tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/baboons-3975/articles
Baboons – The Conversation
2023-05-18T06:49:33Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/205673
2023-05-18T06:49:33Z
2023-05-18T06:49:33Z
Baboon bonds: new study reveals that friendships make up for a bad start in life
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526176/original/file-20230515-12435-66xt42.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Two juvenile baboons passively share information about a food source when one sniffs the other’s muzzle while feeding.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Susan C. Alberts</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Childhoods can predict a great deal about how adult lives might play out. For instance, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0749379798000178?via%3Dihub">research</a> has shown that people whose childhoods involve poverty, abuse and neglect have poorer health and shorter lives than those who have happy, stable childhoods.</p>
<p>Is there a way to overcome a bad start? The <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aax9553">evidence</a> suggests that strong social ties may be one way to make up for adversity in early life. <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25910392/">People</a> (and other animals such as <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2017.1313">killer whales</a>, <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0022375">hyraxes</a> and <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2014.1261">baboons</a>) with strong adult friendships are healthier and live longer than those without such bonds.</p>
<p>I am a biologist working on how social environments affect development and lifespan. I <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ade7172">recently collaborated</a> with statisticians and other biologists to understand whether harsh conditions in early life led to weak social relationships and poor health, or if close friendships could develop in adulthood in spite of a tough childhood. We also wondered if having close friends could potentially even make up for a poor early life. </p>
<p>To answer these questions, we studied a population of wild baboons in Kenya. Scientists often use <a href="https://academic.oup.com/emph/article/2017/1/162/4835137">animal models</a> to test hypotheses that are difficult to study in humans. <a href="https://elifesciences.org/articles/50989">Baboons are a useful proxy for humans</a> because they are similar in their life cycle, social relationships, physiology and behaviour. And research has shown that the effects of early adversity and social bonds on lifespan in <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0145213419303047">humans</a> are <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2015162117">paralleled</a> in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms11181">baboons</a>.</p>
<p>The most important result of <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ade7172">our research</a> is that early life adversity and adult social relationships have independent effects on survival. That is, both early life environments and adult social bonds have strong effects, but they don’t depend on each other. </p>
<p>This has been an important question for social scientists, because one possibility is that the effects of adult social bonds on survival are solely a result of the fact that early life adversity tends to lead to poor social bonds in adulthood and also to poor survival. In that scenario, the two effects are not independent. Everything is driven by early life adversity. </p>
<p>But our data shows that both effects matter. What’s more, our results suggest that strong social bonds can make up for some of the negative effects of early adversity for baboons. If that’s true for human too – we don’t know that yet – interventions early in life and in adulthood could improve human health.</p>
<h2>Baboons’ lives</h2>
<p>Baboons live in social groups with many <a href="https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2656.12887">complex relationships and interactions</a>. They have an accelerated life cycle compared to humans (they mature at around 4.5 years and females live about 18 years). Like humans, they evolved in a savannah environment and are highly adaptable and behaviourally flexible. These traits make them an ideal species for exploring our research questions and linking results to humans.</p>
<p>We study the baboons of the Amboseli ecosystem in Kenya. The lives of these baboons have been documented since 1971 as part of the <a href="https://amboselibaboons.nd.edu/">Amboseli Baboon Research Project</a>. We have complete lifespan data for many individuals and can track families across generations. Direct observation also offers a complete picture of their development and behaviour.</p>
<p>We used data collected by the <a href="https://amboselibaboons.nd.edu/people/">senior field team of biologists</a> in Amboseli between 1983 and 2019 and examined six sources of early life adversity in the baboons: </p>
<ul>
<li>experiencing a drought in the first year of life</li>
<li>being born into an unusually large social group (“crowding”)</li>
<li>having a low-ranking mother</li>
<li>having a socially isolated mother</li>
<li>having a younger sibling born soon after them</li>
<li>losing their mother when they are young. </li>
</ul>
<p>These events are like adverse childhood experiences in humans that are associated with poverty or family trauma.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="One baboon grooms another with its hands" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526739/original/file-20230517-23-na6y4i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526739/original/file-20230517-23-na6y4i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526739/original/file-20230517-23-na6y4i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526739/original/file-20230517-23-na6y4i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526739/original/file-20230517-23-na6y4i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526739/original/file-20230517-23-na6y4i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526739/original/file-20230517-23-na6y4i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A mother grooms her infant daughter during a nursing bout. The mother is wearing a radio collar, which researchers use to locate the study groups.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Susan C. Alberts</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/thriving-in-the-face-of-adversity-resilient-gorillas-reveal-clues-about-overcoming-childhood-misfortune-205184">Thriving in the face of adversity: Resilient gorillas reveal clues about overcoming childhood misfortune</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Once the study subjects grew up, we measured their social bonds and their survival as adults.</p>
<h2>Independent effects</h2>
<p>Our results showed that the effects of early life adversity and adult social relationships on survival were largely independent. Early life environments and adult social bonds both had strong effects on survival, but adult social bonds were not as heavily influenced by early life adversity as we’d thought. And the effect of bonds on survival didn’t depend in any way on whether the baboon experienced early life adversity. </p>
<p>This rules out the possibility that being born into a poor environment destines a baboon to both poor social relationships and poor survival.</p>
<p>Our results also suggest that strong social bonds in baboon adulthood can buffer some negative effects of early adversity: friends can make up for a bad start. </p>
<p>For the baboons, this is especially true if a female loses her mother but can maintain strong social ties to other members of the group after she grows up. Because <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Baboon_Mothers_and_Infants/7x6i9RAgSGAC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=mother+baboons&pg=PR15&printsec=frontcover">mothers</a> are an important source of resources, learning and social support in baboons, maternal loss is a particularly strong source of adversity. </p>
<p>If this result holds for humans, it means that interventions early in life and in adulthood could help improve lifespan.</p>
<h2>Human adversity</h2>
<p>Our results raise the possibility that human health and survival could be improved if people with adverse childhood experiences were identified and helped to improve their social relationships in adulthood. </p>
<p>Researchers working with humans are asking similar questions to determine whether early life adversity and social bonds affect survival in the same way as in baboons. Future work should also ask if there are other links between a poor early life environment and survival. For example, <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01668/full">genetics</a>, <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2004524117">physiology</a>, <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.0902971106">immune responses</a>, and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352154615001588">other behaviours</a> likely play a role.</p>
<p>Our study also shows that some of our most important human traits – including the importance of social relationships for survival – evolved long ago. Looking to the animals can help us learn about ourselves. </p>
<p><em>Shuxi Zeng, Fernando Campos, Fan Li, Jenny Tung, Beth Archie and Susan Alberts co-authored the research and collaborated on the project on which this article is based.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205673/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This work was supported by NIH grant R01AG053308 (S.C.A.), NSF Integrative Organismal Systems grant 1456832 (S.C.A.), NIH grant P01AG031719 (S.C.A.), NIH grant R01AG053330 (E.A.A.), NIH grant R01AG071684 (E.A.A.), NIH grant R01HD088558
(J.T.), and NIH grant R01AG075914 (J.T.).</span></em></p>
Early life environments and adult social bonds both have strong effects on survival.
Elizabeth Lange, Assistant Professor, State University of New York Oswego
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/200554
2023-03-02T14:25:20Z
2023-03-02T14:25:20Z
Roads and power lines put primates in danger: South African data adds to the real picture
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511943/original/file-20230223-703-kx83eg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C17%2C3982%2C2886&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Samango monkey choosing to use a pole bridge instead of a ladder bridge.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Birthe Linden</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>About 25 million kilometres of new roads are expected to be built around the world by <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13717">2050</a>. Along with power lines and railways, roads cut through the landscape everywhere, disrupting ecosystems. This linear infrastructure prevents animals from moving safely around their habitat. It also reduces access to the resources they need, like food, sufficient space and mating partners. </p>
<p>This threat to biodiversity is a conservation issue globally, but especially in developing nations, where <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13717">90%</a> of new road construction is expected. </p>
<p>The African continent is home to unique biodiversity and extraordinary landscapes. Planned <a href="https://au.int/en/videos/20190101/agenda2063-infrastructure-and-energy-initiatives">infrastructure developments</a> will certainly <a href="https://theconversation.com/kenyas-huge-railway-project-is-causing-environmental-damage-heres-how-159813">threaten</a> some of the last, unspoilt wildernesses on the continent.</p>
<p>We’re particularly concerned about the future of primates. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists <a href="http://www.primate-sg.org/primate_diversity_by_region/">half of the continent’s 107 primate species as threatened</a>.</p>
<p>According to the <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/search?query=Primates&searchType=species">IUCN</a> 18% of the world’s primates are directly affected by roads and railroads and 3% by utility and service infrastructure. These figures are based on limited research, though. The true impact is likely to be higher.</p>
<p>South Africa’s case shows why. None of the South African primate species currently have linear infrastructure listed as a threat under the IUCN. But this doesn’t mean they are not negatively affected. It just means that the lists need to be better informed.</p>
<p>South Africa is the only African country that has long-term, country-wide mortality datasets for both <a href="https://ewt.org.za/what-we-do/saving-species/wildlife-and-transport/">wildlife roadkill</a> and <a href="https://ewt.org.za/what-we-do/saving-species/wildlife-and-energy/">wildlife electrocution</a>. It’s collected by patrol staff, scientists and the general public (<a href="https://theconversation.com/tracking-science-a-way-to-include-more-people-in-producing-knowledge-159587">citizen scientists</a>). </p>
<p>Using this data, <a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/ijfp/93/3-6/article-p235_4.xml">we investigated</a> how roads and power lines affect South Africa’s five primate species: the chacma baboon (<em>Papio ursinus</em>), the vervet monkey (<em>Chlorocebus pygerythrus</em>), the samango monkey (<em>Cercopithecus mitis</em>), the lesser bushbaby (<em>Galago moholi</em>) and the greater or thick tailed bushbaby (<em>Otolemur crassicaudatus</em>).</p>
<p>All species were affected, mostly by roads. We found a total of 483 deaths captured in the databases between 1996 and 2021. The number of deaths is likely to be a lot higher, due to under-reporting. Targeted species- and area-specific surveys are needed to refine this dataset. </p>
<p>The more mortality data is available, the better we will understand impacts, know where to focus interventions and inform future infrastructure developments to lessen the human impact on biodiversity.</p>
<p>We recommend that infrastructure like roads and power lines be more prominently recognised as a direct threat when developing Red List assessments.</p>
<h2>Primate deaths</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511944/original/file-20230223-24-c9wbuu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Furry black body of monkey on the verge with trees on either side of the road" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511944/original/file-20230223-24-c9wbuu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511944/original/file-20230223-24-c9wbuu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=344&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511944/original/file-20230223-24-c9wbuu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=344&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511944/original/file-20230223-24-c9wbuu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=344&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511944/original/file-20230223-24-c9wbuu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511944/original/file-20230223-24-c9wbuu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511944/original/file-20230223-24-c9wbuu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Samango monkey lying dead at the side of a road.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Birthe Linden</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Most of the electrocution data used in our study was accessed from the <a href="https://www.eskom.co.za/">Eskom</a> Central Incident Register.</p>
<p>Roadkill data for our study was available from two sources: the national database from the Endangered Wildlife Trust’s Wildlife and Transport Programme and our own observations. </p>
<p>Since 2011, the Endangered Wildlife Trust has received records from systematic patrols on certain highways and species -and area-specific expert research surveys. Citizen science data comes from all over the country including national and regional roads, with differing speed limits, widths and vehicle usage.</p>
<p>The area surveyed by systematic patrols amounts to 1,370 km, covering 0.2% of the country’s entire road network and 0.9% of the paved road network.</p>
<p>The highest number of deaths recorded was for vervet monkeys. This was to be expected as vervet monkeys have a much wider geographic range in South Africa than both bushbaby species and the samango monkey, so they have a greater chance of encountering roads and power lines. The greater (or thick tailed) bushbaby and the samango monkey are forest associated and forests cover only about 0.1% of South Africa’s land surface area.</p>
<p>Although the total of 483 primate deaths over 25 years may not appear very high, we can assume that many remain undetected. For example scavengers might remove the dead animals, or they could be hidden by dense vegetation on road verges. They could be in remote places, in the case of power lines, or severely injured animals might die later, a distance away from the road. For roads, the actual mortality rate could be <a href="https://we.copernicus.org/articles/3/33/2002/we-3-33-2002.html">12–16 times higher</a> than the detection rate.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/statistical-ecology-can-unlock-the-power-of-biodiversity-data-in-africa-171513">Statistical ecology can unlock the power of biodiversity data in Africa</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Solutions</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511945/original/file-20230223-703-ly4rn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Person facing away from the camera looks at a monkey walking along a pole in the tree canopy." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511945/original/file-20230223-703-ly4rn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511945/original/file-20230223-703-ly4rn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511945/original/file-20230223-703-ly4rn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511945/original/file-20230223-703-ly4rn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511945/original/file-20230223-703-ly4rn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511945/original/file-20230223-703-ly4rn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511945/original/file-20230223-703-ly4rn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Samango monkey using a pole canopy bridge while observer looks on.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Horta Lacueva</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Encouragingly, there is more and more <a href="https://brill.com/display/post/news/special-issue-of-folia-primatologica-highlights-the-importance-of-canopy-bridges-to-habitat-connectivity-globally.xml">research</a> showing that primates, as well as many other tree-dwelling species, accept man-made canopy bridges as a means to cross gaps in their habitat. </p>
<p>In South Africa we conducted an <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006320719319172">experiment in the field</a> to test what kind of canopy bridge primates would use to cross gaps between trees. We found that all five South African primate species used the canopy bridges offered to them. The design they preferred was a solid pole bridge, rather than a ladder bridge. </p>
<p>More and more canopy bridges of various kinds are being provided in different countries. But <a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/ijfp/93/3-6/article-p197_1.xml">research</a> shows that Africa is lagging behind other continents in doing this, and there are no canopy bridges in South Africa. We suggest that all infrastructure development projects should try to give attention to maintaining the integrity of landscapes, for example by providing bridges for animals.</p>
<h2>Public participation</h2>
<p>We all need and use linear infrastructure in our day to day lives, so we all carry some level of responsibility. Hence, we encourage people to record wildlife mortalities and submit them to publicly available repositories such as <a href="https://www.inaturalist.org/">iNaturalist</a> or the <a href="https://www.gbif.org/">Global Biodiversity Information Facility</a>. </p>
<p>A new <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/13/10/1692">Global Primate Roadkill Database</a> has been developed by Laura Praill at Oxford Brookes University and colleagues and is <a href="https://gprd.mystrikingly.com/">available to the public</a>.</p>
<p>Public awareness and participation is essential to lessen the human impact on biodiversity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200554/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Birthe (Bibi) Linden is affiliated with the SARChI Chair on Biodiversity Value and Change in the Faculty of Science, Engineering and Agriculture at the University of Venda and the Lajuma Resesarch Centre. She receives funding from the South African National Research Foundation (NRF).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Wendy Collinson is affiliated with The Endangered Wildlife Trust and the South African Research Chair in Biodiversity Value & Change, School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences, University of Venda, Thohoyandou, South Africa. She is also a member of the IUCN: Transport Working Group.</span></em></p>
Researchers encourage citizen scientists to contribute to datasets on animal deaths caused by infrastructure. This will inform efforts to reduce the human impact on biodiversity.
