ages (Kano, 1990, p.4). The bonobo is the only primate besides man who engages in mating for purposes other than procreation (Small, 1992, p.2). Among the females, genital-genital rubbing or G-G rubbing is common and serves to communicate reassurance (Kano, 1990, p.4). Females will lay on top of one another face to face and move their pelvises so that the clitoris of each rubs together, male juveniles will rub each others genitals and place their mouths on each others genitals (Flannery, 2000, p.4).P. paniscus 7 Young bonobos often join in with the adults when they are having intercourse (Flannery, 2000, p.4). Adult males will rub rumps and scrotums (Kano, 1990, p.4).Both males and females will solicit copulation (Flannery, 2000, p.4). The bonobos sexual acts include intercourse, G-G rubbing, oral sex, mutual masturbation, and even a practice that humans once thought they had the patent on: French kissing (Nichols, 2000, p.1).Sex is the way the bonobos deal with the tension of competition (Small, 1992, p.2). Among most animals, for example, tensions arise at mealtime, when there is often troublesome competition for food (Nichols, 2000, p.1). Other animals, including human beings, generally eat meals before copulating, in the bonobo society, sexual play precedes meals, reducing the competitive quarreling (Nichols, 2000, p.1). Bonobo sex is casual; sex saturates bonobo social interaction, its not driven by orgasm, it is not often reproductively driven (Nichols, 2000, p.2). The bonobo is rapidly becoming extinct, we as superior beings need to focus on the damage that we have done and are doing to the bonobos and other species, or they will be lost to us forever. How will we explain to our children that the only way they will ever see beautiful animals like the bonobos is in pictures because we have wiped every single living one out of existence? If by some chance that the bonobos are our distant ancestor, and we have lost their species d...
