A Beautiful Female Bonobo at the San Diego Zoo, Flirting for Our Camera. Ph.D. Deep in the soul of the hot, wet swamps of the Congo, there is a tribe. It is here, in their wild, erotic Garden of Eden, that our closest cousins, the bonobos , live and share a powerful kind of pleasure, and make an extraordinary kind of love. Just in case you don t know a bonobo from a bonsai tree, bonobos , classified as Pan paniscus in the textbooks, are also called pygmy chimpanzees in primatology circles. I call them the horniest chimps on Earth.
Some scientists say they re closer to humans than common chimps, though that s debatable.
They certainly look more like us, with their longer legs, smaller ears, more open faces with higher foreheads. Bonobos have some kind of sex almost every day, usually several times a day. Females are in heat for three-quarters of their cycle, and many of them copulate even when not in heat, a sexual pattern more like human females than that of any other mammal. Though common chimpanzees only partake in basic reproductive sex, bonobos share all kinds of sexual pleasures, including cunnilingus, fellatio, masturbation, massage, bisexuality, incest, body-licking, sex in different positions, group sex, and lots of long, deep, wet, soulful, French kissing. Like tantric sex practitioners, or just like two people very much in love, copulating bonobos often look deeply into each other s eyes.