Birthe (Bibi) Linden, Postdoctoral Researcher (University of Venda) & Associated Researcher (Lajuma Research Centre), University of Venda
Wendy Collinson, Research Fellow: South African Research Chair in Biodiversity Value & Change, University of Venda
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/182624
2022-05-10T18:25:19Z
2022-05-10T18:25:19Z
Pig-human transplants may be a misguided attempt to address the organ shortage
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461887/original/file-20220509-20-agjzud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6000%2C4500&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cross-species transplants require us to examine the relationships between humans and animals.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/pig-human-transplants-may-be-a-misguided-attempt-to-address-the-organ-shortage" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>At the end of 2021, 57-year old David Bennett Sr. was bedridden and on life-support with irreversible heart failure. He was not eligible for a human heart transplant or an implanted mechanical heart pump because of his underlying health condition and, allegedly, “<a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/05/04/1051725/xenotransplant-patient-died-received-heart-infected-with-pig-virus/">a history of disregarding medical advice</a>.”</p>
<p>Certain death was on the horizon and this fatal prognosis made Bennett a candidate for a highly experimental and never-before-attempted surgical procedure involving the transplantation of a heart from a genetically modified pig.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/pig-heart-transplant-was-david-bennett-the-right-person-to-receive-groundbreaking-surgery-174991">Pig heart transplant: was David Bennett the right person to receive groundbreaking surgery?</a>
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<p>The pig-to-human cardiac transplant — or xenotransplant — was <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/01/11/1043374/gene-edited-pigs-heart-transplant/">authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on compassionate grounds on New Year’s Eve 2021</a> and the surgery was performed on Jan. 7, 2022.</p>
<p>Initial reports following the experimental surgery suggested that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00111-9">the genetically modified, human-compatible pig heart was functioning well and infection was not a problem</a>. </p>
<p>Bennett died on March 8 — at the time, “no obvious cause” of death was identified. Now, it has been reported that the pig heart was <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2319108-man-who-received-pig-heart-transplant-has-died-after-pig-virus-found/">infected with a virus called porcine cytomegalovirus and that this virus may have contributed to Bennett’s death</a>. </p>
<p>Though the cause of death remains unclear, infection has been implicated in previous xenotransplantation failures involving baboons as the recipients.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/42bwa85g1DM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The BBC reports on the initial pig-to-human heart transplant surgery.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>More demand than supply</h2>
<p>There is an ongoing chronic <a href="https://hillnotes.ca/2021/04/16/organ-donation-in-canada-2/">shortage of suitable human organs for life-saving transplantation</a>. Indeed, many <a href="https://www.cihi.ca/en/organ-transplants-in-canada-2020-donations-and-need-infographic">Canadian transplant candidates die waiting for an organ donation</a>.</p>
<p>Attempts to increase the limited supply of human organs have included changes to consent rules: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-1253(17)30037-7">moving to an opt-out system</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31870-1">introducing directed living donation and deceased donor-initiated chains</a> and, in some countries, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1097/MOT.0000000000000617">offering financial compensation</a>. </p>
<p>Still, patients die on transplant waiting lists. For this reason, there is ever increasing interest in xenotransplantation — an ethically controversial practice. </p>
<h2>Nonhuman primates and pigs</h2>
<p>In 1984, <a href="https://time.com/4086900/baby-fae-history/">the heart of a young baboon was transplanted into Baby Fae</a>, an infant born with a fatal heart defect called <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/hypoplastic-left-heart-syndrome/symptoms-causes/syc-20350599">hypoplastic left heart syndrome</a>. Baby Fae lived for three weeks, but eventually died of heart failure caused by rejection of the transplanted baboon heart.</p>
<p>Prior to this, there had been three other experimental nonhuman heart transplants, <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08998280.2012.11928783">the earliest in 1964 using a chimpanzee heart</a>.</p>
<p>More recent efforts at xenotransplantation have involved the <a href="https://www.uab.edu/news/campus/item/12566-uab-announces-first-clinical-grade-transplant-of-gene-edited-pig-kidneys-into-brain-dead-human">transplantation of pig kidneys into brain-dead humans</a>. The most dramatic recent example, however, remains Bennett’s first-in-human cardiac xenotransplant using a genetically modified pig heart.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462150/original/file-20220510-17-ol00fx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a baboon behind a cage" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462150/original/file-20220510-17-ol00fx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462150/original/file-20220510-17-ol00fx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462150/original/file-20220510-17-ol00fx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462150/original/file-20220510-17-ol00fx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462150/original/file-20220510-17-ol00fx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462150/original/file-20220510-17-ol00fx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462150/original/file-20220510-17-ol00fx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">One of the earliest xenotransplants involved a baboon heart transplanted into an infant.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For some, the use of pig hearts for xenotransplantation may be ethically preferable to the use of nonhuman primate hearts because pigs are already used for medicine: for example, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/10/20/1047560631/in-a-major-scientific-advance-a-pig-kidney-is-successfully-transplanted-into-a-h">pig heart valves, corneas and skin are used in various treatments</a>.</p>
<p>Or it could be that pigs are preferable “organ donors” because they are already used for food. When it comes to food animals — those who are consumed by humans — people can be biased against accurately seeing the subjectivity of the animal. This is referred to as the “<a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ani9121125">meat paradox</a>,” where people perceive food animals as “<a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190206-what-the-meat-paradox-reveals-about-moral-decision-making">objects and thereby avoid the discomfort caused by knowing about the suffering behind consumer goods</a>.”</p>
<p>A third reason to prefer killing pigs for human benefit instead of killing nonhuman primates is that pigs are biologically less similar to humans.</p>
<h2>Prioritizing humans</h2>
<p>Moral worth — <a href="https://impactethics.ca/2014/09/05/which-lives-are-you-pro/">the value assigned to others in ways that affect how we treat them</a> — is not species specific. Rather, it is associated with specific capacities such as the ability to think, make choices, experience pain, communicate and have social relationships.</p>
<p>Because a human zygote lacks such capacities, not many believe that they have the same moral worth as a human two-year old, and there is nothing obviously irrational about this belief. Though a zygote may have the potential to reach a comparable level of development as a two-year old, they are not yet comparable. Their shared human identity is beside the point. </p>
<p>On occasion, humans may choose to prioritize the interests of their companion animals without doing something obviously wrong. For example, it is not irrational to spend money on the care of pets, even if that money could have gone towards helping fellow humans. This choice may reflect a shared social relationship and the emotional bonds that come with it. It may also reflect a sense of duty toward nonhuman animals that are dependent on the care provided by humans. </p>
<p>Having said this, clearly, there are times when it is appropriate to prioritize the interests of humans over other animals; it is just that <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/human-exceptionalism-is-a-danger-to-all-human-and-nonhuman">this perspective shouldn’t be the default position</a>. In any case, it is not clear, nor is it easy to determine, that Bennett’s extraordinary xenotransplant falls into this category.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462152/original/file-20220510-16-xxiv1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="pigs standing at a trough in a shed" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462152/original/file-20220510-16-xxiv1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462152/original/file-20220510-16-xxiv1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462152/original/file-20220510-16-xxiv1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462152/original/file-20220510-16-xxiv1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462152/original/file-20220510-16-xxiv1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462152/original/file-20220510-16-xxiv1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462152/original/file-20220510-16-xxiv1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The killing and consumption of pigs is normalized as they are produced for food.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Animal welfare</h2>
<p>In Canada, support for animal-based research is anchored in a commitment to <a href="https://www.ccac.ca/Documents/2013_National_Survey.pdf">prevent — or at the very least reduce — unnecessary suffering</a>. The problem with this stance is that current animal welfare considerations do not typically support strong constraints on the scientific use of animals. </p>
<p>Notably, there are pressures to limit, but <a href="https://ccac.ca/en/facts-and-legislation/animal-data/annual-animal-data-reports.html">not to eliminate</a>, the use of animals in research likely to have severe welfare impacts. Also, common animal welfare considerations do not prohibit killing the animals, they just constrain how they are killed. </p>
<p>Part of the problem here is that there are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963180119000732">no substantive ethical principles governing animal use in science</a>. The three Rs, which are pervasive in regulated animal use in science, emphasize <em>replacing</em> sentient animals (animals capable of experiencing pain and pleasure) where possible, <em>reducing</em> the number of sentient animals used in studies to a “bare minimum” and <em>refining</em> their experiences of use to minimize suffering. </p>
<p>As such, the three Rs seem to assume something like a principled commitment to non-maleficence — <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/ilar/ilaa014">avoiding unnecessary harm</a>. However, the continued dependency on harmful animal-based research that almost always ends with the killing of the animals belies this claim, given the known <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/may-7-endangered-tiny-porpoise-mars-quakes-thermal-batteries-and-more-1.6443011/meet-the-canadian-researcher-determined-to-take-the-animals-out-of-lab-testing-1.6443917">significant problems of extrapolation of research findings</a>.</p>
<p>Given the ethical challenges with animal-based research in general and more specifically the ethical challenges with animal-to-human xenotransplantation, there is good reason to look for <a href="https://www.thehastingscenter.org/xenotransplantation-three-areas-of-concern/">other strategies to increase the supply of organs</a> for transplantation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182624/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Fenton is a member of the (Canadian) Society for Humane Science and is currently serving on a subcommittee for the Canadian Council on Animal Care (revising their core ethics document) and a panel on nonhuman primate research for the National Anti-Vivisection Society. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Françoise Baylis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The heart used in the first pig-human transplant was infected with a pig virus. This reveals that using other species as organ donors may not provide a solution for organ shortages.
