Chimps and Chumps : What monkeys don't tell us about man.

In recent decades the average Homo sapiens' understanding of other species has grown impressively. For example, Gary Larson's Far Side cartoon simply would not have been funny before PBS started showing us countless documentaries on penguins, pandas, and polar bears. Interest in apes and monkeys, especially, has reached an unprecedented level, as seen in the opening of the $43 million Congo Gorilla Forest at the Bronx Zoo. Even Tarzan movies are now primatologically correct. As recently as 1984, the pretentious Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes could put extras in generic ape suits--half-chimpanzee, half-gorilla--and receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Makeup. Disney's new Tarzan animated feature, however, is quite realistic in its depiction of gorillas (except for the parts about them talking and raising human babies; evidence for this remains strictly anecdotal).

All this is to be encouraged. As the motto of Faber College in Animal House reminds us, Knowledge Is Good. The rub, though, is in figuring out how to use this knowledge; specifically, how to apply lessons learned from animals to human beings.

Looking for insight into human nature by studying our closest relatives in the evolutionary tree--our fellow primates--has become a popular intellectual pastime. For guidance on how to live, we look less to Scripture nowadays and more to our cousins with the low foreheads. But there are obvious limits to their value as role models: While no ape would have been so stupid as to have gotten America into our current Banana War with the European Union, none would be smart enough to get us out either. Conversely, those things that all of us primates clearly agree upon (e.g., Bananas: Good! Mother Love: Good! Falling Out of Tree: Bad!) tend to be boring.

No, what we want apes to tell us is the answers to those fundamental questions about sex and violence on which we human beings cannot agree. What makes this mode of inquiry so popular--yet so fruitless--is that anybody can turn to his favorite primate in support of his favorite lifestyle. Most upper-middle-class Americans in 1999 believe nature intended us to live in monogamous, egalitarian, affectionate pairs, like Helen Hunt and Paul Reiser on Mad About You. If you doubt it, just ask our fifth-closest cousins, those elegant tree-swinging gibbons. But if you don't want to live with the mothers of your various children, look to our fourth-closest cousins, the orangutans, for justification.

In contrast, the noble silverback gorilla broods in polygamous mastery over his harem. While anti-utopian philosophers find their pessimism about human nature vindicated by the thuggish common chimpanzee, whose basic social unit resembles the Hell's Angels, complete with murderous raids on other troops and frequent gangbangs. But feminists and aging hippies have recently discovered to their delight that there is a rare second species of chimp, the bonobo or pygmy chimp, in which the female plays a much more important (and maybe even central) role.

A bonobo chimp troop resembles an omnisexual commune run by Madonna and Little Richard: Everybody has sex with everybody else all day long. Lesbian crotch-to-crotch grinding is a particular favorite, while males practice "penis-fencing." (Bonobos can couple dozens of times per day, because each session typically lasts only 13 seconds.) Bonobos are said to be "peace-loving." Males remain mama's boys their entire lives, "being dependent on [their mothers] for protection" in the words of primatologist Frans de Waal.

Intellectuals have gone slightly gaga over bonobos. A Washington Post reviewer rhapsodized that bonobos "could be the key to a more harmonious human future." University of Michigan psychologist Barbara Smuts writes in Discover magazine that a "deeper understanding of male aggression against females in other species can help us understand its counterpart in our own." Fortunately, bonobos provide us with an example towards which to aspire: "Recent field studies show that these unrelated females hang out together and engage in frequent homoerotic behavior; . . . sex seems to cement their bonds. . . . [O]ne way that females use these bonds is to form alliances against males, and, as a consequence, male bonobos do not dominate females or attempt to coerce them sexually." The conclusion: "SISTERHOOD IS POWERFUL."

The New York Times's Natalie Angier hopes future studies will prove we are more closely related to bonobos than to common chimps. Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson, the dour authors of Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence, ask: "Those loving bonobos--did we pick the wrong primate to evolve from?" And de Waal asserts that the news about the bonobo lifestyle "commands attention because the bonobo shares more than 98 percent of our genetic profile . . . making it as close to a human as, say, a fox is to a dog."

While the bonobo lifestyle may seem unappealing, the logic behind the bonobo buzz is also lacking. First, bonobos are Darwinian duds. As appealing as their genetic programming may be to the students and faculty of Smith College, their genes have not succeeded in replicating themselves widely: There are fewer than 10,000 bonobos alive, no more than 1/20th the number of those testosterone-addled common chimps.

Second, owing to this relative failure to go forth and multiply, we really don't know much yet about bonobos. To conclude that they are natural-born pacifists, therefore, may well be premature. It took Jane Goodall over a decade to notice that the males in her beloved troop of common chimps were genocidal brutes.

Third, whatever the case may be among bonobos, sisterhood isn't terribly powerful among females in our own species, and probably never will be--for two fundamental reasons. First, women betray other women constantly because it's in their selfish genes' interest that they propagate themselves. They compete with their own sex in order to cooperate with the opposite sex in making babies.

Also, when it comes to sexual violence, women usually aren't protected by other women, but by men: angry fathers with shotguns, vengeful husbands and brothers, police forces, and armies. Men, in this context, tend to be both the problem and the solution. Only men are strong enough and violent enough to deter other strong and violent men.

Fourth, we didn't evolve from chimps, bonobos, or gorillas, but from some mysterious extinct common ancestor.

Fifth, the oft-cited 98 percent figure for shared DNA is less impressive than it looks. Most DNA is unused, so natural selection never changes it. Another big chunk of your personal DNA controls the basics of earthly carbon-based life, and is extremely common across multitudinous organisms. Thus, one study found that we share 70 percent of our DNA with yeast-- suggesting that if you don't have a bonobo around, you can let a packet of Fleischmann's pinch-hit as your role model. De Waal's statement that a chimp is as genetically similar to a human as a fox is to a dog may be true, but we should remember that there are a striking number of gene- driven differences even among dog breeds. A collie is identical to a pit bull in all but a tiny fraction of its genes, yet the two breeds differ radically in size, shape, behavior, and personality. Small genetic differences can have big consequences.

All these facts point to a single conclusion: While research into our fur- covered relations is fascinating in its own right, it's far from the best way to obtain insight into humanity. For that, the best strategy remains a clear-eyed study of ourselves. Alexander Pope got it right: "The proper study of mankind is man."

Mr. Sailer is a Chicago businessman and writer.