Bonobo

Wild Wives of Africa - Bonobo Love Bonobo
Bonobo are the largest primates found only in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They are also known as pygmy chimpanzee and the dwarf chimpanzee as they are very closely related to the chimpanzee. The bonobo is known to share 98% of the DNA with humans. They are omnivorous animals that feed on fruits, leaves, flowers, beak and seeds mainly. If they get a chance, they also feed on honey, eggs, insects, small mammals and reptiles.

Similarities to Humans
====Bonobos are capable of passing the mirror-recognition test for self-awareness. They communicate primarily through vocal means, although the meanings of their vocalizations are not currently known. However, most humans do understand their facial expressions and some of their natural hand gestures, such as their invitation to play. Two bonobos at the Great Ape Trust, Kanzi and Panbanisha, have been taught how to communicate using a keyboard labeled with lexigrams (geometric symbols) and they can respond to spoken sentences. Kanzi's vocabulary consists of more than 500 English words and he has comprehension of around 3,000 spoken English words. Kanzi is also known for learning by observing people trying to teach his mother; Kanzi started doing the tasks that his mother was taught just by watching, some of which his mother had failed to learn. Some, such as philosopher and bioethicist Peter Singer, argue that these results qualify them for "rights to survival and life" — rights that humans theoretically accord to all persons. (See great Ape personhood.)==== ====Instances in which nonhuman primates have expressed joy have been reported. One study analyzed and recorded sounds made by human babies and bonobos when they were tickled. Although the bonobos' laugh was a higher frequency, the laugh was found to follow a similar spectrographic pattern to that of human babies====

Etymology
Despite the alternative common name "pygmy chimpanzee", the bonobo is not especially diminutive when compared to the common chimpanzee. "Pygmy" may instead refer to the pygmy peoples who live in the same area. The name "bonobo" first appeared in 1954, when Tratz and Heck proposed it as a new and separate generic term for pygmy chimpanzees. The name is thought to be a misspelling on a shipping crate from the town of Bolobo on the Congo River, which was associated with the collection of chimps in the 1920s. The term has also been reported as being a word for "ancestor" in an extinct Bantu language.