Françoise Baylis, University Research Professor, Philosophy, Dalhousie University
Andrew Fenton, Associate Professor, Philosophy, Dalhousie University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/175896
2022-04-11T15:17:56Z
2022-04-11T15:17:56Z
Allow me to introduce myself: Squirrels use rattle calls to identify themselves
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457413/original/file-20220411-16-h30zck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=21%2C0%2C4655%2C3120&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Squirrel rattle calls may be a form of announcing their presence.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As a scientist who studies squirrel behaviour, one of the most common questions I am asked is: “How do I get them out of my yard?”</p>
<p>It’s not as easy being a squirrel as you might think. They live a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1139/z95-133">relatively solitary life</a> guarding hard-won food stores to survive the tough winters here in Canada. The behaviour that my students and I are most interested in is how these squirrels use sounds, or what we refer to as vocal communication, to help them make it through this tough life.</p>
<h2>Solitary creatures</h2>
<p>The North American red squirrel lives a somewhat solitary life. They spend most of their days in a 50-100 metre territory foraging for pine cones and other food sources like berries and mushrooms. </p>
<p>Individuals spend time gathering cones throughout the summer and fall months, storing them in a central location called a midden. They can be rather protective of these middens, as squirrels are known to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1644/1545-1542(2005)086%3C0108:FPILRS%3E2.0.CO;2">steal a great deal from each other</a>. In fact, a squirrel can steal up to 90 per cent of its stores from neighbouring squirrels. </p>
<p>These little thieves run back and forth moving and stealing cones to survive the tough Canadian winters. While they are stealing and storing, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4534898">squirrels often produce a loud call</a>, termed a rattle. I am keenly interested in this call — my students and I watch and record squirrels to understand what these rattles might be communicating. </p>
<p>Historically it was assumed that this rattle call was produced to make sure that squirrels knew to stay out of each other’s territories — in a sense, a warning that if you enter you may encounter some aggression from the squirrel that lives there. My research has been exploring <a href="https://shannonmdigweed.weebly.com/squirrel-speak-and-pika-puns">a slightly different view of this call</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IMOQv1QHxSQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Recordings of various red squirrel vocal communications.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Neighbours and strangers</h2>
<p>It is possible that the call still warns other squirrels to stay out, but its <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/czoolo/58.5.758">primary function is to identify the caller to all those who are listening</a>. As a squirrel moves through its own territory, and the territories of its neighbours, they produce intermittent rattle calls. These calls are <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20799540">an announcement of who and where that squirrel is</a>. Listeners then know where their various neighbours are throughout the day. This knowledge can help mitigate costly aggressive interactions, chases and fights. </p>
<p>In addition, by communicating who is calling, the rattle can signal to listeners who is more likely to steal from you and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2017.08.024">thus a more threatening neighbour</a>. Some neighbours may be more likely to steal from you than others. </p>
<p>In behavioural ecology, this is referred to as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1006/anbe.1994.1047">the “dear enemy” effect</a>, and supposes that in maintaining a territory it is useful to know the relative threat posed by your neighbours versus the threat posed by strangers. In most cases, a known neighbour is far less of a threat than a stranger. </p>
<p>With red squirrels, it has been shown that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2017.08.024">different neighbours do have different levels of threat</a>. As a result, knowing who your neighbour is by their rattle call reveals the relative threat they represent and therefore the necessary response.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457043/original/file-20220408-11-ggugy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4684%2C3113&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a young red squirrel carries a pine cone" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457043/original/file-20220408-11-ggugy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4684%2C3113&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457043/original/file-20220408-11-ggugy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457043/original/file-20220408-11-ggugy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457043/original/file-20220408-11-ggugy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457043/original/file-20220408-11-ggugy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457043/original/file-20220408-11-ggugy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457043/original/file-20220408-11-ggugy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Squirrels lead solitary lives.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Social calls</h2>
<p>Self-announcement or self-identification is a common vocal behaviour across many different species. Several marine mammal species, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0509918103">such as dolphins</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2008.04.007">and seals</a>, also produce calls that contain information about who is calling. They are used to identify social companions and offspring. </p>
<p>Several species of primates also have calls that contain information about who is calling. Again, these are often used in social interactions to help mitigate aggression during foraging — <a href="https://doi.org/10.1006/anbe.1998.1031">baboons</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/ajp.20398">capuchin monkeys</a>, for example. So it’s not unusual that a species like the red squirrel would also have information about who is calling to help them with difficult territory interactions. </p>
<p>My students and I have found that squirrels produce these calls throughout their territory as well as in the territory of close neighbours. By conducting experiments on when and where the squirrels produce the rattle call, we hope to show that the occurrence of this call is about announcing who and where you are, and not strictly about getting others out of your territory.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175896/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shannon M. Digweed does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
North American red squirrels produce a range of sounds, but their distinctive rattle call may have more to do with identifying themselves than warning off other squirrels.
Shannon M. Digweed, Associate professor, Psychology and Biological Sciences, MacEwan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/178046
2022-03-10T14:59:42Z
2022-03-10T14:59:42Z
What GPS trackers revealed about Cape Town’s baboon troop movements
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/448866/original/file-20220228-25-1xdyyzt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C139%2C1020%2C626&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Two chacma baboons (_Papio ursinus_) in Da Gama Park, Cape Town.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anna Bracken</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many animals form groups. Living in a group can protect individuals from predators, reducing risk; it also helps them to find more food, increasing rewards. However, the presence of cities can alter these patterns of risk and reward. When wildlife enters urban space, there’s the potential that the way individuals behave in groups – their “collective behaviour” – can be drastically altered.</p>
<p>Until recently, scientists have known little about the collective behaviour of wild animals because it’s difficult to observe many individuals at once. Even less is known about wild animals’ collective behaviour in human-changed environments because the physical structure of urban spaces makes observations even harder. </p>
<p>In Cape Town, South Africa, wild chacma baboons regularly use urban spaces in search of high-energy human foods. This can result in negative interactions between humans and baboons, as well as high levels of baboon injury and mortality caused by electric fences, cars, dogs and shootings with pellet guns. The City of Cape Town contracts a private company which employs teams of “<a href="https://www.baboons.org.za/index.php/management/cape-peninsula/rangers">baboon rangers</a>” to herd the baboons out of urban space in an effort to reduce these negative interactions. </p>
<p>We fitted GPS trackers to a troop of baboons living on the urban edge in Cape Town, to allow us <a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.2141">to study their collective behaviour</a> even when we cannot observe them directly. We aimed to understand if and how their collective behaviour changes in urban space, and what this means for managing them. </p>
<p>We found that baboons showed typical patterns of collective behaviour in natural space, but in urban space these patterns break down: <a href="https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.17372769.v2">individuals were further apart, the group was poorly coordinated and often split into subgroups in urban space</a>.</p>
<p>We then examined leadership using <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaa5099">an established method</a>, which automatically detects leadership events over time, based on the relative positions and movements of all individuals. This uncovered that despite a breakdown in collective behaviour, high-ranking adults continued to have a large influence on others’ movement in both natural and urban spaces. These findings have implications for the management of the baboons.</p>
<h2>How urban space influences collective behaviour</h2>
<p>Chacma baboons typically live in stable mixed-sex groups with strong social bonds among individuals. When moving around their home range they tend to be very coordinated – their activities are often in sync. High-ranking baboons that have many strong social bonds also have a large influence on the group’s movement.</p>
<p>Urban spaces look very different from natural animal habitats. They have heightened risks and rewards, and tend to be “fragmented” – made up of houses, roads and other human structures that split up and create barriers in the landscape. </p>
<p>Using our GPS data recording at every second, we measured inter-baboon distances and variation in baboon speed and compass direction when the troop was in either urban or natural spaces. </p>
<p>This led to our <a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.2141">first finding</a>, that in urban spaces the baboons’ collective behaviour breaks down. But despite the emergence of subgroups, as well as individuals being further apart and activities being less coordinated, it was clear that the troop still followed high-ranking individuals more than other group members.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0fDj1ryoqqc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Chacma baboon movements in natural and urban space.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Because adult male baboons are larger, more visible, and elicit more complaints from the public, baboon management aims to deter baboons from urban space by focusing their efforts on adult males. Since our findings reveal that males are followed in both natural and urban spaces, this strategy successfully deters most of the group from urban space and reduces negative interactions between baboons and people. </p>
<p>However, it’s not that simple. In previous research <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10764-021-00247-x">we’ve shown</a> that low-ranking females, which tend to have fewer social connections, break away from the main troop and use the urban space alone or in small groups. This will require additional or different management strategies.</p>
<h2>The biology of leadership</h2>
<p>The important roles of adult males in both natural and urban space is interesting from a biological perspective. In many species, individuals with many strong social bonds take on leadership roles. Sometimes, these individuals have particularly useful information. For example matriarchs or “grandmothers” in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1057895">elephant</a> and <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.01.037">killer whale</a> societies have the most knowledge about their environment and therefore tend to lead groups. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/448872/original/file-20220228-17-mdbwdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/448872/original/file-20220228-17-mdbwdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448872/original/file-20220228-17-mdbwdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448872/original/file-20220228-17-mdbwdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448872/original/file-20220228-17-mdbwdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448872/original/file-20220228-17-mdbwdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448872/original/file-20220228-17-mdbwdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An adult male baboon on the march in Da Gama Park, Cape Town. Adult males tend to have a large sway on group movement in baboon groups.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Charlotte Solman</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In other species, like chacma baboons, socially-connected high-ranked males act as leaders and are followed since they provide protection from predators and from other males that may commit infanticide. </p>
<p>Our finding that males continue to lead the troop in urban space despite other collective behaviours breaking down might suggest that leadership in animal societies may not be as flexible as other aspects of collective behaviour.</p>
<h2>Why does it matter?</h2>
<p>Our findings can be used to help city authorities understand how best to keep baboons out of urban space.</p>
<p>It is much easier to “herd” a baboon group away from urban space when it is whole, rather than made up of multiple small units. In the short-term, monitoring multiple groups requires more rangers and expense. Longer-term, if the subgroups become permanent (as has happened elsewhere on the Cape), this could be a real hindrance for effective management. </p>
<p>The next step is to understand exactly what factors cause the group to split up in the urban space: is it simply too difficult for them to stay in contact in urban space? Does the distribution of human food rewards cause them to split? What does management and herding mean for cohesion? Are there other factors? </p>
<p>Finding answers to such questions can help us understand how social species adapt – or do not – to human-changed environments, and provide insight into how to better manage the negative interactions that result.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/178046/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anna Bracken has recently completed her PhD with Swansea University. She received scholarship funding from Swansea University. </span></em></p>
The study aimed to understand if and how wild chacma baboon collective behaviour changes in urban space, and what this means for their management.
