Published: March 19, 2021

Two wild female bonobos adopted infants from a different social group at Wamba

Nahoko Tokuyama, Kazuya Toda, Marie-Laure Poiret, Bahanande Iyokango, Batuafe Bakaa, Shintaro Ishizuka
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We’re part of an international team that has seen the first evidence of wild bonobo apes adopting infants who were born outside of their social group. Adoptive mothers in the wild are usually related to orphaned infants or sometimes young females will adopt orphans to improve their own maternal skills. But in two separate cases scientists, including a psychologist from Durham, saw adoption among bonobos from different groups living in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The researchers say their findings could help explain the emotional reason behind why people readily adopt children who they have had no previous connection with.
Continue reading at https://www.dur.ac.uk/research/news/item/?id=44179&itemno=44179
Featured in Science News, The Times
Article Information
Tokuyama N, Toda K, Poiret M, Iyokango B, Bakaa B, Ishizuka S (2021)Two wild female bonobos adopted infants from a different social group at Wamba Scientific Reports , 11:4967 10.1038/s41598-021-83667-2