Animals in the United States

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Can Guys And Girls Really Just Be Friends? Ask These Baboons.

Observing the same group of wild baboons for over a decade, primatologist Anna Weyher says their individual personalities begin to stand out. One baboon named Simon was a good father, a "nice guy" to female baboons, while his brother Garfunkel was "more grumpy."

"Over time you get to know them so well," says Weyher.

After observing Kinda baboons (Papio kindae) in Zambia's Kasanka National Park for nine years, Weyher's research team published their findings in January, the first long-term study of this species.

"Kinda baboon male and female relationships are very different from other baboons that they are closely related to," says Weyher.

Other species of male baboons are typically characterized as aggressive, competing for mating opportunities and dominance in a social hierarchy. Friendships in those baboon societies are most often observed between females.

This new research showed male Kinda baboons are generally "nice guys" like Simon: they develop long-term social bonds with female baboons. While the friendships might result in mating, they also stay friends while females are pregnant or otherwise not available for mating. These male-female friendship bonds set Kinda baboons apart from other baboons.

"Some initial brief observations on the Kindas [had found] a lot of males grooming females," says Weyher, "so we sort of had an inkling that there might be something different."

Male Kinda baboons that maintain friendships with females tend to have more luck getting selected as a mate. Males and females often remain friends after mating.

Photographs By Konrad Wothe/Minden Pictures

Observing the social lives of baboons

Kinda baboons were classified as a subspecies of yellow baboons (Papio cynocephalus) until 2013, when genetic evidence revealed them to be different enough to be their own species. Recent research has shown they are physically and behaviorally distinct from yellow baboons too. Kinda baboons are much smaller, and not very sexually dimorphic—meaning males and females are similar sizes.

Scientists often look at grooming behavior to measure the strength of primate social relationships, but primate grooming has mostly been studied among adult females that maintain long-term social bonds with other females. When male primates groom females, it's typically observed in the context of prospective mating.

A different grooming pattern emerged in the Zambian Kinda baboons. Nine years of behavioral data followed a group that ranged between 43 and 89 individually recognizable baboons. Statistical models analyzed the observations, comparing the types of social behaviors in males and females, and identifying who tended to initiate interactions. The researchers found that male Kinda baboons more often initiated interactions with female baboons.

"These Kinda males are really actively initiating, maintaining, and really responsible for the close association and grooming relationships with females," comments Nga Nguyen, biologist at California State University Fullerton, who was not involved in the new study. "This study provided empirical support and evidence that Kinda males are gentle, kind, and very affiliative towards females."

These male-female friendships lasted for several years, often not ending until one member left the group or died.

In a Kinda baboon population in Tanzania, baboons clash. After observing them for nine years, scientists found that Zambian Kinda baboons were generally docile, but more research is needed to confirm if that trait is found in other populations.

Photographs By Konrad Wothe/Minden Pictures

It's unconfirmed whether this particular study group is just an "oddball population," says Nguyen, or if these behaviors are widespread.

In the Zambian baboons, researchers also observed low levels of aggression among male Kinda baboons, compared with other baboon species. New males entering the study group didn't face much resistance, and slowly moved up the social hierarchy, which is very different from other baboons. Among yellow baboons, for example, alpha males earn their rank by aggressively taking over the group.

"Instead of spending time fighting and being aggressive, [Kindas are] spending time forming what we call friendships," says Weyher.

Outrage After Teenagers Burn Baboon To Death

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Encounters between baboons and people are common in parts of South Africa. WhatsApp groups often share stories of baboons raiding a kitchen and stealing all the food. And stories appear in the media about the torture and killing of baboons.

Recently the hashtag #JusticeForRaygun has been widely shared on social media. A young male baboon named Raygun was being tracked as he made his way through a suburb of Pretoria to the wilds. When he stopped at a school in a small town, a group of teenagers hunted him down, attacked him and burned him to death. Some children had reportedly fainted earlier in the day and he was blamed. This connection to superstition and the occult is nothing new.

Why are baboons so often badly treated in South Africa?

People are far more aggressive towards baboons than the other way round. Analysis suggests that the rage is not really just about baboons, but about society's anxiety more generally, with baboons acting as stand-ins for humans.

People expand their settlements into areas where baboons once lived freely. They create secure spaces behind high walls, razor wire fences and security systems: they fear burglars, they fear those who invade suburban safety, and they want them removed. But they cannot get rid of the human intruders – so they take their frustration out on the baboons. For a long time baboons were legally labelled as "vermin" (pests) and, while patchily protected today (it's illegal to hunt baboons without a permit in most areas), they're still killed illegally in suburbia or on farms.

