AS-HOPE report

Number: AS-24-007

Study on female social behaviors according to their life history

Report: Ryu, Heung Jin

Date: 201/5/26 - 201/9/27

 It was my second field trip to Wamba, DR Congo to conduct a field study on bonobos. I used the same one animal focal following method with help of one tracker to compare social behavior of females according to their life history issue. During 3 month and half, I was able to collect ca. 180 hours of focal animal following data. One of the most impressive events during this field trip was inter-group encounter. The main study group (E1) moved to home range of another group (P) and encountered with p-east group which has been fully identified and habituated recently. It was very exciting moment and I could see how they are different from their nearest relative chimpanzees. Although there were some tensions among members of two different groups, they were able to range together and do inter-group social interaction such as grooming and copulation. Interestingly, male-male coalitionary agonistic interactions, which have been very rarely observed in intra-group agonistic interactions among males, were observed, when males in each group were involved in inter-group agonistic interactions, such as threatening, display and physical attack. It gave me a very valuable chance to contemplate capacity and potential of their behavior and this will be a very fruitful experience for my future study.

Food sharing of a mother Bonobo and her infant


View of rainforest from charter plane

AS-HOPE Project<>