Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape

In 1997, A Dutch zoologist, Frans de Waal and a Dutch photographer, Frans Lanting published a lavishly illustrated book on the bonobo. It includes an overview of behavior and is the only bonobo work written for the general reader.

Dr. Frans de Waal holds posts at Emery University and the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta, Georgia. He launched his career with a study of the world's largest chimpanzee group at the Burger's Zoo in Arnhem, Holland. He was the first to talk about reconciliation, social reciprocity, and conflict resolution in animals.

Frans de Waal has influenced psychologists, behaviorists, and ethologists with his research on primates. He has written many books, including Chimpanzee Politics, Our Inner Ape, and Peacemaking Among Primates.

In Bonobo The Forgotten Ape, the author points out one of the problems: there are so few in zoos that their story is not known to most people. He talks about the joy of watching a group of captive bonobos, "The longer one follows a group, the more its close-kit social life will come to seem like a soap opera, with happy and hilarious but also sad and disturbing moments."

Frans Lanting is an internationally known, award-winning photographer who has a number of books, including ones on Madagascar, Jungles, the Okavango Delta, and Penguins.

Lanting has a wonderful website slide show on the origin of life, along with a evolutionary timeline that can be displayed with snapshots of the accompanying photographs at http://www.lifethroughtime.com/

Lanting visited Kinshasa to photograph the bonobos that I cared for. Several pictures of a young male and female bonobo embracing are seen in Bonobo The Forgotten Ape.