Anna Bracken, PhD Candidate, Swansea University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/165107
2021-08-20T10:23:56Z
2021-08-20T10:23:56Z
South Africa’s bandit slaves and the rock art of resistance
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416584/original/file-20210817-28-s73s3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Painting of a raider on horseback (bottom right) with a musket and domestic stock. A ‘rain-animal’ (top right) was likely summoned to wash away the raiders’ tracks. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Sam Challis and Brent Sinclair-Thomson</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Not all South African rock art is ancient; some dates back to the colonial period – and was created by runaway slaves. It tells a remarkable story.</p>
<p>With the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/dutch-settlement">founding of the Cape Colony</a> in 1652, European colonists were forbidden from enslaving the indigenous Khoe, San and African farmers. They had to look elsewhere for a labour force. And so <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/slavery-south-africa">slaves</a>, captured and sold as property, were <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01440390308559155">unwilling migrants</a> to the Cape, transported – at great expense – from European colonies like Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, the East Indies (now Indonesia), India and Sri Lanka. </p>
<p>Far cheaper was the illegal trade in indigenous slaves that grew in the borderlands of the colony. <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/khoisan">Khoe-San people</a> were forced into servitude as colonists took both land and livestock. Together with immigrant slaves they were the <a href="https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Shaping-of-South-African-Society%2C-1652%E2%80%931840.-Elphick-Giliomee/40b8daf62d3261f8275032b2feaeb233b0733069">labour force</a> for the colonial project.</p>
<p>Desertion was their most common form of rebellion. Runaway slaves escaped into the borderlands and mounted a stiff resistance to the colonial advance from the 1700s until the mid-1800s. In most cases the fugitives joined forces with groups of <em>skelmbasters</em> (mixed outlaws), who themselves were descended from San-, Khoe- and <a href="https://dsae.co.za/entry/sintu/e06478">isiNtu-speaking</a> Africans (hunter-gatherers, herders and farmers). </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416343/original/file-20210816-14-ctdqhm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two images of historical black figures, one in an elaborate hat and coat as part of a bronze sculpture and the other simply dressed and peasant-like and holding a gun." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416343/original/file-20210816-14-ctdqhm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416343/original/file-20210816-14-ctdqhm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416343/original/file-20210816-14-ctdqhm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416343/original/file-20210816-14-ctdqhm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416343/original/file-20210816-14-ctdqhm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416343/original/file-20210816-14-ctdqhm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416343/original/file-20210816-14-ctdqhm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Louis van Mauritius (a) led a rebellion of 300 enslaved people in 1808 and ‘Portrait of Júli, a Faithful [Khoe-San]’ (b) by William Burchell, 1822.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Barry Jackson and the National Heritage Project Company/Library of the University of the Witwatersrand</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Thus, we find recorded examples of <a href="https://www.academia.edu/4102013/Re_tribe_and_resist_the_ethnogenesis_of_a_creolised_raiding_band_in_response_to_colonisation_In_C_Hamilton_and_N_Leibhammer_eds_Tribing_and_Untribing_the_Archive_Identity_and_the_material_record_in_southern_KwaZulu_Natal_in_the_Late_Independent_and_Colonial_periods_282_299_2016">mixed bandit groups</a> hiding out in mountain rock shelters, within striking distance of colonial farms. Using guerrilla-style warfare they raided livestock and guns. In their refuge, they made rock art, images within their own belief systems that relate to escape and retaliation. </p>
<p>These sites can be reliably dated, because they include rock art images of horses and guns. In our most recent <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0067270X.2020.1841979">study</a> of rock art in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, we see that this art also provides us with the raiders’ perspective. Our fieldwork enables us to view something of the slave and indigenous resistance from outside the texts of the colonial record. </p>
<h2>The paintings</h2>
<p>These mountainous regions house many rock shelters with paintings of the traditional corpus of ‘<a href="https://theconversation.com/an-ancient-san-rock-art-mural-in-south-africa-reveals-new-meaning-157177">San rock art</a>’ (antelope and dances) that have become world famous. But owing to almost 2,000 years of contact with incoming African herders and farmers, the hunter-gatherer art changed in appearance, if not in the essence of its meaning. The ‘disconnect’ was most stark, however, during colonisation. The artists’ societies were deeply affected, disrupted and decimated. Where any art continued it was that of the mixed outlaws, often referred to simply as ‘Bushmen’ but who were actually a composite of many cultural backgrounds.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416763/original/file-20210818-19-1na0lci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Paintings showing very simple images of humans and the animals in black paint." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416763/original/file-20210818-19-1na0lci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416763/original/file-20210818-19-1na0lci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=186&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416763/original/file-20210818-19-1na0lci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=186&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416763/original/file-20210818-19-1na0lci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=186&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416763/original/file-20210818-19-1na0lci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=234&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416763/original/file-20210818-19-1na0lci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=234&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416763/original/file-20210818-19-1na0lci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=234&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In the colonial borderlands, paintings with (a) horses and guns and (b) ostriches and baboons.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Sam Challis and Brent Sinclair-Thomson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The paintings themselves are also mixed – some brush-painted, some finger-painted – but are united by subject matter pertaining to spiritual beliefs concerning escape and protective power. Certain motifs, including baboons and ostriches, continued to be used, but now appearing alongside motifs such as horses and guns. This suggests some continuity in the recognition of these animals, mystical or otherwise, as subject matter pertinent to people’s changed circumstances. </p>
<p>Despite these changes, bandit groups, however mixed they were, held onto, and even highlighted, some specific traditional beliefs. </p>
<h2>Ritual specialists</h2>
<p>The location of one band of mixed outlaws, in the Mankazana River Valley in today’s Eastern Cape, comes from <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/narrative-of-a-residence-in-south-africa/oclc/9115428">the record</a> of the 1820 settler, poet and abolitionist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thomas-Pringle">Thomas Pringle</a>. During our fieldwork in this area we found rock paintings of horses, riders with guns and cattle raids that can be reliably dated to approximately when Pringle was writing. </p>
<p>That diverse groups of bandits painted depictions of cattle raids suggests that raiding was a fundamental concern for these groups. If we have learnt anything from the last five decades of southern African rock art research, it is that images are not the mere depictions of what the artists saw around them. Rather, they are of what ritual specialists see while travelling through the spirit world. </p>
<p>In the case of bandit groups, the ritual specialist often performed the role of war-doctor, who supplied traditional medicines to ensure protection in dangerous situations, including cattle raids and the flight from servitude.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/417008/original/file-20210819-21-1givc5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Paintings, in red and in black, of horses with baboons, very simple and using a finger-paint technique." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/417008/original/file-20210819-21-1givc5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/417008/original/file-20210819-21-1givc5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=209&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417008/original/file-20210819-21-1givc5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=209&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417008/original/file-20210819-21-1givc5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=209&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417008/original/file-20210819-21-1givc5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=263&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417008/original/file-20210819-21-1givc5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=263&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417008/original/file-20210819-21-1givc5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=263&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Finger-painted and fine-line horses attest to the mixed nature of bandit groups, note the baboons beneath the black horse.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Sam Challis and Brent Sinclair-Thomson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is telling that these images also include motifs relating to protection during raids as can be seen in the appearance of certain animals, especially baboons and ostriches.</p>
<p>Baboons are associated with protection across Khoe-San and African farmer society. The |Xam San people of the 1800s claimed that the baboon chewed a stick of <em>so-/oa</em>, a root medicine which would alert the user (animal or human) to approaching danger and keep it safe. Among the Xhosa there is a cognate belief in <em>uMabophe</em> – arguably the same root medicine. Like <em>so-/oa</em>, <em>uMabophe</em> was supplied by ritual specialists to those who wished to exert supernatural influence over projectile weapons, including turning ‘<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15740773.2017.1487122">bullets to water</a>’. </p>
<h2>Protective animals</h2>
<p>Many of these images are painted with a fine-line, unshaded technique. But there are also images that are finger-painted in black or bright orange pigment, which have a distinctly Khoe-speaker inflection. In technique they strongly resemble the art of the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228635204_The_magical_arts_of_a_raider_nation_Central_South_Africa%27s_Korana_rock_art">Korana raiders</a>, to the north of the colony, who were known to take in runaway slaves. </p>
<p>Further into the hinterland, as if to mark the fighting retreat of bandit groups as the colonial frontier expanded, we discovered rock shelters in the Stormberg and Zuurberg that exhibit yet more features of an indigenous resistance idiom. In one are images of people with horses and guns, as well as baboons and ostriches. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/an-ancient-san-rock-art-mural-in-south-africa-reveals-new-meaning-157177">An ancient San rock art mural in South Africa reveals new meaning</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://www.academia.edu/10768936/Birds_in_the_life_of_KhoeSan_with_particular_reference_to_healing_and_ostriches">The ostrich</a> was recognised by Khoe-San groups as particularly adept at escaping danger. It could outrun most predators and leap over hunters’ nets. Khoe-San would, and still do, tie the tendons from ostrich legs to their own legs to combat fatigue. Ostrich eggshell was recognised as a medicine that could be ground and consumed as a fortifying tonic. In the art of bandits, images of ritual specialists transforming into ostriches or baboons attest to them drawing on the powers of protective animals to ensure their own escape from former captors or following stock raids. </p>
<h2>The bandit’s view</h2>
<p>Although never officially recognised as slaves, the Khoe-San were uprooted from their land and lifeways by European settlers and forced into bondage. This brought them into contact with immigrant slaves, alongside whom they often escaped. In defiance they raided their former captors and other settlers and in rocky hideouts they painted their concerns. </p>
<p>The rock art of bandit groups is bound up with beliefs in the ability to call upon the protection of the supernatural. Baboons and ostriches, painted with images of livestock and people on horseback with firearms, were heralded for their associated powers pertaining to escape and protection while raiding. For these runaway slaves, rock art was one of several crucial ritual observances performed to prevent the likelihood of ever returning to a life of oppression.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165107/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sam Challis receives funding from the NRF African Origins Platform and is a member of the Bradshaw Foundation Rock Art Network</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brent Sinclair-Thomson receives funding from the National Research Foundation African Origins Platform. </span></em></p>
Runaway slaves joined indigenous Khoe-San people and raided colonial farms. The rock art they left in their hideouts tells a fascinating story.
Sam Challis, Senior Researcher, University of the Witwatersrand
Brent Sinclair-Thomson, Support staff, University of the Witwatersrand
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/132377
2020-03-09T13:25:45Z
2020-03-09T13:25:45Z
What tooth tartar taught us about baboons kept captive in ancient Egypt
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319321/original/file-20200309-118881-aainx9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A photograph of a baboon mummy from the Lyon collection. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Number MHNL 90001206, © Département du Rhône, Patrick Ageneau</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many people know it’s important to clean their teeth to prevent a build-up of dental plaque. This sticky film growing on teeth every day is composed of millions of bacteria. Over time, plaque can create mineral deposits, known as dental calculus or tartar, on the teeth. The end result can be <a href="https://www.nidcr.nih.gov/health-info/childrens-oral-health/tooth-decay-process">gum disease and tooth decay</a>. </p>
<p>Modern oral hygiene practices and dentistry can easily prevent dental calculus build-up. But it is hard to imagine that people living hundreds or thousands of years ago took the same oral care. That’s why calculus deposits are frequently found on the teeth of ancient humans studied by archaeologists. Dental calculus has recently become a useful <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2013.0376">tool</a> to investigate the health and lifestyles of humans in the past. </p>
<p>In a recent <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-56074-x">study</a> we applied this tool to animals for the first time, when we studied the remains of baboons held captive in ancient Egypt. Our findings show that they had a distinctive oral microbiome when compared to ancient and modern humans, Neanderthals and a wild chimpanzee. </p>
<p>Our hope is that our study will be a starting point for more extensive studies on ancient animal oral microbiomes to examine the extent to which domestication and human management in the past affected the diet, health and lifestyle of animals. In turn, this holds great potential for learning more about interactions between humans and animals in the past. </p>
<h2>Domesticating animals</h2>
<p>Domestication and human management of animals are associated with deep changes in the animals’ biology. They are not in their natural ecosystems, and human manipulation strongly affects their diet and breeding. We wanted to explore what dental calculus could tell us about captive animals forced to live in confinement. </p>
<p>The remains of animals that lived in captivity 2,500 years ago in Egypt provided a good case study. </p>
<p>The research was also a test of the technique of DNA sequencing of dental calculus. It showed that dental calculus, unlike other tissues, preserves ancient microbial DNA well even in hot regions.</p>
<p>We analysed the dental calculus of baboons in captivity – using samples from both recent and ancient times – and found similarities in the kinds of microbes found in their mouths. </p>
<p>The ancient baboons were mummified specimens dated to the late Pharaonic era, collected at the <a href="http://www.museedesconfluences.fr/fr/visit-museum">Musée des Confluences</a> of Lyon, in France. The specimens originated from the site of Gabbanat el-Qurud, near Thebes, in Upper Egypt. They were held captive in unknown structures, possibly near or in temples. </p>
<p>Baboons are not native to Egypt. Ancient texts and iconography show that Ancient Egyptians undertook expeditions south of the Nile Valley and to the “Land of Punt”, which was most likely in East Africa or in the Arabian Peninsula. Puntites traded valuable goods and exotic plants and animals, including baboons, which were brought to Egypt, kept as “sacred animals” and associated with the cult of Thoth. </p>
<p>Despite their symbolic value, their life in captivity seems to have been far from ideal. Evidence of hand and foot fractures suggests that the Egyptian animals were subject to harsh treatment and suffered from poor health conditions, as was also demonstrated by another <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/oa.2440">study</a> of ancient wild animal remains from another site in Egypt. </p>
<p>We also showed that one of the baboons suffered from oral infections, most likely due to Actinomycetes bacteria, which damaged its skull. </p>
<p>We know this because of what we learnt by sequencing the DNA of the bacteria trapped in the dental calculus of the baboons. These ancient animals possessed a distinctive oral microbiome (the composition of the mouth’s microbial DNA). It was different from that of a wild non-human primate, a chimpanzee, and of ancient humans and Neanderthals who foraged for food, like the baboons in their natural wild condition. This may suggest that captivity influenced the oral microbiome of the baboons.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319276/original/file-20200309-118956-1dspvtk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319276/original/file-20200309-118956-1dspvtk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319276/original/file-20200309-118956-1dspvtk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319276/original/file-20200309-118956-1dspvtk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319276/original/file-20200309-118956-1dspvtk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319276/original/file-20200309-118956-1dspvtk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319276/original/file-20200309-118956-1dspvtk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Right upper jaw of a baboon (number MNHL 510000509), clearly showing the dental calculus (red arrows) on the two premolars behind the canine.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Wim Van Neer.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Baboons are opportunistic and very flexible eaters, yet they are strongly dependent on natural resources for proteins, minerals, vitamins and even medical chemicals. It has been observed that traditional nutritional management adopted today for baboons in zoos are based on a diet that is low in fibre and rich in simple sugars (such as fruit). This high-quality food provisioning has social implications in the captive groups, leading to food-based dominance, increased aggressiveness and immunodepression, resulting in dental disease. </p>
<p>Similar factors may have come into play in ancient Egypt, causing a disruption of baboons’ social patterns, overall health depression, and changes in their oral microbiome.</p>
<p>We also found in one ancient Egyptian baboon and in one of the two modern zoo animals a bacterial species that was probably transmitted by humans, <em>Methanobrevibacter oralis</em>. It was recently found also in the mouth of <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature21674">Neanderthals</a>. More research will help to unravel whether this species occurs naturally in baboons. But we believe they may have acquired it in captivity from humans, for example by sharing food. It’s also possible that it was transmitted by humans to baboons when they were pups being reared in captivity. </p>
<p>Future studies of oral microbiomes in ancient wild and captive primates will help to shed further light on the effects of captivity conditions on animal oral ecology.</p>
<p>Our study demonstrates that dental calculus is a powerful tool to unravel human-animal interactions in the past, including domestication and other forms of animal management. </p>
<p><em>Stéphanie Porcier of the Laboratoire CNRS “Archéologie des Sociétés Méditerranéennes” (Université Paul-Valéry, Montpellier) contributed to this article and the research it is based on as a co-author.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/132377/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Claudio Ottoni does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The DNA of microbes and food trapped in the teeth can reveal information about diet and health.