Of course, baboons are complex, adaptable beings whose cultures are closely evolved with ours: they live in social groups as we do and behave in recognisably similar ways. Baboons have evolved to live near humans and benefit from our environmental modifications. So they often enter human spaces. This feels "unnatural" to people used to the shy, human-averse smaller wildlife surrounding urban settlement.

Like us, baboons are inquisitive, socially complex and flexible, with enough dexterity to navigate sources of delicious food. They embrace our high-energy, low-effort foods, from orchards, fields, rubbish bins and dumps, picnics and kitchens – in a (very) few cases, wounding people and domestic animals.

Some baboons lose their usual suspicion of humans and deploy scare tactics to acquire food. This behaviour precipitates human–baboon conflict even before the added factor of the occult baboon.

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A baboon forages in a bin (Reuters)

The occult baboon?

The baboon may also be seen as part of the occult arts or as linked to the tokoloshe (a supernatural baboonesque man-beast in South African folklore who acts both independently and as a kind of witch's familiar).

Indeed, some South Africans refuse to even name the baboon or utter the words used to describe it in various languages, like imfene, tshwene and mfenhe. Some adults rather use the euphemism selo sa thabeng (mountain thing).

We need to ask why it's mainly the baboon, out of all animals, that's come to play this role in the popular imagination.

Why does it play this role?

The answer is both psychological and historical. Baboons were important in the cosmology of indigenous hunter-gatherer groups. They're evident in mythic stories, including those of shapeshifting between human and baboon. Oral history and rock art suggest there wasn't an inevitable hostility between baboons and humans.

In fact, some groups, such as the AmaTola or VhaLaudzi, chose baboons as totem animals. Baboons were associated with root medicines called so-/oa by the /Xam San, and U-mabophe by the Nguni people. These medicines made a person invincible to weapons while clouding the enemy's judgement – so you could defeat them in daylight and raid their cattle by night.

They cured headaches and stomach ills, but were also a powerful "charm" against evil. The baboon, because it also self-medicated with plant roots, was understood as a symbol of protection.

What went wrong?

The rupture in the shared deep history of the baboon–human relationship came with the shift from hunter-gatherer lifeways to sedentary crop farming (starting about 1,000 years ago). Baboons raiding crops suddenly posed a real threat to human food security. But they also came to be a threat to psychological security.

To this day they've remained linked with an unnatural "wrongness" in society inherent to witchcraft. The occult or witchcraft (a flawed term that doesn't capture local nuances) is the darker side of traditional healing and remains part of the cosmologies of most South Africans. This might take the form of consulting with diviners for ritual help in order to cause harm or to accumulate wealth and power illegitimately.

Historically, baboons became understood to work as witches' familiars (as tokoloshes or as themselves) or, occasionally, to be actual witches. Stories can be traced that tell of witches riding baboons backwards, approaching homes in reverse, at night, disrupting all that is normal, a creature out of place.

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Baboons on a South African road (EPA)

But being in the wrong place at the wrong time is entirely normal for baboons: young males like Raygun tend to leave their troops to seek mates in other troops (which ensures genetic diversity). Today, these young males end up perceived as "out of place" because they follow historical routes that are now human spaces.

This is probably the greatest challenge that a male baboon will face in his life: navigating a new world alone over great distances in unfamiliar landscapes – with increased testosterone and cortisol. He's primed to be a being terrifyingly "out of place".

In some high conflict areas, the majority of baboon deaths on the urban edge are human-induced (hit by cars, electrocutions, poisoned or shot or killed by dogs). As baboon numbers drop it becomes rarer to see a dispersing baboon, more "unnatural" and more difficult for the baboons themselves.

Add to this a psychological factor: baboons provoke sympathy, indeed empathy, by coming into focus as almost-us. Then, with the final click of the intellectual lens, they are in complete focus and are revealed as not us at all. This is integral to the "uncanny". They are us and not us.

Historically, the uncanny creature has been used as a proxy or scapegoat to account for something unsettling or unlucky. The uncanny might also be that which unconsciously reminds us of ourselves – the dark side of ourselves, the "animal side", our own repressed impulses. So we project these onto the uncanny thing, blaming them for inexplicable troubles that befall us.

What should happen to prevent another Raygun?

