This volume includes twelve novel empirical papers focusing on the behaviour and cognition of both captive and wild bonobos (Pan paniscus). As our species less known closest relative, the bonobo has gone from being little studied to increasingly popular as a species of focus over the past decade. Overall this volume demonstrates how anyone interested in understanding humans or chimpanzees must also know bonobos. Bonobos are not only equal to chimpanzees as our relatives, but they are also unique.

The majority of papers in this volume show that whether you are interested in the evolution of culture and tool use, social relationships and sharing or foraging ecology and cognition, bonobos have a major contribution to make. Four papers provide further evidence that the behaviour and psychology of bonobo females is radically different from that observed in chimpanzees. Foraging behaviour and cognition of bonobos is the focus of three papers that each show important ways that bonobos spatial cognition differs remarkably from chimpanzees. Two papers are relevant to solving the puzzle of why bonobos are expert extractive foragers in captivity but have never been seen using tools to obtain food in the wild.

The articles presented in this volume are previously published in a Special Issue of Behaviour, Volume 152, Parts 3-4 (March 2015).