Claudio Ottoni, Postdoctoral research associate, Sapienza University of Rome
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/128514
2019-12-11T19:03:31Z
2019-12-11T19:03:31Z
Examining how primates make vowel sounds pushes timeline for speech evolution back by 27 million years
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306429/original/file-20191211-95149-1bal81j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=303%2C720%2C4251%2C2916&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Baboons make sounds, but how does it relate to human speech?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/baboon-relaxed-sitting-tree-1536555830?studio=1">Creative Wrights/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sound doesn’t fossilize. Language doesn’t either.</p>
<p>Even <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_writing">when writing systems have developed</a>, they’ve represented full-fledged and functional languages. Rather than preserving the first baby steps toward language, they’re fully formed, made up of words, sentences and grammar carried from one person to another by speech sounds, like any of the perhaps <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-human-beings-speak-so-many-languages-75434">6,000 languages spoken today</a>.</p>
<p>So if you believe, as we linguists do, that language is the foundational distinction between humans and other intelligent animals, how can we study its emergence in our ancestors?</p>
<p>Happily, researchers do know a lot about language – words, sentences and grammar – and speech – the vocal sounds that carry language to the next person’s ear – in living people. So we should be able to compare language with less complex animal communication.</p>
<p>And that’s what we and our colleagues <a href="https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/12/eaaw3916">have spent decades investigating</a>: How do apes and monkeys use their mouth and throat to produce the vowel sounds in speech? Spoken language in humans is an intricately woven string of syllables with consonants appended to the syllables’ core vowels, so mastering vowels was a key to speech emergence. We believe that our multidisciplinary findings push back the date for that crucial step in language evolution by as much as 27 million years.</p>
<h2>The sounds of speech</h2>
<p>Say “but.” Now say “bet,” “bat,” “bought,” “boot.”</p>
<p>The words all begin and end the same. It’s the differences among the vowel sounds that keep them distinct in speech.</p>
<p>Now drop the consonants and say the vowels. You can hear the different vowels have characteristic sound qualities. You can also feel that they require different characteristic positions of your jaw, tongue and lips.</p>
<p>So the configuration of the vocal tract – the resonating tube of the throat and mouth, from the vocal folds to the lips – determines the sound. That in turn means that the sound carries information about the vocal tract configuration that made it. This relationship is the core understanding of speech science.</p>
<p>After over a half-century of investigation and of developing both anatomical and acoustical modeling technology, speech scientists can generally model a vocal tract and calculate what sound it will make, or run the other way, analyzing a sound to calculate what vocal tract shape made it.</p>
<p>So model a few primate vocal tracts, record a few calls, and you pretty much know how human language evolved? Sorry, not so fast.</p>
<h2>Modern human anatomy is unique</h2>
<p>If you compare the human vocal tract with other primates’, there’s a big difference. Take a baboon as an example.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306195/original/file-20191210-95173-1t2mbr7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306195/original/file-20191210-95173-1t2mbr7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306195/original/file-20191210-95173-1t2mbr7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306195/original/file-20191210-95173-1t2mbr7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306195/original/file-20191210-95173-1t2mbr7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306195/original/file-20191210-95173-1t2mbr7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306195/original/file-20191210-95173-1t2mbr7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306195/original/file-20191210-95173-1t2mbr7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The vocal tract of a baboon has the same components – including the larynx, circled in green – as that of a person, but with different proportions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Laboratory of Cognitive Psychology (CNRS & Aix-Marseille University) and GIPSA-lab (CNRS & University Grenoble-Alpes)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>From the baboon’s larynx and vocal folds, which is high up and close to their chin line, there’s just a short step up through the cavity called the pharynx, then a long way out the horizontal oral cavity. In comparison, for adult male humans, it’s about as far up the pharynx as it is then out through the lips. Also, the baboon tongue is long and flat, while a human’s is short in the mouth, then curves down into the throat.</p>
<p>So over the course of evolution, the larynx in the human line has moved lower in our throats, opening up a much larger pharyngeal cavity than found in other primates.</p>
<p>About 50 years ago, researchers seized on that observation to formulate what they called the laryngeal descent theory of vowel production. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.164.3884.1185">In a key study</a>, researchers developed a model from a plaster cast of a macaque vocal tract. They manipulated the mouth of an anesthetized macaque to see how much the vocal tract shape could vary, and fed those values into their model. Then finally they calculated the vowel sound produced by particular configurations. It was a powerful and groundbreaking study, still copied today with technological updates.</p>
<p>So what did they find?</p>
<p>They got a schwa – that vowel sound you hear in the word “but” – and some very close acoustic neighbors. Nothing where multiple vowels were distinct enough to keep words apart in a human language. They attributed it to the lack of a human-like low larynx and large pharynx.</p>
<p>As the theory developed, it claimed that producing the full human vowel inventory required a vocal tract with about equally long oral and pharyngeal cavities. That occurred only with the arrival of anatomically modern humans, about 200,000 years ago, and only adults among modern humans, since babies are born with a high larynx that lowers with age.</p>
<p>This theory seemed to explain two phenomena. First, from the 1930s on, several (failed) experiments had <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.162.3852.423">raised chimpanzees in human homes</a> to try to encourage human-like behavior, particularly language and speech. If laryngeal descent is necessary for human vowels, and vowels in turn for language, then chimpanzees would never talk.</p>
<p>Second, archaeological <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_modernity">evidence of “modern” human behavior</a>, such as jewelry, burial goods, cave painting, agriculture and settlements, seemed to start only after anatomically modern humans appeared, with their descended larynxes. The idea was that language provided increased cooperation which enabled these behaviors.</p>
<h2>Rethinking the theory with new evidence</h2>
<p>So if laryngeal descent theory says kids and apes and our earlier human ancestors couldn’t produce contrasting vowels, just schwa, then what explains, for instance, Jane Goodall’s observations of clearly contrasting vowel qualities in the <a href="https://youtu.be/BF0qIy4ZnSU">vocalizations of chimpanzees</a>?</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BF0qIy4ZnSU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Chimpanzees shift between vowel sounds before maxing out in a scream.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But that kind of evidence wasn’t the end of the laryngeal descent idea. For scientists to reach agreement, especially to renounce a longstanding and useful theory, we rightly require consistent evidence, not just anecdotes or hearsay.</p>
<p>One of us (L.-J. Boë) has spent upward of two decades assembling that case against laryngeal descent theory. The multidisciplinary team effort has involved <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2014.07.002">articulatory and acoustic modeling</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2013.04.001">child language research</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1006/jpho.2002.0170">paleontology</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.3726/b12405">primatology</a> and more. </p>
<p>One of the key steps was our <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0169321">study of the baboon “vowel space.”</a> We recorded over 1,300 baboon calls and analyzed the acoustics of their vowel-like parts. Results showed that the vowel quality of certain calls was equivalent to known human vowels.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306253/original/file-20191211-95138-1hyal6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306253/original/file-20191211-95138-1hyal6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306253/original/file-20191211-95138-1hyal6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306253/original/file-20191211-95138-1hyal6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306253/original/file-20191211-95138-1hyal6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306253/original/file-20191211-95138-1hyal6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306253/original/file-20191211-95138-1hyal6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306253/original/file-20191211-95138-1hyal6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A schematic comparing the vocal qualities of certain baboon calls (orange ellipses) with selected vowel sounds of American English, where the phonetic symbols / i æ ɑ ɔ u / represent the vowels in beat, bat, bot, bought, boot.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Louis-Jean Boë, GIPSA-lab (CNRS & University Grenoble-Alpes)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our latest review <a href="https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/12/eaaw3916">lays out the whole case</a>, and we believe it finally frees researchers in speech, linguistics, primatology and human evolution from the laryngeal descent theory, which was a great advance in its time, but turned out to be in error and has outlived its usefulness.</p>
<h2>Speech and language in animals?</h2>
<p>Human language requires a vocabulary that can be concrete (“my left thumbnail”), abstract (“love,” “justice”), elsewhere or elsewhen (“Lincoln’s beard”), even imaginary (“Gandalf’s beard”), all of which can be slipped as needed into sentences with internal hierarchical grammar. For instance “the black dog” and “the calico cat” keep the same order whether “X chased Y” or “Y was chased by X,” where the meaning stays the same but the sentence organization is reversed.</p>
<p>Only humans have full language, and arguments are lively about whether any primates or other animals, or our now extinct ancestors, had any of language’s key elements. One popular scenario says that the ability to do grammatical hierarchies arose with the speciation event leading to modern humans, about 200,000 years ago.</p>
<p>Speech, on the other hand, is about the sounds that are used to get language through the air from one person to the next. That requires sounds that contrast enough to keep words distinct. Spoken languages all use contrasts in both vowels and consonants, organized into syllables with vowels at the core.</p>
<p>Apes and monkeys can “talk” in the sense that they can produce contrasting vowel qualities. In that restricted but concrete sense, the dawn of speech was not 200,000 years ago, but some 27 million years ago, before the time of our last common ancestor with Old World monkeys like baboons and macaques. That’s over 100 times earlier than the emergence of our modern human form.</p>
<p>Researchers have a lot of work to do to figure out how speech evolved since then, and how language finally linked in.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>The authors have also published a <a href="https://theconversation.com/la-parole-ne-serait-pas-apparue-avec-homo-sapiens-et-ce-sont-les-singes-qui-nous-le-disent-128708">version of this article in French</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128514/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Researchers say it’s time to finally discard a decades-old theory about the origins of human language – and revise the date when human ancestors likely were able to make certain speech noises.
Thomas R. Sawallis, Visiting Scholar in New College, University of Alabama
Louis-Jean Boë, Chercheur en Sciences de la parole au GIPSA-lab (CNRS), Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA)
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/115588
2019-05-16T04:44:29Z
2019-05-16T04:44:29Z
Climate change is putting even resilient and adaptable animals like baboons at risk
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274884/original/file-20190516-69195-1k09w6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/low-angle-horizontal-colour-photograph-small-307316930?src=f51ChtmJdzytthsV6EMnbA-1-36">Villiers Steyn/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Baboons are large, smart, ground-dwelling monkeys. They are found across sub-Saharan Africa in various habitats and eat a flexible diet including meat, eggs, and plants. And they are known opportunists – in addition to raiding crops and garbage, some even <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2009/nov/25/cape-town-baboons-world-cup">mug tourists</a> for their possessions, especially food.</p>
<p>We might be tempted to assume that this ecological flexibility (we might even call it resilience) will help baboons survive on our changing planet. Indeed, the <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/">International Union for the Conservation of Nature</a> (IUCN), which assesses extinction risk, labels five of six baboon species as “of Least Concern”. This suggests that expert assessors agree: the baboons, at least relatively speaking, are at low risk.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jbi.13582">my recent research</a> suggests this isn’t the whole story. Even this supposedly resilient species may be at significant risk of extinction by 2070.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269766/original/file-20190417-139107-1xlgnd4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269766/original/file-20190417-139107-1xlgnd4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269766/original/file-20190417-139107-1xlgnd4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269766/original/file-20190417-139107-1xlgnd4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269766/original/file-20190417-139107-1xlgnd4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269766/original/file-20190417-139107-1xlgnd4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269766/original/file-20190417-139107-1xlgnd4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Resourceful – surely resilient?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/monkey-wants-open-car-baboon-tries-762150256?src=hm3fxlTnEuw5Ra4iN02D5Q-1-14">Okyela/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We know people are having huge impacts on the natural world. Scientists have gone as far as naming a new epoch, <a href="http://www.anthropocene.info/">the Anthropocene</a>, after our ability to transform the planet. Humans drive other <a href="https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/5/e1400253?utm_source=pulsenews&utm_medium=referral">species extinct</a> and modify environments to our own ends every day. Astonishing television epics like <a href="https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/80049832">Our Planet</a> emphasise humanity’s overwhelming power to damage the natural world.</p>
<p>But so much remains uncertain. In particular, while we now have a good understanding of some of the changes Earth will face in the next decades – we’ve already experienced <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/SYR_AR5_FINAL_full.pdf">1°C of warming</a> as well as increases in the frequency of floods, <a href="https://theconversation.com/cyclone-idai-rich-countries-are-to-blame-for-disasters-like-this-heres-how-they-can-make-amends-113971">hurricanes</a> and wildfires – we still struggle to predict the <a href="http://www.els.net/WileyCDA/ElsArticle/refId-a0020480.html">biological effects</a> of our actions.</p>
<p>In February 2019 the <a href="https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/06/first-mammal-extinct-climate-change-bramble-cay-melomys/">Bramble Cay melomys</a> (a small Australian rodent) had the dubious honour of being named the first mammal extinct as a result of anthropogenic climate change. Others have suffered range loss, population decline and complex knock-on effects from their ecosystems changing around them. Predicting how these impacts will stack up is a significant scientific challenge.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1098057210943492096"}"></div></p>
