Human-Chimp Relations in Science & Fiction

It has only been 40 years since molecular studies showed the true relationship between humans and apes, and it's much close than previously thought. Bones of apes 15 million years old had been called probably humn, but the molecules showed the common ancestor of chimps and humans lived only about 5 million years ago. This discovery caused a huge furor between scientists who study bones and those who study molecules, but now it's clear the molecules were right, and the oldest human bones, 4 millions years old, are very chimplike.

Jane Goodall's observations of wild chimps in Tanzania showed how much like us they behave. There are two species of chimps– the common ones that Goodall studies and a rarer and more elusive species called pygmy chimps or bonobos. They are the world's sexiest primates. My wife, anthropologist Adrienne Zihlman, put them on the scientific map, so to speak, when she wrote an article in Nature that showed they are anatomically and behaviorally more like humans than the common species. The novels, Mating, and Brazzaville Beach, a few years ago drew heavily on Goodall's work with the common species. Ape House recently treated laboratory bonobos.

My novel, The Dark X:a Medical Mystery and African Adventure, is the first to feature bonobos in the wild. Suzanne, who studies bonobos, develops a disease new to medical science, and when she and her doctor Tony go to Africa to find the cause and cure, a triangle develops between Suzanne, Tony, and Jinji, her favorite bonobo who adores her. The chimp-human relationship develops dranatically when Suzanne lies near death from the The Dark X.