Experienced Bonobo Babysitter Comes Highly Recommended

Hey, if you’re looking for a babysitter for your infant bonobo ape, I know of someone. His name is Nyota. He’s a twelve year old male who graduated from Georgia State University. He lives in Des Moines, Iowa now, so car fare might present a challenge. But he has lots of experience caring for Teco, his fourth month old cousin, and excellent references.

“Nyota is an excellent babysitter,” said William M. Fields, director of scientific research at The Great Ape Trust

, the 230-acre research facility in Iowa where Nyota lives with six other bonobos, including Teco, and two orangutans. “What you are seeing is his experience and enculturation, his learning process. 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.”

Bonobos are highly eroticized apes, much less hung up on social taboos than humans or chimpanzees, so there’s a good chance Nyota will engage in sexual contact with any infant placed in his care. But, you know, as long as something like that doesn’t bother you.