Out of more than possible adult female-adult male pairs in the troop, however, only about one in ten qualified as friends; these really were special relationships. Several factors seemed to influence which baboons paired up. In most cases, friends were unrelated to each other, since the male had immigrated from another troop. Four friendships, however, involved a female and an adolescent son who had not yet emigrated.
Unlike other friends, these related pairs never mated. Older females tended to be friends with older males; younger females with younger males. I witnessed occasional May-December romances, usually involving older females and young adult males. Adolescent males and females were strongly rule-bound, and with the exception of mother—son pairs, they formed friendships only with one another.
Regardless of age or dominance rank, most females had just one or two male friends. But among males, the number of female friends varied greatly from none to eight. Although high-ranking males enjoyed priority of access to food and sometimes mates, dominant males did not have more female friends than low-ranking males. Instead it was the older males who had lived in the troop for many years who had the most friends.
When a male had several female friends, the females were often closely related to one another. Since female baboons spend a lot of time near their kin, it is probably easier for a male to maintain bonds with several related females at once. When collecting data, I focused on one nonestrous female at a time and kept track of her every movement toward or away from any male; similarly, I noted every male who moved toward or away from her.
Whenever the female and a male moved close enough to exchange intimacies, I wrote down exactly what happened. When foraging together, friends tended to remain a few yards apart. Males more often wandered away from females than the reverse, and females, more often than males, closed the gap. The female behaved as if she wanted to keep the male within calling distance, in case she needed his protection.
The male, however, was more likely to make approaches that brought them within actual touching distance. Often, he would plunk himself down right next to his friend and ask her to groom him by holding a pose with exaggerated stillness. The female sometimes responded by grooming, but more often, she exhibited the most reliable sign of true intimacy: she ignored her friend and simply continued whatever she was doing. In sharp contrast, when a male who was not a friend moved close to a female, she dared not ignore him.
She stopped whatever she was doing and held still, often glancing surreptitiously at the intruder. Ifhe did not move away, she sometimes lifted her tail and presented her rump. When a female is not in estrus, this is a gesture of appeasement, not sexual enticement. Immediately after this respectful acknowledgement of his presence, the female would slip away. But such tense interactions with nonfriend males were rare, because females usually moved away before the males came too close.
These observations suggest that females were afraid of most of the males in their troop, which is not surprising: male baboons are twice the size of females, and their canines are longer and sharper than those of a lion. All Eburru Cliffs males directed both mild and severe aggression toward females. Mild aggression, which usually involved threats and chases but no body contact, occurred most often during feeding competition or when the male redirected aggression toward a female after losing a fight with another male.
Females and juveniles showed aggression toward other females and juveniles in similar circumstances and occasionally inflicted superficial wounds. Severe aggression by males, which involved body contact and sometimes biting, was less common and also more puzzling, since there was no apparent cause.
An explanation for at least some of these attacks emerged one day when I was watching Pegasus, a young adult male, and his friend Cicily, sitting together in the middle of a small clearing. Cicily moved to the edge of the clearing to feed, and a higher-ranking female, 20ra, suddenly attacked her. Pegasus stood up and looked as if he were about to intervene when both females disappeared into the bushes.
He sat back down, and I remained with him. A full ten minutes later, Zora appeared at the edge of the clearing; this was the first time she had come into view since her attack on Cicily. Pegasus instantly pounced on Zora, repeatedly grabbed her neck in his mouth and lifted her off the ground, shook her whole body, and then dropped her.
Zora screamed continuously and tried to escape. Each time, Pegasus caught her and continued his brutal attack. When he finally released her five minutes later she had a deep canine gash on the palm of her hand that made her limp for several days. This suggested that some, perhaps many; severe attacks by males actually represented punishment for actions that had occurred some time before.
Whatever the reasons for male attacks on females, they represent a serious threat Records of fresh injuries indicated that Eburru Cliffs adult females received canine slash wounds from males at the rate of one for every female each year, and during my study, one female died of her injuries.
Males probably pose an even greater threat to infants. Although only one infant was killed during my study, observers in Botswana and Tanzania have seen recent male immigrants kill several young infants. Protection from male aggression, and from the less injurious but more frequent aggression of other females and juveniles, seems to be one of the main advantages of friendship for a female baboon.
Seventy times I observed an adult male defend a female or her offspring against aggression by another troop member, not infrequently a high-ranking male. In all but six of these cases, the defender was a friend. Very few of these confrontations involved actual fighting; no male baboon, subordinate or dominant, is anxious to risk injury by the sharp canines of another.
