I really appreciate your site. i am putting together a program here in the states for kids and parents. I will be spending some time on the Bonobo. I will hope to link to your sight to educate families about this beautiful animal and the threats to its survival.

Best to you in your endeavors.

Maria Murphy

Ash trip well done – how is that awful strange rash. i hope better

We found very large groups in Salonga as well but not very often.
Also these very large groups seem to only occur here down near the savannah
area.
Not sure why and not sure it is a behavioral thing or just because of
circumstances ie food or hunting or landscape. Maybe the savannah restricts
their habitat.
Either way we try to find out in the next few months. At least some
preliminary ideas anyway.
What is interesting is that there does seem to be many large nests in these
groups that I do not remember from Salonga and neither do the other guys. So
that might be interesting to try and find out what causes that. Different
trees or feeding habits. Who knows.

Well I’m sure Bonobos are the same as chimps. Fission – fusion groups. So there is one large family but during the day this can be divided up into many different groups out feeding in different places and late in the day some of these groups might come together for the night or they might come together at a good feeding site. Rarely the whole group is together.

Therefore group size can vary greatly. From as little as just a few (3-4) up to 20 or maybe more.
If we took nest group size we have from our data as definitive then that is what it would show. (3 – 20 with the odd group of 1, prob a lone male but not certain of course). However we are not totally certain of that right now. In other words have got nest group definition correct. A difficult one to know.

4 times I have personally seen Bonobos now and each time group size varied. One observation was just a mother and her baby. The first obs was a group of approx 5/6. The 2nd was a larger group of about 10 and the final observation (on this trip) was a very large group of maybe 15-20 individuals.

So a great mix of group size. Hope that helps.