The Similarities Between Bonobos And Chimpanzees

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Bonobos and chimpanzees are both similar primates with relations to today’s modern humans. Chimpanzees are more similar to modern humans making them the better models of our earliest human ancestors both morphologically and behaviorally. Bonobos are a species that use sexual behavior as the key to social life. In most other species, chimpanzees or humans, sexual behavior is a fairly distinct category. Despite this sexual behavior, the bonobo’s rate of reproduction is the same as that of a chimpanzee. A female gives birth to a single infant at intervals of five years, sharing this characteristic with chimpanzees of partial separation between sex and reproduction. Humans have a different rate of reproduction in that they give birth to 1-2 infants within a three-year period and raise them together. Although humans rate of reproduction is different, and adapted to raise children simultaneously, than both of these primates their sexual behavior is most similar to that of chimpanzees. …show more content…

If this is true, the bonobo may most closely resemble the common ancestor of all three modern species, chimpanzees, modern humans, bonobos, suggesting that the bonobo might not be a good model for the earliest human ancestors. This also supports the evidence of chimpanzee’s adapting and becoming more bipedal like our human ancestors. Bipedal locomotion helps animals living in hot climates, like the chimpanzee, to stay cool by reducing the amount of sunlight that falls on the body by increasing the animal’s exposure to air movements and by immersing the animal in lower air temperature. Chimpanzees sometimes stand on their two hind legs as they harvest fruit from trees. This bipedal adaptation in chimpanzees is evident in modern

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