Along with chimpanzees, bonobos are our closest living relatives. These great apes, found only in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, are critically endangered, with only 20,000 individuals remaining. Researchers from the University of Vienna, University College London and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig have now used genetic analysis to show that, despite the small population size, there are at least three genetically distinct groups that diverged phylogenetically around 145,000 years ago.