While I was attending UCSC in 1989 I wrote this report on a book I was reading. My attention had been caught by the fact that though Chimpanzees are on their way to extinction along with most of the great Apes like Humans(not that humans are going extinct) that Baboons were growing in numbers like Humans. So, I figured they must have traits in common with humans.
For example, some species do well around humans like Deer, raccoons, coyotes and sometimes wolves. However, people have a harder time getting along with Bear and Mountain lions but at least in some places like California and other places like Alaska and the West Coast they try. A big part of this is "natural habitat". Where I live I see deer all the time but I have also seen a dog who made the mistake of chasing a male deer with antlers within a few blocks of where I live. I could tell he had been thrown by the antlers because his flesh was torn off his ribs and hanging there. His 13 year old female owner was crying hysterically because she likely was going to be responsible for what happened to her dog when it chased the wrong male deer (a buck with horns).
So, Baboons being this close in behaviors where they can adapt more to humans when other apes might not was something I thought very interesting about them. Baboons keep their baboon identity rather than socializing with humans like Chimpanzees are known to do. So, baboons tend to keep to their own and stay wild.
begin quote:
I
also would like to share a part of a paper I wrote in college. It was
an Anthropology college course. I was amazed by the similarity of Baboon
society to humans of the last 10,000 years.
Basically I wrote a report on a study outlined in a book called Almost Human by Shirley C. Strum.
Begin
quote: Dr. Shirley C. Strum left for Africa from UC Berkeley in 1972
to do graduate work in Kenya with Baboons. Her quest in her own words
from p. 7 was, "---Robert Ardley--- told the lay public that modern
humans were not far removed from our primeval days. A killer ape still
lurked inside of each of us. Men and women were naturally different in
abilities. Even if we wanted a society with greater sexual equality we
might not be able to overcome millions of years of biology.
"What
if he was right?" Worse still what if he was wrong and I believed
him?---Like early humans, baboons have met the challenge of the savanna
life like few other primates have. Watching baboons might help us
understand the problems early humans may have faced through the
solutions they have found."
When Dr. Strum was still an
undergraduate, she was sold on Anthropology as a major. She saw that a
holistic approach was the right approach because it looks at human
problems and evolution from a variety of approaches simultaneously. She
really liked this cross-cultural perspective. She saw no other systemic
approach doing this as well as Anthropology. Dr. Strum first took a
course in Cultural Anthropology and one course led to another. She
says,"I felt linked not only to a few thousands years of art and culture
but to millions of generations, to something bigger than I had ever
imagined existed." un-nsa-tc-00542
During her research in Kenya
she was surprised by many of her findings. Many of her logical
preconceptions of baboon behavior were blown away by the facts. For
example, her research led her to study Ray, an outsider male trying to
move in and become part of the troop. Many of Ray's approaches were
indirect. For many months he did not directly challenge the top male
leadership for supremacy. Rather he kept his distance and slowly moved
closer and closer over two months and eventually copulated with Naomi, a
low status female. However, Dr. Strum could not figure out why the
males of the troop did not put a stop to this behavior. Next Ray sought
out one of the main matriarchal females but a big male named Sumner got
jealous. Ray and Sumner fought but then neither claimed Peggy, the
Matriarch as his sexual prize. Another lesser male claimed her instead.
This confused Dr. Strum as it made no sense to her. I think that this
has more to do with her not understanding males because it makes perfect
sense to me. If I had been in a life or death struggle,even over a
female, I certainly wouldn't be in the mood for anything but letting my
adrenalin settle down to normal afterwards.
It seemed to Dr.
Strum that baboons could adapt their behavior to many different kinds of
environments whereas chimpanzees were close to extinction. What good
did the chimpanzees' near humanness get them if they were going extinct?
If
the numbers of primates are considered in total, baboons including
subspecies are second only to man in primate population whereas all the
great apes may be on their way to extinction.
Historic human
societies also hearken back to societies where females only acquire
status in relation to their association with a dominant male which Dr.
Strum considered to be an almost direct parallel to early human tribal
societies.And these human historic societies in this way directly
parallel present day Baboon societies.
The males of the baboon
species are like fighting machines and so male baboons compete for such
things as females, food and status within a troop. Once males fought and
achieved their rank lower ranking males tended to give way without
protest. Those of higher rank got their rewards consistently without
further protest. The system is much like human societies. It is
maintained through threat and bluff. The threat and bluff system gives
strength to the social fabric of baboons.
In contrast, females
lives revolve around babies: having them, feeding them and raising them
to be useful members of the troop. Female eyes were always turned toward
the males. All females compete for the right to groom the dominant
males as the dominant males protect them from outside predators and
inter-troop quarrels. The dominant males were both guardians and
protectors to all within the group.
Females are predictable.
