this is super exciting. just last year they saw meat eating in bonobos, which had also never been seen before.
i wonder if the infant was killed by a high ranking male.
we've never seen anything like this in the sanctuary. the last time I saw an infant die, the mother held onto it for days and the keepers had trouble taking the body away.
results like gottfried's illustrate the complexity of bonobo social behavior and the necessity of further research on thee amazing creatures.
If you were drawing up a guest list for an animal dinner party, sex-mad bonobos might not be your first choice, especially as they have recently been shown to cannibalise their own offspring.
But at least they will share food with strangers.
Till now it was thought that humans were the only primates to share food in this way. Chimps, for example, won't do it. But Brian Hare of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and Suzy Kwetuenda of the Lola Ya Bonobo refuge for orphaned bonobos in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have now shows that bonobos will also "freely" share.
Just wanted to take a moment to celebrate that the bonobos at the release site are going so well!! 2 babies!! it's absolutely wonderful.
Both the ladies Etumbe and Lukaya were pregnant before they went to the release site and the fact that they gave birth so effortlessly just goes to show how well they are adapting to their new home.
Next step - a real wild baby - conceived and given birth at Ekolo - that is the sign that a release project is REALLY successful - that the bonobos are reproducing.
fingers crossed!