If another male gets too dose to an infant or if a juvenile female plays with it too roughly, the friend may intervene. Male baboons at Gombe Park in Tanzania and Amboseli Park in Kenya have also been seen rescuing infants from chimpanzees and lions. These several forms of male protection help to explain why females in Eburru Cliffs stuck closer to their friends in the first few months after giving birth than at any other time.
My co-worker Nancy Nicolson found that by about nine months of age, infants actively sought out their male friends when the mother was a few yards away, suggesting that the male may function as an alternative caregiver.
This seemed to be especially true for infants undergoing unusually early or severe weaning. Weaning is generally a gradual, prolonged process, but there is tremendous variation among mothers in the timing and intensity of weaning. After being rejected by the mother, the crying infant often approached the male friend and sat huddled against him until its whimpers subsided. Two of the infants in Eburru Cliffs lost their mothers when they were still quite young.
Larger than all other troop members, adult males monopolize the best feeding sites. In general, the personal space surrounding a feeding male is inviolate, but he usually tolerates intrusions by the infants of his female friends, giving them access to choice feeding spots. Although infants follow their male friends around rather than the reverse, the males seem genuinely attached to their tiny companions.
If the infant whimpers in distress, the male friend is likely to cease feeding, look at the infant, and grunt softly, as if in sympathy, until the whimpers cease. When I returned to Eburru Cliffs four years after my initial study ended, several of the bonds formed between males and the infants of their female friends were still intact in other cases, either the male or the infant or both had disappeared.
When these bonds involved recently matured females, their long-time male associates showed no sexual interest in them, even though the females mated with other adult males. Mothers and sons, and usually maternal siblings, show similar sexual inhibitions in baboons and many other primate species. To answer this question definitely we would need to conduct genetic analysis, which was not possible for these baboons. Instead, I estimated paternity probabilities from observations of the temporary a few hours or days exclusive mating relationships, or consortships, that estrous females form with a series of different males.
Most females consorted with only two or three males during this period, and these males were termed likely fathers. Interestingly, males who were friends with the mother but not likely fathers nearly always developed a relationship with her infant, while males who had mated with the female but were not her friend usually did not. Thus friendship with the mother, rather than paternity, seems to mediate the development of male-infant bonds.
Recently, a similar pattern was documented for South American capuchin monkeys in a laboratory study in which paternity was determined genetically. This leads to local communities trapping and killing the olive baboons. Olive baboons share an interesting symbiotic relationship with African giants , elephants. This relationship especially takes place in desert regions such as Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Elephants dig deep holes in the sand, breaking through to groundwater and creating a well. Olive baboons follow the elephants and gain access to these small water sources.
The wise elephants know that nothing comes for free in the wild. In return, the baboons, perched high in the treetops, serve as an early alarm system to warn of any incoming danger. With unparalleled survival skills and complex relationships, they have proved to be a highly adaptable species.
With such a far-reaching range, you have a great chance of seeing these interesting baboons when you book an African safari. Editorial Team at Africa Freak is a group of expert Africa writers and influencers. We're all about safari and celebrating wild Africa. Your email address will not be published. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Join us as we celebrate wild Africa , inspiring positive change in the people we reach.
Celebrate Wild Africa With Us! About The Author. Related Posts. Leave a reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Africa Freak. I help people reconnect with themselves through nature. Recent Posts Honey badger vs wolverine: who would win? Marula fruit: African alcohol for wild animals, or total myth? What do lions eat? How much does an elephant weigh? What is the most dangerous animal in Africa?
The olive baboon is active during the day. The animal usually spends most of its waking hours on the ground but sleeps in the trees or on rocky cliffs at night.
The baboons may also roar, bark, screech and scream to signal various emotions ranging from aggression to fear. Visual signals also play a large part in olive baboon interactions. The animals often smack their lips when greeting other individuals. Aggression is communicated vie various expressions and gestures, including staring, yawning, and slapping the ground. If a threat is detected, the baboons vocalize to alert the rest of the troop, and quickly flee to safety.
Male baboons may also attack predators in order to protect the females and the young. Olive baboon female with infant. Female baboons become receptive for 15 to 20 days at a time. These close associations are often brief, but some last for as long as two weeks. During this time the male aggressively guards the female from his rivals and copulates with her frequently.
The gestation period is about 6 months, after which the female gives birth to a single infant. The infant has a black coat and weighs roughly 1 kg 2.
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