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Brian Hare’s work has won him some fame, but he’s got nothing on his wife and co-researcher Vanessa Woods. An author of children’s books, correspondent for Australian TV and award-winning science journalist, she also runs a blog from their summer field work in Congo that last summer drew more than 30,000 readers.

Woods is also a member of the Duke faculty, as a research scientist in Biological Anthropology and Anatomy. This summer, she’ll be studying the childhood sex play of bonobos, who begin practicing what humans would consider adult behaviors well before sexual maturity.

“Whenever there’s a potentially stressful situation — like when the food comes, where everybody is competing — then that’s when the socio-sexual activity happens,” Woods says. “So they rub their genitals together in a variety of different positions across both sexes. It seems to be a tension-relieving activity to kind of calm everybody down and make sure everybody’s getting along before the food comes.”

“We’re going to look at about ten infant bonobos all under the age of five, which has never been done before,” Woods says. “And then we’re going to compare them to a similar nursery group of infant chimpanzees all under five.”

The chimps appear to stick to themselves. “They just kind of grab the food and they run into a corner and then hope that nobody else comes and steals it.”

The contrast is important to observe, Woods says, because all of these chimps and bonobos are orphans, raised without the social cues of their mothers and other adults. “It’s not cultural. They aren’t taught to do this. It’s something that’s very innate.”

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You can follow along with Vanessa and Brian’s work this summer at bonobohandshake.blogspot.com
Note: Given the behavior of bonobos, parents may want to review the blog before sharing it with their children.