Bonobos and People at Wamba: 50 Years of Research

This book reviews all the findings about bonobos and the local people of Wamba village in the Luo Scientific Reserve in the Democratic Republic of the Congo over the last 50 years. In 1973, Takayoshi Kano, a Japanese primatologist, traveled across a vast area of the Congo Basin with a bicycle and found Wamba village to be a promising site to start his first studies on wild bonobos. Since then, many researchers from Japan and all over the world have been working at Wamba, now the longest standing study site, to uncover various aspects of the ecology and behavior of this most recently identified great ape species. The researchers study bonobo behaviors and carry out various activities for the conservation of bonobos. They also conduct anthropological studies of local people who live with bonobos and believe them to be distant relatives from the same family, living in the forest. This book is published in commemoration of 2023 marking the 50th year of study.  

The main chapters are contributed by active researchers studying bonobos and the local people at Wamba. The book also includes contributions from various eminent researchers who have carried out short-term research or have supported research at Wamba, which helps place these studies of bonobos in a broader primatological or anthropological perspective.  

This book will be a useful resource for professional researchers in primatology and anthropology, as well as graduate or undergraduate students interested in these research fields. 

Takeshi Furuichi is an emeritus professor and a specially appointed professor at Kyoto University, Japan. From 1991 he worked at Meiji-Gakuin University and since 2008 he has worked at the Primate Research Institute and the Wildlife Research Center of Kyoto University. His main research interests include the female life history and the social organization of great apes, and the process of human evolution. He has 40 years of experience in research on bonobos at Wamba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and 27 years of research on chimpanzees at Kalinzu Forest Reserve, Uganda. He also played an important role in the conservation of great apes as a member of the IUCN/SSC Primate Specialist Group executive committee. 

 

Gen'ichi Idani is an emeritus professor and a specially appointed professor at Kyoto University, Japan. He has been a professor and director of the Wildlife Research Center at Kyoto University since 2008. His research interests include the sociology of African great apes and the socio-ecology of large mammals. He is also the general director of the Japan Monkey Centre and the academic advisor of the Kyoto City Zoo. 

 

Daiji Kimura was a professor at the Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies, Kyoto University, Japan, until 2020. He is an emeritus professor at Kyoto University and a specially appointed professor at the Center for African Area Studies, Kyoto University. Since 1986, he has been conducting anthropological research on the Bongando people in the Wamba region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 
 

Hiroshi Ihobe is a professor at the School of Human Sciences, Sugiyama Jogakuen University, Japan.He has conducted fieldwork on bonobos, chimpanzees, red colobus, and guenons at Wamba, in the Mahale Mountains National Park in Tanzania, and in the Kalinzu Forest in Uganda since 1986. His research interests include the socio-ecology of primates, especially Pan and Cercopithecidae, and predator-prey relationships in primates. He has been a member of the advisory board of Primates since 2002 and a member of the editorial board of Anthropological Science since 2006. 

 

Chie Hashimoto has been an assistant professor at the Primate Research Insitute and the Wildlife Research Center, Kyoto University, Japan, since 2004. She has been studying wild bonobos in Wamba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, since 1989 and wild chimpanzees in the Kalinzu Forest Reserve, Uganda, since 1992. Her research interests include female life history and social relationships, especially sexual behavior. She has been active in bonobo and chimpanzee conservation at both sites.