Tonight at 8 p.m. national television viewers will see Assistant Professor of Anthropology Frances White carving forgotten paths through the jungles of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Viewers will see her search for the bonobo chimpanzees she left behind years before when she and her fellow researchers fled the Central African nation that had become embroiled in a brutal, international war that left an estimated 3 million people dead.
A documentary on the PBS program NOVA, which will be shown in 180 PLC at 8 p.m., will examine the character of the bonobo chimpanzee, the species’ links to humans and White’s struggle to reunite with the chimps she left behind.
In an interview, White said that bonobos distinguish themselves from regular chimpanzees because of their social organizations and sexual behavior. A 1995 Scientific American article by primatologist Frans de Waal said that in bonobo communities females are dominant and fighting is rare. Bonobos also have a voracious appetite for sex. Bonobos copulate with multiple partners – sometimes several at the same time. Male bonobos have sex with one another as do the females; they have oral sex, massage one another’s genitals and, de Waal said, they French kiss.
White first went to the Congo in the late 1980s as part of her research on bonobos, she said. She studied there intermittently until she was forced to flee in 1998 and the recent stability arising from the 2003 adoption of an interim government allowed her continue her research in 2005. On her first trek back to the habitat of the bonobo community she’d spent a decade studying, a BBC camera crew accompanied her and captured her reactions when she reached the bonobos’ home.
“It has a happy ending,” White said.
Although her image will be broadcast across the nation, White said she wasn’t excited.
“I don’t particularly enjoy seeing myself on television,” White said. “But my kids like it.”