<p>We can guess at which species are at most risk and which are safe. But we must not fall into the trap of trusting our expectations of resilience, based as they are on a specie’s current success. Our recent research aimed to test these expectations – we suspected that they would not also predict survival under changing climates, and we were right.</p>
<h2>Baboons and climate change</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030438000500267X">Models</a> of the effects of climate change on individual species are improving all the time. These are ecological niche models, which take information on where a species lives today and use it to explore where it might be found in future.</p>
<p>For the baboon study, my masters student Sarah Hill and I modelled each of the six baboon species separately, starting in the present day. We then projected their potential ranges under 12 different future climate scenarios. Our models included two different time periods (2050 and 2070), two different degrees of <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-011-0148-z">projected climate change</a> (2.6°C and 6°C of warming) and three different global climate models, each with subtly different perspectives on the Earth system. These two different degrees of warming were chosen because they represent expected “best case” and “worst case” scenarios, as modelled by the <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/">Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change</a>.</p>
<p>Our model outputs allowed us to calculate the change in the area of suitable habitat for each species under each scenario. Three of our species, the <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/92250442/92250811">yellow</a>, <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/40647/10348950">olive</a> and hamadryas baboons, seemed resilient, as we initially expected. For yellow and olive baboons, suitable habitat expanded under all our scenarios. The <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/16019/5354647">hamadryas baboon</a>’s habitat, meanwhile, remained stable.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269635/original/file-20190416-147505-1l2q5dt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269635/original/file-20190416-147505-1l2q5dt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269635/original/file-20190416-147505-1l2q5dt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269635/original/file-20190416-147505-1l2q5dt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269635/original/file-20190416-147505-1l2q5dt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269635/original/file-20190416-147505-1l2q5dt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269635/original/file-20190416-147505-1l2q5dt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269635/original/file-20190416-147505-1l2q5dt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Guinea baboons like these seem to be especially sensitive to warm and arid conditions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">William Warby via Flickr and Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/16018/5354225">Guinea baboons</a> (the only one IUCN-labelled as Near Threatened) showed a small loss. Under scenarios predicting warmer, wetter conditions, they might even gain a little. Unfortunately, models projecting warming and drying predicted that Guinea baboons could lose up to 41.5% of their suitable habitat.</p>
<p>But <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/136848/92251482">Kinda baboons</a> seemed sensitive to the same warmer and wetter conditions that might favour their Guinea baboon cousins. They were predicted to lose habitat under every model, though the loss ranged from a small one (0-22.7%) in warmer and dryer conditions to 70.2% under the worst warm and wet scenario.</p>
<p>And the final baboon species, the <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/16022/99710253">chacma baboon</a> from South Africa (the same species that are known for raiding tourist vehicles to steal treats) is predicted the worst habitat loss. Under our 12 scenarios, habitat loss was predicted to range from 32.4% to 83.5%.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269770/original/file-20190417-139120-jec3e4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269770/original/file-20190417-139120-jec3e4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269770/original/file-20190417-139120-jec3e4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269770/original/file-20190417-139120-jec3e4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269770/original/file-20190417-139120-jec3e4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269770/original/file-20190417-139120-jec3e4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269770/original/file-20190417-139120-jec3e4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chacma baboons like these may struggle to survive in the next few decades.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/chacma-baboon-kruger-national-park-south-790927285?src=D3X5VivaA4kKw_-gIGMNjg-1-7">PACA COMO/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Wider implications</h2>
<p>The IUCN identifies endangered species using estimates of population and range size and <a href="https://portals.iucn.org/library/sites/library/files/documents/RL-2001-001-2nd.pdf">how they have changed</a>. Although climate change impacts are recognised as potentially causing important shifts in both these factors, climate change effect models like ours are rarely included, perhaps because they are often not available.</p>
<p>Our results suggest that in a few decades several baboon species might move into higher-risk categories. This depends on the extent of range (and hence population) loss they actually experience. New assessments will be required to see which category will apply to chacma, Kinda and Guinea baboons in 2070. It’s worth noting also that baboons are behaviourally flexible: they may yet find new ways to survive.</p>
<p>This also has wider implications for conservation practice. First, it suggests that we should try to incorporate more climate change models into assessments of species’ prospects. Second, having cast doubt on our assumption of baboon “resilience”, our work challenges us to establish which other apparently resilient species might be similarly affected. And given that the same projected changes act differently even on closely related baboon species, we presumably need to start to assess species more or less systematically, without prior assumptions, and to try to extract new general principles about climate change impacts as we work.</p>
<p>Sarah and I most definitely would not advocate discarding any of the existing assessment tools – the work the IUCN does is vitally important and our findings just confirm that. But our project may have identified an important additional factor affecting the prospects of even seemingly resilient species in the Anthropocene.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263883/original/file-20190314-28475-1mzxjur.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263883/original/file-20190314-28475-1mzxjur.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263883/original/file-20190314-28475-1mzxjur.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263883/original/file-20190314-28475-1mzxjur.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263883/original/file-20190314-28475-1mzxjur.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=176&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263883/original/file-20190314-28475-1mzxjur.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=176&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263883/original/file-20190314-28475-1mzxjur.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=176&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/imagine-newsletter-researchers-think-of-a-world-with-climate-action-113443?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=Imagineheader1115588">Click here to subscribe to our climate action newsletter. Climate change is inevitable. Our response to it isn’t.</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115588/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Isabelle Catherine Winder does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
New research suggests that even ecologically flexible baboons could be at significant risk of habitat loss and endangerment from anthropogenic climate change.
Isabelle Catherine Winder, Lecturer in Zoology, Bangor University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/70230
2016-12-14T13:00:52Z
2016-12-14T13:00:52Z
Was there an evolutionary purpose to bullying?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149832/original/image-20161213-1594-1qeza4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/472811992?src=nXotvmZLwHWbYZDbHt5EWw-1-87&id=472811992&size=medium_jpg">Syda Productions/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>I once watched a dominant baboon walk purposefully toward several members of the troop to bully them with snarls, slaps and bites. Baboons are well-known bullies. They use actual and threatened violence to climb the social ladder and then to cement their status as the most dominant animal. Male baboons bully (biologists prefer “harass”) for dominance because they want first dibs on the tastiest foods and opportunities for mating. Charles Darwin explained in <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2009">Origin of Species</a> that these are the drivers of evolution: food and sex.</p>
<p>The baboon I was watching was actually the largest of the adult females. The staff at the Detroit Zoo had removed all the adult males because they fought so fiercely with each other, and so mercilessly harassed the females, that the zoo hospital was overworked with sewing-up deep cuts and dealing with lost fingers. But soon after the males were removed, this particular female grew physically larger and started bullying the others. She became more muscular and even developed a false scrotum – she looked like a big male and acted like one. She was probably making more of the “male” hormone, testosterone, and more growth hormones. </p>
<p>This machoness in hormones, body and behaviour is also seen in other social-living species where female competition for breeding is intense, such as <a href="https://www.cam.ac.uk/subjects/meerkat">meerkats</a>, some <a href="http://lemur.duke.edu/discover/meet-the-lemurs/ring-tailed-lemur/">lemurs</a> and especially hyenas where the females lead and the males are submissive.
But what was this female baboon after? Zoo food is more or less the same every day and there were no males to mate with. A colleague watching these baboons for months told me that they bully each other “because they can”. My colleague meant that when given the opportunity both males and females will be bullies. Harassing others is evolutionarily ingrained; it is just the way they are. </p>
<h2>But what about humans?</h2>
<p>Can the same be said for people? We are a status-driven species. Like baboons, lemurs and hyenas, we live in social groups and we form power hierarchies. The “top dogs” in all human societies often get what they want, including food and mates. However, for 99% of our evolutionary history, all humans lived by foraging, that is hunting and gathering wild foods. Everybody had to work together to survive. </p>
<p>In the few forager societies of Africa that still exist today, people live in small, mobile groups. Possessions are few and easily carried from camp to camp. The children play games of cooperation and not the competitive games typical of children in our own society. Very little physical bullying exists, but people use gossip to socially regulate behaviour. The society strives for equality and cooperation and hunted foods are usually shared with all members of the group. Some men, however, are more successful hunters. Research has found that these men have greater upper-body strength and <a href="http://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138(14)00081-6/abstract">deeper voices</a> – both signs of greater testosterone production. These same men are also more desirable to women and father more babies than other men. So, Darwinian evolution is at work here, selecting for machismo, and has probably been at work throughout human history. </p>
<p>In the past, a few forager societies with abundant local resources lived in permanent villages. One example are the native people of the Pacific coast of Canada. Some families in the villages <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Home_Before_the_Raven_Caws.html?id=z4E1AYV-epoC&redir_esc=y">controlled more resources</a> and had higher social status than other families. The social hierarchies were depicted on totem poles. The families high on the totem pole enjoyed the most power, had the most materials goods, and produced the most children. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149833/original/image-20161213-1620-d6zz1s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149833/original/image-20161213-1620-d6zz1s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149833/original/image-20161213-1620-d6zz1s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149833/original/image-20161213-1620-d6zz1s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149833/original/image-20161213-1620-d6zz1s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149833/original/image-20161213-1620-d6zz1s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149833/original/image-20161213-1620-d6zz1s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Baboons are well known bullies.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/pic-397472089/stock-photo-olive-baboon-or-anubis-baboon-papio-anubis-in-mole-national-park-ghana.html?src=6iMyfp--hIp_l4SuaOSCHQ-1-69">feathercollector/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With the beginnings of farming about 10,000 years ago came ever greater social stratification, running right up to the ancient and modern kingdoms and today’s societies where a few extremely wealthy families dominate business, political and social life and bully the less fortunate into lives on the dole and zero-hour work contracts.</p>
<p>Evolutionary biology is at work today. In the US, census data show that rich women are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/oct/25/women-wealth-childcare-family-babies-study">more fertile</a> than poor women. The rich are also taller than the poor in most societies, and have been for <a href="http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471354481.html">centuries</a>. Once this was thought to be due to better food and healthcare, but new research has <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v533/n7604/full/nature17986.html">found</a> that bullying is also at work – at least in the animal kingdom. Juvenile meerkats fighting to be the breeding adult – just one pair usually breed – grow competitively and bully their younger siblings into remaining small. The competitors must eat more to sustain their growth, but their faster growth begins before they start eating more. They seem to be pumping out more hormones for both faster growth and bullying. </p>
<p>Studies of human growth have long been available but never interpreted in terms of bullying and competitive growth. One British study is especially relevant, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (<a href="http://researchonline.lshtm.ac.uk/5171/">ALSPAC</a>). The participants are mostly white native British families. Researchers sifted through 12,000 records for an association between growth in height and sibling number, birth order and birth spacing. They reported that with each additional older sibling the study child was up to 1.3 inches shorter by age ten. </p>
<p>Neither the economic conditions of the family nor the sex of the older sibling influenced the findings. The conventional explanation is that, with more mouths to feed, each additional, younger sibling receives a smaller share of parents’ resources. But, the ALSPAC study families are relatively wealthy, the children are well-fed, and in the society studied has universal healthcare and education, with extra benefits to those in need. Bullying may be a better explanation for the height deficit of younger siblings. With or without intentional malice, older siblings are known to inflict physical and emotional stress on <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23159327">younger brothers and sisters</a> and may slow the flow of their growth hormones. In fact, another study of ALSPAC <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16670160">children</a> showed strong positive associations between the most important growth hormone, called IGF-1, and height for both boys and girls. </p>
<p>There does appear to be an evolutionary purpose to bullying; it is found in many animal societies and has deep evolutionary roots. People bully each other, not just to get ahead for food and sex but also, like the baboons, because they can. On the other hand, the hunter-gatherer studies show that we can be highly cooperative and reduce the need for bullying to a minimum. So let’s look for those evolutionary mechanisms favouring cooperation and reward people who use them. Humans have evolved to be smart enough to take personal and collective decisions about how we want to behave. We can overcome bullying and we could get used to it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70230/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Barry Bogin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Understanding how bullying evolved may help us deal with it in modern society.
