Of Bonobos and Men. Deni Ellis Bechard
feet carefully, one in front of the other, to keep from tripping. The weeds were shoulder-high, pushing in from either side, soaking my sleeves. I had yet to put my poncho on, the drizzle too faint to be bothersome and the heat of my body drying me.
Suddenly, a large white moth was flying just above my right shoulder, keeping pace, following my headlamp’s gauzy beam through the humid air. It fluttered off, vanished. The ground before me dropped, descending steeply toward a stream, and when I glanced up from my feet, I had a vista of the exposed, rising forest on the opposite slope. The trees reared up, immense, pale pillars lifting the dark canopy high against a faintly silver sky.
When Léonard motioned us to stop, we had been walking for over an hour. We sat along a log. Gray light filtered down. We put on our ponchos as the drizzle intensified, seeping through the canopy and gathering on the bottoms of branches in large drops that plummeted the distance to strike loudly against the dead leaves of the forest floor.
Léonard told us that the bonobos had made their nests in the top of a tree bigger and higher than the others, a dense weave of vines hanging from it, like the tangled rigging of a ship. A hundred feet up, the trunk forked and then, higher, forked again, each branch as big as the trunks of nearby trees.
Bonobos’ nests serve an important role in the rainforest ecosystem. As a group travels each day, sometimes as many as seven miles, they consume large quantities of leaves and fruit. Almost every evening, they make new nests, pulling branches together, snapping or just bending and weaving them, exposing the forest floor to the sun. In the night and morning, they defecate, and their droppings fall to the earth, carrying seeds that have passed through their guts largely intact. The seeds are mixed with fertile roughage and their hulls have been abraded by the digestive tract, making them more ready to sprout. In the patches of sunlight where the nests broke the canopy, the seeds grow more easily, taking root in the rainforest’s thick loam. Because the bonobos travel so widely within their territory, they spread seeds, contributing to biodiversity. Without the bonobos—as well as the numerous other rainforest animals, from elephants, to buffalos, to birds—certain tree species might even go extinct.
With dawn, the forest began to reveal its contents, the stony phallic mounds of termites, some mushroom-shaped, others veritable lingams, a foot to three feet tall. Mushrooms grew from rotting sticks, some white and pin-shaped, others vivid orange saucers. A few gray caterpillars with red and black markings crawled on my poncho, others on leaves. Called mbindjo, they, like mpose, provide protein for both the locals and the bonobos.
The clouds glowed, sunlight struggling through, and as we stared at the dense canopy, the sky was a million specks of mercury, the leaves like lacework around larger openings.
Branches began to shake, drops of water falling. A bonobo’s arm weaved out briefly. A figure walked along a branch with a humanlike swaying of its shoulders. An adult bonobo gave its high-pitched hoot, and then a baby wailed, very much like a human baby, but just two or three times before it fell silent.
The canopy again ceased to move. Léonard told us that the bonobos would wait in the highest branches for the sunlight to warm them. Like us, they are slow to rise on rainy mornings. I pictured them seated on the immense branches, at the summit of this tree rising above the rest of the forest. They stared out over the green ocean, slowly blinking their black and luminous eyes. It was hard not to wonder at that primeval experience, of a creature so similar to ourselves living in such absolute elements, gathered with its family, sitting in peace at the line of forest and sky.
Staring up, I got vertigo and needed to look down for a moment before I could take a step. Above me, the dark interlacing canopy seemed liquid, the sky shining through like a reflection of light cast on the deep, shadowed water of a well. Each of the bonobos’ movements caused the leaves to shimmer as if a pebble had been dropped in.
We waited for over an hour. Alan identified the calls of birds for us, the chiming of the emerald cuckoo and the low mournful fluting of the chocolate-backed kingfisher. Léonard explained that this particular community of bonobos had twenty-five members, three adult males, twelve females, six adolescents (three of each sex), and four babies.
Eventually, the branches began to shake in earnest. A large piece of deadwood fell and thudded against the loam. The bonobos all seemed to be awake, but waiting. The dark circles of their nests were barely visible.
They might have been feeding on mbindjo in the trees, Léonard told us. Along a high branch, a female walked on all fours, the pink bulge of her vaginal swelling clear even at this distance, a child following behind. Normally, bonobo infants cling to their mothers until they are four or five years old, but this one was larger, more independent.
Sally opened a bag and began passing around power bars and trail mix. This was a tradition she had begun, that visitors and trackers ate together, and she told me that it never failed to intrigue the bonobos. Food sharing is central to their culture, and often, when they come upon plentiful amounts, they have sex in excitement before sharing it. Sally preferred eating together rather than simply following bonobos with binoculars and cameras, which to her felt aggressive, as if we had come there just to take something.
“It’s better to draw them to us,” she said. “I’ve noticed that the demeanor of the people who are in the forest changes how close the bonobos come, and how long they stay with us. They love seeing humans share the way they do.”
There was faint hooting in the canopy, flurries of movement as the bonobos moved closer to find out what we were eating and how we were passing the food around.
A bonobo stood on two legs and, holding a branch above it for balance, turned its broad head to stare down, its posture evoking that of a tightrope walker paused, contemplating the world below. Then it reached higher into the foliage, stretching the sinews of its long body before it lifted itself out of sight.
After we finished eating, we watched the silhouettes move off along the canopy, leaping at times. One used its body weight to make the branch it was on sway closer to a branch of the next tree, before it grabbed hold and crossed over. Léonard told us that the bonobos most often traveled on the forest floor; crossing from tree to tree required too much effort.
He again directed his trackers quickly, with slight gestures. Even as we spread out, he led us through the undergrowth, off the path now, pausing to break branches and place leaves so that, in case one of us wandered off with a tracker to take photos, the tracker could read the signs and we could all meet up again.
I’d bought my poncho online, assuming its soft waterproof material made from recycled plastic would be ideal for use in the rainforest. But I immediately saw its flaw. Unlike the smooth plastic ponchos that the others wore, mine caught every thorn in its weave. As I peeled briars away, wire-thin vines snared my boots and torso, and occasionally I had to stop and untangle myself as if from a net.
Alan pointed out a caterpillar with long white whiskers and a black head, a four-tuft Mohawk of black and white bristles on its back, and I wondered which of the more exotic butterflies this one became. It was the most spectacular caterpillar I’d ever seen.
Léonard warned me that it probably stung, that the prettier they were the more likely they were to be dangerous. He motioned us farther through the forest, the occasional rotten log compressing like a sponge beneath my boot.
Though slow to reveal themselves, the bonobos began to make more appearances, peeking down through the foliage with curious eyes, red lips vivid in their black faces. They had the taut, muscular arms of athletes, and their bodies were particularly graceful. As they studied us, they curled their long fingers around branches and tree trunks. We crept through the foliage, trying to see them more closely.
The large infant I’d noticed earlier hung for a while in an opening in the branches, eyes laughing, clearly entertained. He was suspended with his potbelly protruding as he examined us: strange creatures, our faces lifted. He glanced around with fascination, then disappeared into the foliage, and moments later an adult male swung to a nearby tree, one hand holding the trunk. He watched with the same curious and pleased air as the infant, lowering his eyebrows and pushing his lips forward, then faintly, sweetly simpering, as if unable to