Hope lies not in furious outbursts on social media but in law-enforcement supported by education.

Animal protection societies already do a heroic job, with very limited resources. They focus on criminal prosecutions as well as animal rescues. A R20,000 (US$1,000) reward has been offered for information leading to a successful conviction of Raygun's killers. In simple individual cases of animal cruelty, law enforcement is both vital and sufficient.

But in dealing with community cosmology and supernatural belief, education initiatives may be as useful. This shouldn't be left to animal protection groups. Educators, traditional and church leaders, community leaders and the media all need to promote knowledge about animal behaviour and sentience to encourage connection to the animal world.

If you remove the fear, you can remove the violence.

Sandra Swart is a Professor of History at Stellenbosch University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article

Wild Baboons Don't Recognize Themselves In A Mirror

Self-awareness may be beyond primates in the wild.

Chimps, organutans and other species faced with a mirror react to a dot on their face in the lab, a widely used measure of self-awareness. But while baboons in Namibia exposed to mirrors find the reflective glass fascinating, they don't respond to dots placed on their faces, researchers report in the January Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. The result could indicate that lab responses to mirrors are a result of training — and that self-awareness might exist on a spectrum.

"Psychological self-awareness is this idea that you as an individual can become an object of your own attention," says Alecia Carter, an evolutionary anthropologist at University College London. It's a hard concept to measure in other species, in part, she notes, because "it's also difficult to imagine not having that kind of self-awareness."

One measure of self-awareness is the mark test. An animal sits in front of a mirror, and a mark is placed somewhere they normally cannot see, such as on the face. If the animal recognizes themselves in the mirror, and the mark as out of place, the animal will respond to the mark.

Chimps, orangutans and bonobos have "passed" the mark test in the lab, while primates that are not great apes, such as rhesus macaques, have mastered it only after training. Other species, such as Asian elephants, dolphins and even a fish called the cleaner wrasse, have also responded to the mark test.

But no one had tried a large-scale mirror test with fully wild animals. Carter and her colleagues set up two mirrors for five months at the Tsaobis Nature Park in Namibia. The mirrors were placed by water points favored by two troops of chacma baboons (Papio ursinus). When a baboon stared into the mirror, a scientist would shine a laser pointer onto the animal's cheek or ear and record the reaction. The researcher would also shine the laser pointer on spots on the arms or legs that the baboon could see, to make sure the animal reacted to the dot.

The baboons adored their reflective toy. "They were lining up to sit in front of it," Carter says. They also responded to the laser pointer alone — when scientists put the dot on the visible body parts of 91 baboons, the monkeys pawed at it 64 percent of the time. But only one of the 51 baboons that gazed in the mirror while a laser shone on their face or ear responded even once. A few, Carter notes, peered at the mark in the mirror, but did not reach for their own face. The results suggest that monkeys might not pass the mark test without experience in laboratory conditions, Carter says.

While wild baboons looked in a mirror, scientists shone laser pointers on their faces. Even though the monkeys pawed at the dot when it was on their arms or legs, they didn't touch their faces when they saw the dot in the mirror.

It's "the first systematic study of the mirror self-recognition question in wild primates," says James Anderson, a primatologist at Kyoto University in Japan, and it confirms that non-ape monkeys do not recognize themselves in a mirror. In the lab, trained rhesus monkeys voluntarily use mirrors to examine their genitals. But the baboons showed no sign of using the mirror on their primate privates, Anderson says, further confirmation that they may not see the monkey in the mirror as themselves.

The baboons might, however, not see the mark as being on their face, says Masanori Kohda, an animal sociologist at the Osaka Metropolitan University in Japan who has been studying the mark test in cleaner wrasse. "The laser pointer mark does not follow one's movements precisely," he says. The baboons might see the mark as projected onto the mirror instead of their own faces.

The baboons did appear to understand the mirror depicted the scenery behind them, and that the image in the mirror was not another baboon. This intermediate understanding could indicate that self-awareness exists on a spectrum, says Lindsay Murray, a psychologist at the University of Chester in England. In humans, self-awareness arises gradually — only 65 percent of children show the skill by age two. "An increasing number of researchers are now using this gradualist framework," she says.

After all, while humans place a lot of importance on self-awareness, Carter notes, that is how we experience the world, not how other animals do. "Baboons are doing very well without possibly having a concept of self-awareness," she says. "And I'm not entirely sure what they could get out of it."

Fish and Amphibians