Tree of Origin edited by Frans de Waal, Harvard University Press,
$29.95, ISBN 0674004604
BONOBOS are promiscuous, enjoying sex within and between genders and across
generations. Like us, they seem to have separated the functions of sex and
reproduction, using sex as a means of getting what they want where other species
resort to aggression. And, uniquely among the great apes, they sometimes
copulate face-to-face, a fact which embarrassed their first human observers and
may explain why they have been overshadowed by the more aggressive chimpanzee in
the debate about our shared evolutionary history.
Now Frans de Waal attempts to…
