Females shape hunting of vertebrates in wild bonobos.

Over 10 years in two habituated Pan paniscus communities at LuiKotale, bonobos hunted terrestrial ungulates (42%) and arboreal primates (43%), with red colobus monkeys (77%) dominating primate prey.

• Why it matters: The study challenges a chimpanzee–bonobo dichotomy that links hunting type to sex and assumes male-biased, cooperative hunting is ancestral.
• What they did: Using observations from two habituated bonobo communities at LuiKotale, the researchers quantified prey types and hunting rates by sex and tested how female age related to hunting frequency.
• The result: Males and females hunted arboreal primates at similar rates, females accounted for most non-primate captures, and age shaped primate versus ungulate targeting, supporting dominance-based predictions.