Animal · DR Congo
Bonobo
Pan paniscus — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The bonobo is a great ape that lives in one country only, in the rainforest of the Congo Basin south of the Congo River. It looks like a slim chimpanzee, but its groups are led by females and quarrels are usually settled without a fight.
Picture credit: Wcalvin (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Greg Hume (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Ltshears (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the bonobo live?
Home: Rainforest south of the Congo River, in one country only.
In the wild it lives in these countries: DR Congo.
Conservation status from the IUCN: endangered.
The short profile
Fully grown: about 1.1 m tall standing, males a little larger. It weighs about 39 kilograms. On the menu: both plants and meat.
The story behind it
Bonobos live in one place and nowhere else: the forest between the Congo River in the north and the Kasai River in the south. The river matters, because bonobos cannot swim, and it has kept them apart from chimpanzees for a very long time. Fruit makes up more than half of their food, and leaves, seeds, honey, eggs and the occasional small animal fill up the rest. A community can count dozens of animals, but during the day it breaks into small parties that meet again in the evening to sleep in nests built fresh in the trees. Females sit at the centre of group life and decide much of what happens, and tension is usually settled by grooming and touching instead of fighting. Between about 29 500 and 50 000 bonobos are left, and hunting and forest clearing make them endangered.
Find it on the globe
Bonobo is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
What is the difference between a bonobo and a chimpanzee?
They are two different species, separated by the Congo River. A bonobo is slimmer, with longer legs, a darker face and pinker lips, and its groups are led by females instead of males.
Where do bonobos live?
Only in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in the forest between the Congo River and the Kasai River. No wild bonobo lives anywhere else in the world.
Are bonobos endangered?
Yes, they are listed as endangered. Perhaps 29 500 to 50 000 remain, and hunting for meat together with the clearing of the forest keeps the number falling.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
Last checked: