Although bonobos are still often referred to as “the last ape” that is least understood by science, they often appear in the media as hippie primates, or the apes that never grow up - and wild claims still abound. In Planckendael, a research project has been ongoing since 1992, shedding sometimes a different light on the social behaviour and development of these popular apes. In the current talk I will highlight results from three ongoing studies that involve the bonobos in Planckendael. In socio-ecological studies, we focus on social relationships in zoo-housed bonobos. We find that scientific data do not always match with popular belief: not all bonobos make love and not war. Instead, we find highly variable social relationships between individuals, that have great influence on the social structures in the group. A second project focused on the genetic bases of sociality and found an effect of avpr1a on sociality in bonobo males, but not females. A third project, in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, focuses on the endocrinological development of bonobos, in comparison to chimpanzees. We find that bonobos differ in a number of developmental markers from their congeners, and continue to monitor differences in somatic growth. While obviously life in a zoo differs from that in the rainforests of Democratic Republic of Congo, captive work offers some obvious benefits too, and it is conspicuous that recently a number of early results from the Planckendael group have been confirmed by field data, amongst others the hidden ovulation of bonobo females, the top down coalitions of females and the lack of tool use, but not of object manipulation, showing that captive research can complement research in the field, yielding a more complete picture of bonobo social life and development, ultimately leading to insights about human evolution.