Barry Bogin, Professor, Loughborough University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/57701
2016-04-14T13:26:24Z
2016-04-14T13:26:24Z
How long before we can transplant an animal’s heart in a human?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118579/original/image-20160413-22081-20dy3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A ready source of hearts...one day.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=&search_tracking_id=mSbrvoIupQlaQly9s3K79Q&searchterm=pigs&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=272113169">www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160405/ncomms11138/full/ncomms11138.html">The announcement</a> that researchers in the US kept a genetically engineered pig’s heart beating in a baboon for nearly three years has, in some quarters, revived speculation about the prospect of pig organs being suitable for transplantation into humans. </p>
<p>Research into xenotransplantation (the transplant of live organs, tissues or cells from animals to humans) dates from at least the 1900s, when research on it and allotransplants (human-to-human transplants) <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1406409/">ran in parallel</a>. </p>
<p>Interest in animal-to-human transplants was renewed in the 1980s when the development of immunosuppressant drugs, such as cyclosporine, <a href="http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM198310063091401">made transplants between humans more effective</a>. The hope was that such drugs –- which lower the body’s ability to reject a transplanted organ – could be used in cross-species transplants. Also, advances in genetic engineering and cloning in the 1990s and 2000s resulted in <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12493821">genetically engineered pigs</a> without the antibody that leads to their organs being immediately rejected by humans. These two advances led some to believe that cross-species transplants were an imminent possibility. </p>
<p>While some may see this latest research from the US as moving us a step closer to xenotransplants, a closer inspection of the study indicates that it is premature to view such a prospect as imminent. There are several reasons why this research is more of an inch than a significant step forward. </p>
<h2>Significant hurdles</h2>
<p>In this study, genetically engineered pigs’ hearts were transplanted into five baboons and while one of the hearts remained healthy for nearly three years, one baboon died from an antibiotic-resistant infection about five months after the transplant. The median (middle) survival rate was 298 days. While a survival time of nearly three years might seem reasonable given the shortage of human organs available for transplant, it is important to note that these were not life-supporting transplants – the baboons’ hearts remained in their chests with the pig hearts attached to the baboons’ abdomens. So the pig hearts were not functioning as the baboons’ hearts. And only one heart survived in a baboon’s abdomen for nearly three years.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118575/original/image-20160413-22040-qpsyn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118575/original/image-20160413-22040-qpsyn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118575/original/image-20160413-22040-qpsyn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118575/original/image-20160413-22040-qpsyn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118575/original/image-20160413-22040-qpsyn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118575/original/image-20160413-22040-qpsyn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118575/original/image-20160413-22040-qpsyn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A pig’s heart.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=&searchterm=pig%27s%20heart&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=268838735">www.shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The baboons were initially given large doses of immunosuppressant drugs so that their bodies would not reject the pig hearts. These drugs are needed because even though pigs can now be genetically engineered to minimise the risk of hyperacute rejection – where the organ is rejected within minutes of being transplanted – the baboons’ immune systems still need to be suppressed to prevent their bodies perceiving the hearts as foreign. </p>
<p>The large doses would not be tolerated by humans in the long term and so the researchers reduced the level of the immunosuppressants to see if the pigs’ hearts would still function. When they did this, two of the baboons almost immediately began to reject their hearts and the anti-pig antibody in them was reactivated. While the pig hearts connected to two of the baboons continued to function with the lower dose of drugs, once the immunosuppressants were discontinued altogether the hearts were rejected (at 616 and 945 days). </p>
<p>These are important findings because if such an immunosuppressant regime was replicated in a pig-to-human transplant, it seems that the recipient’s immune system would need to be suppressed on a long-term, if not lifelong, basis – otherwise the anti-pig antibody could well return. Whether people would tolerate taking these drugs for a lifetime is a different matter and research on this is still needed.</p>
<p>While the study may provide further evidence that there are ways of managing one of the types of rejection that is predicted to follow from a xenotransplant, there are other types which have yet to be addressed. These have not been studied in detail because they do not come into play until instant hyperacute rejection has been addressed. So, we do not know how these other forms of rejection will operate, if at all, nor have we really begun to consider appropriate strategies to counter them.</p>
<p>As these were not life-supporting transplants, we still do not know whether – and this study is clearly not evidence that – a pig’s heart could function and support the life of a baboon, let alone a human. The question whether the heart of a quadruped can appropriately function in a biped remains unanswered.</p>
<p>While strategies to meet the shortfall in organs available for use in transplantation shouldn’t be too readily dismissed, given the huge human cost involved, it would be rash to suggest that we are now significantly closer to using genetically engineered pigs as sources of organs for humans.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57701/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sara Fovargue does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A baboon survived nearly three years with a pigs heart, so does that mean cross-species transplantation is imminent?
Sara Fovargue, Reader in Law, Lancaster University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/55042
2016-02-29T04:25:16Z
2016-02-29T04:25:16Z
Why southern Africa’s iconic baboon is on the decline
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112893/original/image-20160225-15165-smkc8g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The core habitat of the notorious chacma baboon is becoming smaller due to human takeover.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Olivia Stone</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Southern Africans have a love-hate relationship with chacma baboons. They have an unmistakable presence on the landscape, but their reputation as notorious troublemakers makes them unpopular. Lethal removal is common throughout their range; humans are the principal cause of the population decline.</p>
<p>The people of southern Africa associate the infamous primates with home, even though they are are seen as pests. They are as much a part of southern African heritage as the big five (elephant, rhinoceros, buffalo, lion and leopard), rich cultural diversity, and the magnificent vista. Baboons are an African icon.</p>
<p>Humans have actually taken over most of the key areas where baboons traditionally live. These key areas include many major cities where baboons are seemingly abundant. In reality, baboon numbers are dropping.</p>
<p>Human versus baboon competition and conflict probably always existed due to the close association between our species, as seen in fossil records. But baboons have never before encountered the human population expansion and vast land transformations that are permanently altering the modern landscape. </p>
<p>Now more than ever, it appears that baboons are losing the ability to access large amounts of land that has historically been central to their survival. Their core habitat is diminishing.</p>
<p>The general perception is that baboons are abundant, despite <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10329-012-0303-9">evidence of population decline</a>. This belief exists, in part, because in many cities and populated areas we can still see baboons daily. But <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2015/20140279">new research</a> suggests these same areas are the very regions that offer the best environmental conditions for baboon survival; it is their core habitat. So, baboons will inevitably attempt to inhabit these areas in preference to areas that outwardly appear more suitable, with less human population and disturbance. </p>
<p>The impression of abundance may relate to the baboons’ continuing proximity to human populated areas. Effectively, it is a fight over prime real estate.</p>
<p>This prime real estate, or <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2015/20140279">baboon environmental core habitat</a>, is approximately 10% of the entire range for the baboon. It includes or is adjacent to more than 30 major southern African cities. These cities included Harare, Johannesburg, Pretoria, Soweto, Bulawayo, Port Elizabeth and one of the fastest-growing cities in Africa, Botswana’s Gaborone, to name a few.</p>
<p>To put it simply, the baboon populations are intertwined with human settlements because we are living in their core habitat. Instinctively these animals want to be there too.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112895/original/image-20160225-15145-bxgm86.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112895/original/image-20160225-15145-bxgm86.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112895/original/image-20160225-15145-bxgm86.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112895/original/image-20160225-15145-bxgm86.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112895/original/image-20160225-15145-bxgm86.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112895/original/image-20160225-15145-bxgm86.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=760&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112895/original/image-20160225-15145-bxgm86.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=760&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112895/original/image-20160225-15145-bxgm86.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=760&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Much of the natural core habitat of the chacma baboon is in areas where humans are now living.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Gaborone</h2>
<p>According to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species’ chacma baboon distribution <a href="http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/16022/0">map</a>, there is a large uninhabited area of land – that also happens to be core habitat – in eastern Botswana. </p>
<p>This area also happens to include or be adjacent to seven of Botswana’s major centres, including Gaborone and the close (100km) surrounds that by 1991 contained 50% of the human population of <a href="https://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjvyYqV9OvKAhUBG5QKHVyNAp8QFggfMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ibrarian.net%2Fnavon%2Fpaper%2FPatterns_and_Trends_of_Urbanization_in_Botswana__.pdf%3Fpaperid%3D2572503&usg=AFQjCNGpKE_5NcaIye0r_IA92WfS2rLCSQ&sig2=TT3dLdUfljEPEa66CMwPJg">Botswana</a>. </p>
<p>Gaborone itself has a human population density of <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0031743">1 160 people per km2</a> and that particular region of core habitat has a higher human population density than the majority – three-quarters – of southern African baboon core habitat. All of this, combined with the extensive growth of Botswana’s urban satellite <a href="http://ecastats.uneca.org/aicmd/Portals/0/Census%202011%20Preliminary%20%20Brief%20Sept%2029%202011.pdf">villages</a>, means that the land transformation and deterioration in this region is likely to be widespread and pervasive. So, the absence of baboons may not be surprising.</p>
<p>The problem is not limited to Botswana – it is southern-Africa-wide. For example, the status of baboons in Lesotho is unknown and likely poor. The <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2015/20140279">limited core habitat in Lesotho</a> is in close proximity to seven out of ten district capitals. </p>
<p>The core habitat in South Africa – which is more than half of the total core habitat of southern Africa – also contains at least 62 settlements or cities of more than 20,000 people. This includes the major cities mentioned above, in addition to many smaller settlements. In the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2015/20140279">less than 5%</a> of baboon core habitat contains baboons</p>
<h2>What does this mean?</h2>
<p>We need to consider that baboons are highly resilient adaptable animals, so if we begin to detect a decline in their population, we must consider that the less resilient animals are potentially already in a worse condition.</p>
<p>Think of it like an ecological alarm system. When this species starts to falter, we have problems.</p>
<p>Second, more than half of the world’s primates that have known conservation status are classified as <a href="http://www.iucn.org/?11259/Primates-in-peril--conservationists-reveal-the-worlds-25-most-endangered-primates">threatened</a>. The baboon is one of the few primate species that has survived thus far without failing. </p>
<p>Despite all of the baboons’ perceived misgivings, can we really afford to sit back and let the chacma baboon become part of those statistics?</p>
<h2>What can we do?</h2>
<p>Start teaching respect for nature, including understanding that wild animals will be wild. We need to raise awareness that baboons are trying to live in their natural habitat and are not necessarily problem animals, therefore alternative, non-lethal strategies may have potential.</p>
<p>General conservation efforts need to aim to preserve areas of land that have the lower population and less degradation and are within these core habitat areas. Baboons are not necessarily protected in “protected” areas. </p>
<p>Private reserves and game parks, along with government land areas, should consider protecting these animals. If nothing else, we should acknowledge this loss of habitat and currently reported population decline, and that alone should motive us to do regional reassessments to confirm population status over the wider southern African region.</p>
<p>We need to make a start and stop burying our heads in the sand. Or it will be a sad day when the iconic symbol – the baboon silhouettes on a hill, in the setting African sun – is no longer visible.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55042/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Olivia Stone does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The iconic southern African Chacma baboon is in danger. The species is facing a population decline.
Olivia Stone, Researcher at the Evolution & Ecology Research Centre, UNSW Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/43482
2015-06-19T05:06:13Z
2015-06-19T05:06:13Z
Baboons don’t play follow the leader – they’re democratic travellers
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85522/original/image-20150618-23239-bn722u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Well if you'd just ASK someone Bernard...</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/emb/93584.php?from=298789">Courtesy of Rob Nelson</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Baboons in the wild are known for their highly strategic and <a href="http://www.princeton.edu/%7Ebaboon/social_life.html">hierarchical societies</a>. So when it comes to decisions about where to go, one might expect that some bolshie individuals will direct the group through its habitat. However, a new study of the <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aaa5099">collective movements of wild olive baboons in Kenya</a> suggests that there are more democratic processes at play. </p>
<p>For wild animals location is everything. The decision to head north instead of south may lead you to a fruiting tree, a pool with water or a place of shelter: all of these things could be the difference between life and death. For that reason, animal movements are never random. Even when searching for things, animals will use specific patterns of movements to sweep their environment. Social animal species like monkeys may not sit down and have a confab over a map, but they still need to make a decision about where the group should be heading.</p>
<h2>A baboon in sheep’s clothing?</h2>
<p>Numerous theoretical studies show the more you use collective information, <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0376635710001221">the better the decision making process turns out</a>. So it actually makes sense for clever animals like baboons to ignore a dominant individual no matter how much of a despot they are, but instead use a democratic process.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85543/original/image-20150618-23243-vybgp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85543/original/image-20150618-23243-vybgp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85543/original/image-20150618-23243-vybgp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85543/original/image-20150618-23243-vybgp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85543/original/image-20150618-23243-vybgp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85543/original/image-20150618-23243-vybgp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85543/original/image-20150618-23243-vybgp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Oliver might be resourceful but look at that silly stroll. He clearly has no idea where he’s going.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BaboonTroop.jpg">Andicat/wikipedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So far, there has been a limited amount of knowledge about how baboons make decisions about movements. The problem is how to study simultaneous and collective decision making in animals that live in large groups. Baboons typically live in groups of around 100. High accuracy GPS devices mounted on the majority of group members is the answer: this will reveal how animals coordinate their movements relative to one another. I have used this technique in the past on a much smaller scale to investigate the secretive lives of mated pairs of <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-7998.2006.00176.x/abstract">maned wolves</a> in Brazil.</p>
<p>The researchers monitoring baboons in Kenya did just this. When an animal moved off, its influence on the other members of the group was observed. Did the other members follow (that is, did it “pull” them along)? Or did the other members resist the initiative to move off (that is, “anchor” the group). And what happened when several individuals moved off at the same time in different directions?</p>
<p>The researchers found that there was no relationship between position in the hierarchy and pulling the crowd along. In other words, top baboons were as likely to be followers as being followed. This illustrates that leadership and social roles within a social group can be distinct roles. Just because you are the leader does not mean that everyone else in the group treats you like you are infallible in your decision making.</p>
<p>In general individuals were followed when they moved purposefully off in a set direction and were able to rapidly recruit or “pull” other individuals in that direction. This makes sense in that it suggests to other group members that the moving individual’s behaviour is goal driven, for example by looking for food. Perhaps the individual has suddenly remembered the location of a fruiting tree. It would therefore appear that baboons like to follow the crowd – this is similar to quorum sensing behaviour in bees and ants when they are choosing a new nest. The option with the most votes wins.</p>
<h2>The 90-degree rule</h2>
<p>A big problem of group movement is how to resolve disagreement about the direction to be taken. It is rather like being lost in a strange city on a night out with a group of friends with widely differing opinions about where to go. One effect of this for both humans and baboons is that it delays any decision being made as the conflict is being resolved.</p>
<p>So what’s the solution? It turns out that baboons have a special rule. When the difference between two individuals trying to initiate movements in different directions is less than 90 degrees from one another, then it is resolved by splitting the difference and taking a middle path. However, if the difference of opinion about directions is greater than 90 degrees then individuals accept the choice of one individual over the other. Initiators of movement in a certain direction build up followers, and the individual that has accumulated most followers will end up determining the group’s direction.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85541/original/image-20150618-23243-9xodiv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85541/original/image-20150618-23243-9xodiv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85541/original/image-20150618-23243-9xodiv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85541/original/image-20150618-23243-9xodiv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85541/original/image-20150618-23243-9xodiv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85541/original/image-20150618-23243-9xodiv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85541/original/image-20150618-23243-9xodiv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">You are wrong - the difference is 91 degrees, not 88. Let’s follow Jack.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Listen_Up,_Gelada_Baboons_%2813887149686%29.jpg">Rod Waddington/wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is surprising that something as important as group movement in baboons can be determined by a few simple rules, which are based on the idea that it is better to use the group’s collective knowledge than trust in the opinion of their leader. And perhaps even more so the fact that a dominant individual accepts that it is better to be a sheep than a shepherd in certain situations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43482/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert John Young does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
When it comes to choosing locations, the leaders of baboon packs take a step back.
