Bonobos belong to a specie very close to ximpances, as between both there is only a million years divergence time. Despite that, their social behaviors are very different from each others. While ximpancees have a more aggressive behavior and an stron territorial component, the bonobo is charaterised to be very pacific and very active in sexual activity.

With this study, the completion on Genome information of all Great Apes is finished. An the door to a better understanding of the relations among all those species, included humans, is now open.

This study has beed coordinated by Kay Pruefer  and  Svante Pääbo, from Max Planck Institute (Alemanya) and has counted with the participation of more than 20 different groups from 8 Countries, including that of Tomàs Marquès-Bonet at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology.

Reference article: Kay Prüfer, Kasper Munch, Ines Hellmann, Keiko Akagi, Jason R. Miller, Brian Walenz, Sergey Koren, Granger Sutton, Chinnappa Kodira, Roger Winer, James R. Knight, James C. Mullikin, Stephen J. Meader, Chris P. Ponting, Gerton Lunter, Saneyuki Higashino, Asger Hobolth, Julien Dutheil, Emre Karakoç, Can Alkan, Saba Sajjadian, Claudia Rita Catacchio, Mario Ventura,Tomas Marques-Bonet, Evan E. Eichler, Claudine André, Rebeca Atencia, Lawrence Mugisha, Jörg Junhold, Nick Patterson, Michael Siebauer, Jeffrey M. Good, Anne Fischer, Susan E. Ptak, Michael Lachmann, David E. Symer, Thomas Mailund, Mikkel H. Schierup, Aida M. Andrés, Janet Kelso, Svante Pääbo (2012), " The bonobo genome compared with the chimpanzee and human genomes", Nature, doi:10.1038/nature11128.