When assistant professor of evolutionary anthropology Brian Hare first traveled to the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2004 to study bonobos, he had no idea that a chance encounter with a young master’s candidate would cause a paradigm shift in bonobo research.
The subject of this story is Suzy Kwetuenda, who is the first native Congolese scientist to ever conduct bonobo research. She visited Durham this week to deliver a presentation to the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology. Bonobos are a species of primate that, like the common chimpanzee, are one of the closest living relatives of humans. Bonobos are only found in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and are in danger of extinction due to habitat destruction and commercial poaching. Kwetuenda researches bonobo behavior and sociality as a way to illuminate human behavior in an evolutionary context.
“The way that Suzy met us is actually quite a story,” said Jingzhi Tan, a postdoctoral associate in Hare’s lab.
When Hare traveled to the Congo for research, he encountered a Congolese girl taking notes outside of the enclosures. Kwetuenda was a master’s student in biology at Kinshasa University at the time, which surprised the researchers because gender equality is a problem in the Congo.
“In my country, the custom is that most women are there just to give birth and to take care of the house,” Kwetuenda said of the barriers to scientific achievement she faced in the Congo. “Sometimes I call myself like a river, because I’m a fighting woman, very curious, very passionate, who just wants to learn and to help humanity to learn.”
This curiosity was evident from the moment Kwetuenda and Hare met. At the time that Hare came to the Congo to conduct research at Lola ya Bonobo, the world’s only sanctuary for orphaned bonobos, Kwetuenda had already been spending every day at the sanctuary observing the animals’ behavior for her master’s thesis. She conducted all of this work without affiliation with the sanctuary, receiving no salary from them.
“Every morning, she took a bus and walked for two hours and 30 minutes to get to this place, sat there and studied bonobos, and traveled the same length back. She just did this on her own. For free,” Tan said.
Hare was so impressed with Kwetuenda that he took her on as an intern in the Congo. She grew more and more involved both with Hare’s research and with conservation and research efforts at Lola ya Bonobo, until eventually Hare decided to hire Kwetuenda as his field research coordinator and to train her in psychology.
Kwetuenda said this training was invaluable in furthering her understanding of the bonobos under her care at the sanctuary.
“I’m very lucky to have been trained in psychology because it has helped me to understand better how to think of each bonobo as an individual,” she said. “I’m in charge of bonobo care and conservation at Lola ya Bonobo because I know each and every bonobo. I’m like a link between one species and the other.”
Kwetuenda’s insight into the bonobo mind enabled her to, in collaboration with Hare, design and conduct the first experiment to show that bonobos are capable of sharing—a trait that was previously thought to be unique to humans. Even Hare initially thought this result was impossible. Previous research into other nonhuman primates indicated that nonhuman primates were exclusively competitive and incapable of displaying cooperation as is found in humans.
“Even for chimpanzee mother-offspring relationships, the infant will only get the food that the mother doesn’t want. So we were like, ‘There’s no way that we can find bonobos that can share,’” Tan said. “Brian Hare didn’t believe this could happen, and Suzy said, ‘No, you’re wrong. Let me show you. We can do this.’”
The results were published in Current Biology in 2010, showing that bonobos did in fact readily share their food with others.
“It was just mind-blowing.” Tan said. “We’d been studying bonobos for years and still didn’t believe that any nonhuman animal could do this. Suzy knows bonobos better than any of us as researchers.”
Beyond a pure scientific curiosity into the inner life of the bonobo, Kwetuenda’s research also holds an immediate practical necessity in her work as the leader of the ongoing effort by Lola ya Bonobo to release bonobos from the sanctuary back into the wild. This is the first project of its kind in history.
“The next step in bonobo conservation will be to assess their ability to become wild again after years in captivity—how they survive, how well they remember their skills,” Kwetuenda said.
Kwetuenda serves as both the manager of the bonobo release project and as the science director of the sanctuary. Her research, she said, is crucial to assessing how well bonobos will adapt to the wild.
Kwetuenda maintains, however, that the most difficult part of her project lies in convincing the Congolese public that they should care about bonobo conservation.
“[Bonobo release] is very challenging because we need to educate people in the surrounding area …about other ways of life that don’t involve killing bonobos. They still get everything they need to survive from the forest. This keeps bonobos in danger because they are still victims of meat trafficking,” Kwetuenda said. “This will be the most difficult part of the project. Because these people are still very poor, they still need some way to survive.”
However, clear signs of progress are already being seen, she said. For example, some people from a nearby area brought an orphan bonobo to the sanctuary, whereas in previous years they might have eaten it. She said that is an example of the community getting involved in the cause and the education project’s goals being met.
“As with any work involving endangered species, it’s essential that people in the habitat country embrace the effort to protect and understand these amazing animals,” said Evan MacLean, a senior research scientist of evolutionary anthropology. “Suzy is the first Congolese woman to study bonobo psychology and is an ambassador for this work. She can connect with Congolese communities vital to bonobo conservation and educate Congolese youth about this species in ways that are impossible for researchers outside the DRC.”
For Kwetuenda, though, her groundbreaking work as a scientist and conservationist is foremost an act of love.
“I fell in love with bonobos the first time I met them,” Kwetuenda said. “It’s more a passion than a job. So I really understand the importance of that, and I will need that in the future in order to have a big impact on my country. That is what motivates me.”
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