NOT one. Not a single bonobo was sighted during the most comprehensive survey yet undertaken to ascertain the fate of our closest living relative. So few can now be found that biologists cannot even take an educated guess at their number.
The cause, predictably, is human activity. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo a 10-year humanitarian crisis has triggered an upsurge in bush-meat hunting, with the bonobo, sometimes called the pygmy chimp, its highest-profile victim. Tragically, we are wreaking similar havoc all over the world. Birds, butterflies, beetles, bats, fish, frogs, turtles and tigers are all in crisis, suffering…
