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Bonobos are perceived to be matriarchal: females tend to collectively dominate males by forming alliances; females use their sexuality to control males; a male's rank in the social hierarchy is determined by his mother's rank.[15][16] However, there are also claims of a special role for the alpha male in group movement.[citation needed] The limited research on Bonobos in the wild was also taken to indicate that these matriarchal behaviors may be exaggerated by captivity, as well as by food provisioning by researchers in the field.[15] This view has recently been challenged, however, by Duke University's Vanessa Woods;[17] Woods noted in a radio interview[18] that she had observed bonobos in a spacious forested sanctuary in the DRC exhibiting the same sort of hypersexuality under these more naturalistic conditions; and, while she acknowledges a hierarchy among males, including an "alpha male", these males are less dominant than the dominant female.
Sexual intercourse plays a major role in bonobo society observed in captivity, being used as what some scientists perceive as a greeting, a means of forming social bonds, a means of conflict resolution, and post-conflict reconciliation. Bonobos are the only non-human animal to have been observed engaging in all of the following sexual activities: face-to-face genital sex (although a pair of Western Gorillas has been photographed performing face-to-face genital sex[40]), tongue kissing, and oral sex.[41] In scientific literature, the female-female behavior of touching genitals together is often referred to as GG rubbing or genital-genital rubbing, or, as referred to commonly by British primate researchers, "scissoring."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo
