"great ape" sex (was: Stuffing the ballot box)

[Ken Kinman]

John,
      Since three (out of five) of your newest characters deal with sex, I started thinking about the bonobos.  Female bonobos are not dominated by males the way regular chimps tend to be and are known to initiate sex and/or foreplay with males.  And bonobos often have sex face-to-face (the female genital orientation is said to be a bit more like humans).  And now that I think about it, bonobos often have a pretty good head of hair (like humans)---probably longer than orangutan head-hair.

      Perhaps you should compare humans with bonobos, rather than with regular chimps.  Perhaps even better to compare bonobos with australopithecines.  I think I am going to be looking at the following possible cladistic  topology:

  Orangutan (hominid (bonobo (reg. chimp (gorilla)))).

      Here is a link to a picture of some bonobos with a nice head of hair.  Their browridges even look like they might be a bit "mounded" too:
    http://www.unm.edu/~astro1/ET109/whatislife/bonobo.jpg

       ------Ken Kinman