Q How do the short films (included in the Unit 4 module) on bonobos and chimps demonstrate primate diversity?  Can you draw connections between bonobo and chimp social behavior and human social behavior? In which ways do humans differ from our primate relatives?  What do these differences and similarities imply about our evolutionary history?   Both the short videos and the article, “Dim Forest, Bright Chimps,” address the issue of human encroachment on ape territories.  Ape habitats are being destroyed, and apes are hunted for food, captured for medical research, and so on.  Bonobo research is relatively recent, and has significantly expanded our awareness of the diversity of social behavior among primates (e.g., chimp societies are patriarchal whereas bonobo societies are matriarchal).  Imagine for a moment that bonobos were forced into extinction before we had the opportunity to study them, what then would be missing from our understanding of primate diversity and of our potential evolutionary history?  For example, would we assume perhaps that it is in our nature to designate and defend territories (remember chimp border patrols)? What is the relevance of the social diversity we witness among primates to human evolution?