Tracking collars uncover the secrets of baboons' raiding tactics

Date:  November 8, 2017

Source:  Swansea University

Summary:

New research shows how canny baboons in Cape Town use a sit-and-wait tactic before raiding people's homes in search of food.

Scientists from Swansea University are part of an international team who have revealed how canny baboons in Cape Town, South Africa, use a sit-and-wait tactic before raiding people's homes in search of food.

"Raiding baboons are a real challenge in the Cape Peninsula, South Africa. The baboons enter properties to raid in gardens and bins, but also enter homes and sometimes take food directly from people," said Professor Justin O'Riain, Director of the Institute for Communities and Wildlife in Africa at the University of Cape Town, and co-author on the study published by Scientific Reports.

In a previous study, the team showed that whilst Cape Town's baboon management strategy was keeping baboons away from the urban space, some males were still finding ways in. The team therefore built bespoke baboon tracking collars allowing them track the movements and activity levels of 10 males via GPS and accelerometer sensors.

Dr Gaëlle Fehlmann, lead author of the study, said: "People assume the baboons don't have enough food in their natural habitats and therefore have no choice but to forage in town. In fact, our research shows there is plenty of food in the natural environment where there is very little risk of the baboons being disturbed by anyone. In contrast, the chances of human-baboon conflicts in urban areas are high, but so are the food rewards, which are 10 times richer in terms of calories."

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New tools to spy on raiding baboons in suburbs of Cape Town, South Africa

Date: March 24, 2017

Source: Swansea University

Scientists from Swansea University's College of Science are part of an international team attempting to better understand the human-baboon conflict in Cape Town, South Africa.

"Raiding baboons are a real challenge in the Cape Peninsula, South Africa," said Professor Justin O'Riain from the University of Cape Town, a co-author on the study published by the journal Animal Biotelemetry, who has been studying baboons in the region for over a decade.

"The baboons enter properties to raid in gardens and bins, but also enter homes and sometimes take food directly from people."

In a previous study, the team showed that whilst the management strategy was keeping baboons away from the urban space, some males were still finding ways in. The team therefore wanted to understand how the baboons were doing this.

"Raiding events are so fast, so intense, that we couldn't keep up following them by foot in urban areas with high walls and security fences. We had to find another method to document the very special techniques baboons were adopting when raiding," said Swansea University PhD researcher Gaëlle Fehlmann, lead author of the study who carried out the fieldwork in South Africa.

"Here at Swansea's Laboratory for Animal Movement we have been developing new technologies to study animal behaviours and use accelerometers to quantify how much an animal moves in the three dimensions," said Dr Mark Holton, co-author of the study.

Such methods have been used for more than a decade, but mainly on birds or sea mammals. The Swansea team designed and built bespoke collars for the baboons that would enable them to precisely track the baboons.

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