Bonobos

Bonobos:

Apparently, a very rare species of the ape family, this was thought to be a common chimpanzees untill 1982, when scientists found a difference in the genetic sequence. now there is a swing that these Bonobos are closer to humans than to Chimps.
I actually came across this on bbc's website that said there exist less than 10K of these. I was thinking, that an entire species exists, who's total strenght is less than the number of people working in one city in my office. like the dodo, if things are not done fast, the bonobo will become extinct.

so why is this ofprime importance to me? quite simple, i did chcek some pictures of these things, and i saw that these are so close to humans that they might be the missing link between chimps and humans. This is a matriarchial society, like the egyptians and some of the more advnaced societies in the world, the female bonobo makes decisions.
They breed once every 3 to 4 years, thereby giving the female time to recover and nurse the bonobo till its old enough. That is another line similar to humans ( well, i guess i am leaving out certain areas that have an annoying habit of getting "knocked" up "unknowingly" and not in terms of planning for families) that is why the number of bonobos are reducing as the frequency of births and number of offsprings are a far cry from some other species such as dogs and turtles.

Now come some more interesting facts, the bonobo infant, needs the love of a mother, else it just dies. thats very scary considering, the fact that we assumed the mammals to be of a "lesser" species. there does exist a sanctuary in DR Congo that has 'surrogate" mothers to take care of these infants.

The links that I thought i must talk about,

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/06/africa_bonobos_under_threat/html/1.stm

and the sanctuary that take care of Bonobos:

http://www.friendsofbonobos.org/

NOTE: The above images are not mine. They have been taken from the website http://www.friendsofbonobos.org/