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Block isn't blind to her shameless anthropomorphism. But, she argues, "a little anthropomorphism never hurt Flipper." She says sex will offend as much as it will titillate and no matter how unscientific her perspective is on the bonobo, it's impossible to overlook their overt sex appeal.

"And guess what," she quips. "Sex sells. Why not tap into my shows' audience to help save the bonobo?"

In response to her critics from academia, Block admits she's an inspired businesswoman who is looking to them for leadership. She claims her Dr. Block Bonobo Foundation serves to help protect the bonobo through educating her audience and encouraging donations to the Bushmeat Project, the Bonobo Conservation Initiative and the Bonobo Protection Fund.

Block says her first fundraising event, an erotic art show entitled "Sexual Evolution," is scheduled for fall, and a percentage of its proceeds will be donated to the initiative.

Sally Coxe, who researched the bonobo for seven years after leaving National Geographic, created the nonprofit initiative to help promote information sharing and collaboration among international teams of scientists and conservationists. Coxe could care less about Block's occupation and plans to involve her in an upcoming Peace Concert Benefit.

Tony Rose, director of the Biosynergy Institute and its Bushmeat Project, which aims to stop the increased trade of ape meat; Richard Wrangham, author of "Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence;" and Hope Walker, director of the Primate Conservation and Welfare Society, have also shown enthusiastic support for Block's efforts.

But her self-promotion of the "bonobo way" has not always been well received. Georgia State University's Bonobo Protection Fund has published a magnum opus online that dismantles the premise of comparing human and animal sexual behavior as depicted in the "popular movement called 'the bonobo way,'" and accuses Block of exploiting bonobo by associating them with her porn.

And de Waals, who concedes his book has appeal to special populations, largely gay and feminist, who could be targeted for fundraising, still says he fails to see why someone who has never been "in the field" would be interested in saving the bonobo.

Rose does. He's written extensively on how conservation can become a "global social movement based on a deepening discovery of primate kinship." He writes that scientific epiphanies rarely move laypeople, but "biophilia," the belief that humans, urbanites in particular, are endowed with an innate fascination and need to relate to other living things, can. He cites the case of an Internet chat with Koko the gorilla that ranked the fifth largest in online history.

Claire Richardson, president of the Diane Fossey Foundation, seconds Rose's contention that anthropomorphism goes along with the human condition. "You have to bridge the relevance gap. When you talk about biodiversity the eyes of the general public tend to glaze over. So what we have to do with a charismatic species like the great apes is use them as a flagship species. What we know is that it's about habitat, not individual species. So if you educate the public about our close kinship to the bonobos and get the message out that if these protected places disappear, so do the species, maybe people will be more motivated to act."

However Gaye Reinartz, coordinator of the Bonobo Species Survival Plan for the Zoological Society of Milwaukee, who has just returned from the Congo where she met with government officials about reaffirming their conservation commitments, gets a little fed up with talk about "biophilia" and habitat.

"I don't sit around pondering my interconnectedness," she says, "Let's not put this in the abstract. Hell, the Grand Canyon isn't habitat, it's the grand old USA!" She recognizes, however, that public pressure is needed to induce U.S. foreign policy leaders to take a more active role in bringing peace and preservation to the Congo.

"Our government has certainly proved it can hold a carrot and a stick," Reinartz insists. "And believe me, the Congo makes Kosovo look like Disneyland. At some point it will become a security risk."

Next page | The bonobos' sex life continues to provide saucy headlines