Robert John Young, Professor of Wildlife Conservation, University of Salford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/41723
2015-05-13T15:30:32Z
2015-05-13T15:30:32Z
Here’s what baboons can teach us about social media
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81458/original/image-20150512-25041-1731o7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">No you can't join. This is the cool table.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/emb/91616.php">Alecia Carter</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Birds of a feather flock together” is a saying that exists in a number of different languages. “Gambá cheira gambá” (opossums smell other opossums) in Brazilian Portuguese is a particularly colourful example. The reason is that like-minded people like to hang out together across many cultures. And it seems the same is true of baboons. </p>
<p>Baboons’ preference to spend time with similar personality types was revealed in a <a href="http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/5/140444">study of wild chacma baboons</a> in Namibia. It found that the monkeys typically associate with other baboons based on personality type, age, rank and propensity to generate or use information. However, the study also found that this kind of cliquey behaviour hindered information sharing. For example, shy, high-ranking baboons often missed out on where to find the latest food sources as that information was typically held by bolder and younger baboons. </p>
<p>Perhaps there is a lesson there for us humans, reminding us that having a diverse set of friends may actually be an asset?</p>
<h2>The limits of the Facebook share</h2>
<p>Social media sites such as Facebook are supposed to be <a href="http://www.academia.edu/624601/Social_Media_A_Path_Toward_Democratisation">democratising the world</a> as they provide us with greater contact between individuals. In theory we have access to a world of information. But let’s be honest, our choice of friends is often guided by our interests, age and backgrounds. No one person’s Facebook is a random sample of the world’s population. Therefore the information shared is limited.</p>
<p>More than 90% of my friends on Facebook are biologists but I do not have friends who work in politics. This means that while I get the inside scoop on what is happening in biology – politics tend to take me by surprise. That’s not to say that associating with individuals of similar types doesn’t make a great deal of sense. Along with being a biologist I am also a father of two small children and therefore hang out with the parents of my kids’ friends, who are a great source of friendship and support.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81532/original/image-20150513-2491-10oefpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81532/original/image-20150513-2491-10oefpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81532/original/image-20150513-2491-10oefpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81532/original/image-20150513-2491-10oefpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81532/original/image-20150513-2491-10oefpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81532/original/image-20150513-2491-10oefpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81532/original/image-20150513-2491-10oefpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Are we reading too much into social media?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/damienbasile/3629544077/in/photolist-6wJn1a-4QgkMF-nhNGq1-dAPegg-b6w67e-7YnCi1-4oKr7o-9rn9Yh-5c57BW-eQczcB-fpdGRG-fP18Jx-9tEwxG-c1eWwu-fqabmK-fqnv9w-ayBabc-cpyFfC-bu2Cwj-7ViGYF-bB3S24-9AEx97-g1psMs-dDucNE-7mAJc2-b7Wjpp-4Jtigc-fqoQBs-8fFN5T-afJYxb-fpekjE-6vHHN-eLUvcT-fiWatq-fpekqh-gGr6Sr-qYnvBu-dcQjkB-biPib6-c8mN7s-fMPec4-6W7iaz-e5RERs-6rMguJ-7EbEkX-7EbEm2-ccJoLL-4nKcET-fqNFg1-7JtzoP">Damien Basile/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But while it may be easy to see why people like to form cliques, it is less obvious why animals do this. Female primates with young offspring <a href="http://anthro.palomar.edu/behavior/behave_2.htm">often form a social group</a>. Some of the benefits of this are practical – such as opportunities for their offspring to play together – but it may also be driven by the unique challenges this group of individuals faces. Adult males are more mobile than females, which creates an uneven competition for access to food. But as a group, these females are able to collectively look for food away from the males.</p>
<p>The study found that in chacma baboons it is younger and bolder individuals that typically try something new such as a strange food item or innovate in how to access a new food resource. The researchers were able to determine these associations by looking at who groomed who. Primates use grooming not only for hygiene, but also to make friends.</p>
<p>Similarly, studies in fish have suggested that positive association by <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00265-009-0802-x">personality type</a> may increase cooperation between individuals – such as bolder individuals approaching a predator together to see if it is hungry or not. But if you are a shy individual, not associating with bold peers you might be in trouble because you’ll have no way of knowing that the predator is hungry.</p>
<h2>Survival versus enlightenment</h2>
<p>I get on the same train every day to work and therefore sit next to people who have the same working hours in roughly the same geographic location. But as this association is a matter of temporal and geographic convenience they do not influence what I do. However, I do take the highly selected information I get from my friends seriously and may act upon it – if it is in my benefit.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81533/original/image-20150513-2470-iie6xp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81533/original/image-20150513-2470-iie6xp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81533/original/image-20150513-2470-iie6xp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81533/original/image-20150513-2470-iie6xp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81533/original/image-20150513-2470-iie6xp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81533/original/image-20150513-2470-iie6xp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81533/original/image-20150513-2470-iie6xp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Can’t wait to share this with Jo and Steve.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/tjeerd/1659332/in/photolist-5dFM6J-chAbNC-5dFFKd-5dBkmB-5dBjs2-chA5YA-chA6nN-chA6hd-chA5P7-chA5Bw-chA5TY-chA6cj-chA62y-chAbaj-chAbyh-chAbtE-chAbi9-fDJHrd-bWsYX4-6Z3T79-S6nW1-S6oDJ-S8hkZ-S6o1y-S6o8N-S8h9B-S6oXf-S8gVM-S8mt4-7Sw5Q1-9vgb-bJB5MT-iza4AF-izbQzX-bvGhfd-bJB4aa-abtgsL-kuTLhE-qwwwbz-qeQsvu-XP3DR-pzLw4R-qu7bRd-bVY2Ba-bVY2MR-gdHcnE-EkwfG-ahy81p-dSRCPS-nCTcRL">Tjeerd Wiersma/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For most social species, having the right kind of friends – which often means friends with similar personality – will enhance their chances of survival. But this may come at the cost of limited information flow. </p>
<p>The irony of living in a social network where information could flow freely is that by choosing your friends you limit your access to information. So before you unfriend that person on Facebook for uploading yet another “funny” cat video: remember variety is the source of information and not necessarily the spice of life.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41723/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert John Young does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Baboons shed light on the irony of social networks: cliques limit information sharing.
Robert John Young, Professor of Wildlife Conservation, University of Salford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/16932
2013-08-21T05:19:00Z
2013-08-21T05:19:00Z
Hungry baboons are a lesson in human personality
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/29599/original/gywmhcy8-1377006315.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Baboons can be shy, just like you</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Arno Meintjes Wildlife</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Our individual, varied personalities are among the traits often cited as those that distinguish us from the rest of the animal kingdom. However, as we, like the rest of life on Earth, are products of natural selection, our uniqueness as individuals is also a product of our evolutionary history. </p>
<p>Human personalities are complex, but looking at consistent differences in behaviour in animals (commonly known as “animal personalities” or “animal personality traits”) can provide insights into why they, and possibly we, have broadly recognisable and predictable behaviour that persist through time.</p>
<p>The purpose of behaviour is to achieve a goal. When information regarding a decision is abundant, an informed decision can be made to achieve a desirable result. But when information is unreliable, perhaps it is better to act according to our past experiences or individual preferences. Such situations could reveal individual behavioural tendencies (or personalities) and potentially provide an insight into why these tendencies exist throughout the animal kingdom, including in humans.</p>
<p>Dr Alecia Carter and colleagues investigated this idea in a recent study published in <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000334721300331X">Animal Behaviour</a>. The study was conducted on 55 wild chacma baboons, <em>Papio ursinus</em>, in Namibia. These subjects are particularly interesting because the life history of wild baboons is thought to reflect that of early hominids (our ancestors), and therefore may provide insight into the behaviour of more modern humans.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/29153/original/5tmd7j9h-1376388745.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/29153/original/5tmd7j9h-1376388745.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/29153/original/5tmd7j9h-1376388745.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/29153/original/5tmd7j9h-1376388745.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/29153/original/5tmd7j9h-1376388745.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/29153/original/5tmd7j9h-1376388745.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/29153/original/5tmd7j9h-1376388745.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dr Alecia Carter and a juvenile chacma baboon in Namibia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alecia Carter</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The study was in three parts. First, Dr Carter and colleagues assessed two independent aspects of personality, namely boldness (the propensity of an individual to undertake risky behaviour) and anxiety (the reaction of an individual to a threatening situation) using novel food and predator presentation experiments. </p>
<p>Boldness was assessed by presenting the baboons with a novel food in the form of a dyed hard boiled egg. A bold individual would interact with, and eat the egg, while a shy individual would not interact with the object. To test anxiety, the baboons were observed interacting with a taxidermied puff adder. Anxious individuals spent longer inspecting the snake, while less anxious individuals noticed the snake but paid it little attention. <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000334721200276X">Previous work</a> by Dr Carter has demonstrated that reactions to these experiments are consistent in individual baboons through time.</p>
<p>Next, Dr Carter and colleagues followed the baboons in their natural habitat and noted the foraging decisions of each individual with the aim of understanding whether the individual personality attributes of the baboons influenced their foraging decisions or whether the baboons based their decisions on environmental information. </p>
<p>Importantly, in natural conditions, it is easy to obtain reliable information about the quality of a foraging patch because leaves, seed pods and flowers can be seen from a distance. A baboon was noted to “produce”, or actively search for food, when it entered a foraging area that was unoccupied, while it was seen to “scrounge”, or follow the foraging activities of others, when it entered an area occupied by at least one other baboon. A total of 8,992 patch entry decisions by the 55 individual baboons were noted. </p>
<p>Finally, Dr Carter conducted a field-based foraging experiment to investigate whether personality attributes of the individual baboons affected foraging decisions when information about the quality of a patch was unreliable. Her team created five experimental foraging patches and ensured that the quality of each varied through time. Experiments were filmed with a video camera and whether an individual “produced” or “scrounged” was noted. The food content (maize kernels) of each patch was replenished each day.</p>
<p>Dr Carter and colleagues found that individual decisions to “produce” or “scrounge” in natural conditions (when information about patch quality was reliable) were not influenced by individual personality attributes in the 55 wild baboons. Instead, decisions were based on environmental information such as the quality of the patch as well as some individual attributes such as sex and dominance rank.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/29185/original/b3c8fqk7-1376406996.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/29185/original/b3c8fqk7-1376406996.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/29185/original/b3c8fqk7-1376406996.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/29185/original/b3c8fqk7-1376406996.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/29185/original/b3c8fqk7-1376406996.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/29185/original/b3c8fqk7-1376406996.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/29185/original/b3c8fqk7-1376406996.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chacma baboons in Namibia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alecia Carter</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By contrast, individual decisions to “produce” or “scrounge” in experimental conditions (when information about patch quality was unreliable) was influenced by personality attributes; bolder individuals were more likely to produce and spent less time in each patch and more time travelling between patches than their shyer counterparts. Similarly, individual characteristics such as dominance and age as well as patch size were also important predictors of patch entry decisions while anxiety was found to have no influence.</p>
<p>These results demonstrate that personality attributes affect decision making when information in a given circumstance is lacking. They therefore suggest that the existence of consistent individual behaviours, or personalities, may be an evolutionary mechanism to facilitate decision making when information is unreliable. </p>
<p>Similar results have been found previously in <a href="http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/277/1681/601">barnacle geese</a>, but because wild baboons might share a similar history to us, their behaviour in this study may provide more applicable insights into why we too possess individual personalities that help define us as individuals.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/16932/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Feeney does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Our individual, varied personalities are among the traits often cited as those that distinguish us from the rest of the animal kingdom. However, as we, like the rest of life on Earth, are products of natural…
William Feeney, Australian National University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.