One of the more eccentric ideas of Phoenix Ark Press was to do a book called “Chimp or Bonobo, making Love or War?”
The pigmy chimpanzee, the Bonobo (pictured being sweet in a tree above), seems to display markedly different characteristics to the common Chimpanzee ( sharp-eyed, below his cousin), most notably with Bonobos’ constant enthusiasm for sex and socializing (dirty diggers that they are), much in the vein of ‘Make Love Not War’!
If the novel Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd tells a brilliant parable about man, nature and chimpanzees, loosely following the work of one of the three “Richard Leaky women”, Jane Goodall, but essentially describing the public backing crisis and moral dilemmas that ensue when a team of scientists discover the uncomfortable truth (always a problem with science) that their chimpanzees have extremely warlike, even cannibalistic tendencies, perhaps its an important question about Man too!
So, the GAME and evolving question is this: While the Bonobos lounge about making love and hugging each other, or so much about chimpanzees and indeed Silverback gorillas suggests that the true evolutionary skill is not just to be top dog but deeply social, how would you place some of today’s world leaders, since we are 95% primate? Phoenix Ark gives a little run down of the candidates:
Two Bonobos, um, practicing Tai Chi?
VLADIMIR PUTIN, RUSSIAN PRESIDENT – CHIMP OR BONOBO?
Phoenix thinks CHIMP : Likes guns, macho-ness, Judo and invading Ukraine.(Compare lips with chimp above.)
BARACK OBAMA, US PRESIDENT – CHIMP OR BONOBO? Phoenix thinks BONOBO: Definite eye for the ladies.
BASHIR ASSAD, SYRIAN PRESIDENT – CHIMP OR BONOBO?
Phoenix thinks CHIMP: Seems to have no idea of society whatsoever, if life’s a gas!
ROBERT MUGABE, PRESIDENT OF ZIMBABWE – CHIMP OR BONOBO?
Phoenix thinks CHIMP: With probably an eye on taking over Brazzaville too.
ANGELA MERKEL, GERMAN PREMIER – CHIMP OR BONOBO?
Phoenix thinks BONOBO: Cuddly, (but still German).
DAVID CAMERON, UK PRIME MINISTER – CHIMP OR BONOBO?
Phoenix thinks ETONIAN, socializing very rarified, in all that Big Society.
NICK CLEGG, DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER – CHIMP OR BONOBO? Phoenix thinks OLD WET (which means he went to Westminster School), but supposedly Liberal minded.
ED MILLIBAND, LABOUR LEADER – CHIMP OR BONOBO?
Phoenix thinks BONOBO face, but very CHIMP eyes! (Turned cannibalistic in seeing off his brother David)
NIGEL FARAGE, LEADER OF UKIP – CHIMP OR BONOBO?
Phoenix thinks CHUMP!
Please do contribute your own ideas to the game (for which the only prize is evolving), but just don’t be too rude about any animals, they are far more sensitive than people! All pictures are taken from Wikipedia. ( You trying to be funny? This would not have made a good book – ed! ps Why so many men?)
Phoenix Ark's Blog 
Haha, as an animal ecologist I can get behind this comparison, in spite of my disdain for politics. Most folks have never heard of the bonobo (case in point, SpellCheck is dinging the word with a big red squiggle), nor know the violent nature of chimpanzees. How applicable to modern politics…. who knew!