Their first loyalty is to their family. The mother is on top of the
matriarchy followed by the children in reverse order of age. The female
dominance hierarchy is strictly matriarchal. The matriarchal hierarchy
is a contrast to the male dominance hierarchy. The male dominance
hierarchy can shift from day to day or from hour to hour whereas the
matriarchal hierarchy is linear and fairly rigid and only changes
slightly when someone dies or is born. The sphere of influence of the
males was found to be much more powerful but also much more narrow than
Dr. Strum expected, whereas a dominant female's influence was fairly
consistent on-going and on-growing. The dominant females, the
matriarchs, ward off bullies within the troop and also protect the group
from the dangers outside the troop. The matriarchs wield a great deal
of influence both directly and indirectly.
A primate hand is a
remarkable invention. It is one of several primary reasons that humans
now do so well. As brain areas related to vision and manipulation
increased in size, the human brain also increased in size.
From
the back piece of the book George B. Schaller says this of Dr. Strum's
work, "From her extended study (Dr. Shirley C. Strum) gained not just
knowledge but understanding. She ceased being a scientific technician
focused on a narrow aspect of baboon behavior and became a humanist who
considered the philosophy, ethics, and science of her involvement with
the animals--aspects that give this book unusual depth.... Books such as
hers create an awareness that animals too have unique and complex
societies as worthy of study and preservation as our own."
Although
Chimpanzees are thought to be the closest link to man; baboon society
is biologically much closer to humans, except for the use of tools, to
our tribal beginnings. I think that the baboons will have much to teach
the human race for many generations to come. Baboons may survive long
after all the great apes have gone extinct in the wild because of their
greater adaptability in the wild than any primate except man. Endquote
of my college book report on "Almost Human" by Dr. Shirley C. Strum.
Written
today: When I read this book, I was amazed by the similarity between
modern and historic human society and the baboons. I think that more has
not been made of this precisely because the similarities to human
society are so striking.
There is one story that didn't make it into my report that was the most astonishing thing I learned in reading this book.
When
the baboon troop,which lives mostly in one or two trees on the Savanah
or flatlands, exhaust the food supply in that location they would have
to move. The journey across open land to a new copse of trees is
extremely dangerous. The trees provide some safety from lions and other
big cats, though 5 or more alpha male baboons could drive off a single
lion because of their fierceness and very sharp long teeth.
Anyway,
as the group of 50 to 100 mostly related Baboons traveled through the
flatlands and grasses to the next oasis or safe spot with trees, some of
the older teenage males would likely be killed because they were at the
outside of the circle and would get picked off during an attack, very
much like corporals and privates in an army on the move. What amazed Dr.
Strum was why older teenage males would put themselves in such a
dangerous position for the good of the troop.
Eventually, after
watching the troop over a long time, she was able to understand. If
these older teenage males survived this dance with death they then had a
chance at becoming one of the inner circle of alpha males or even the
Alpha male himself at some point, since the whole troop witnessed their
bravery at taking such a risk. They also positioned themselves to being
able to mate with some of the alpha females if they survived.
This
completely amazed me because it so directly resembles human tribal
society for thousands of years as well as how even nations and armies
reward those soldiers who are brave and move up the ranks. I felt
grateful for the holistic study that Dr. Strum made while researching in
the field for such an extensive period.
note: After I finished
transcribing this college paper I wanted to know how many chimpanzees
and Great apes were left and how many Baboons. Here is what I found:
http://books.google.com/books?id=-CvJnqkHaAYC&pg=PA319&lpg=PA319&dq=total+chimpanzee
+world+population&source
This
is from Jane Goodall, a good source as of 2000 ad "The world human
population would fill the rose bowl stadium some 60,000 times
over;-------By contrast the most 'numerous' of the African Great Apes,
the chimpanzee, might conceivably fit its total world population into
two rose bowl stadiums. Experts may disagree on the rate , but they
agree that the world chimpanzee population is declining dangerously,
ultimately to a place of no return.The other three Great Apes
species--gorillas, orangutans, and bonobos-- are rarer and if anything
moving more rapidly to extinction. The total world population of
gorillas, for instance, might fill the rose bowl staduim half way. The
total world population of orangutans probobly would not. And the entire
world population of bonobos, as an optimistic guess, might fill a third
of that same stadium. end quote. at page 319 Visions of Caliban: On
chimpanzees and people
http://www.princeton.edu/~baboon/demography.html
This following is from the princeton site which is the Ambrosia Baboon
Research Project
We know that fluctuations in birth and death
rates have occurred, however, partly because the baboon groups have all
shifted their home ranges at some point in the past decades. Such shifts
usually result in an increase in both food and predation. Our current
work involves investigating the effects of such fluctuations on the
population growth rate. Analyses so far suggest that these fluctuations
are very dramatic, so that while the pooled population growth rate has
been 4% per year, growth rates over smaller periods of time, looking at
single groups, may be as high as 8% per year and as low as -4% per year -
from high growth to actual shrinkage. The implication of these
fluctuations is that, while the baboon population may continue to grow
if it remains on its current trajectory, it may also shrink and become
vulnerable to extinction. Several bad years in a row, for instance,
would accumulate in such a way that another crash could easily occur. We
are currently in the process of trying to measure the possibilities -
will the population continue to expand, or will it crash and return
again to the edge of local extinction? end quote
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