Des Moines, Iowa – October 13, 2010 – Something pretty amazing is happening at Great Ape Trust. On the 230-acre campus that is home to a scientific research program that studies culture, language and intelligence, a 12-year-old male bonobo has shown unique behavior as a caregiver to his four month old baby cousin.
Nyota has become a babysitter.
New video taken by Great Ape Trust scientists shows Nyota gently and meticulously grooming baby Teco in one of the research lab’s play yards. The clip has been posted on Great Ape Trust’s You Tube channel and Web site, www.GreatApeTrust.org.
“Nyota is an excellent babysitter. What you are seeing is his experience and enculturation, his learning process,” said William M. Fields, director of scientific research at The Trust. “The effects of the social matrix Nyota grew up in at Georgia State University are being expressed in his adult form now here in Des Moines. He is able to treat this baby in the same manner that he was treated.”
Fields added that in free-ranging or wild bonobos, there is shared rearing by males and females but it’s with juveniles, not infants. With chimpanzees, rearing is relegated to females.
Teco was born on June 1, 2010 and is the first baby bonobo at Great Ape Trust. He is the son of Kanzi and Elikya.
Background Information
Great Ape Trust is a scientific research facility in Des Moines, Iowa, dedicated to understanding the origins and future of culture, language, tools and intelligence, and to the preservation of endangered great apes in their natural habitats. Announced in 2002 and receiving its first ape residents in 2004, Great Ape Trust is home to a colony of seven bonobos involved in noninvasive interdisciplinary studies of their cognitive and communicative capabilities, and to two orangutans. To learn more about Great Ape Trust, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, go to GreatApeTrust.org
