Baboons consider best access to
both food and safety
Date: May 17, 2017
Source: University of California
- Davis
Are you the kind of person who,
at a party, tends to be surrounded by friends in the middle of the crowd, or do
you prefer to find a quiet corner where you can sit and talk? Recent work by
scientists at UC Davis shows that wild baboons behave similarly to humans --
with some animals consistently found in the vanguard of their troop while
others crowd to the center or lag in the rear.
Using high-resolution GPS
tracking, UC Davis Assistant Professor Margaret Crofoot and her team of researchers
continuously monitored the movements of nearly an entire baboon troop in
central Kenya to discover how interactions among group-mates influenced where
in the troop individuals tended to be found.
"How animals position
themselves within their social group can have life or death consequences,"
explained Crofoot, an anthropologist. "Individuals at the front of their
group may get the first crack at any food their group encounters, but they are
also more vulnerable to being picked off by predators."
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