Almost Human

For the last few weeks I have really been settling into a weekly routine of getting up at 3:30am to walk to baboon sleeping sites and following, this is when we can find them. For a few weeks the baboons seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth, well at least over Mount Lajuma to Siguwana sleeping sites where we cannot follow them. 

Larrissa and me by Diepkluf Sleeping site at 5:00am 

The week after, we had a lot better luck with the baboons, it was the first week that Caroline was not scheduled to join us in following so we were on our own. On Tuesday we spread out with Larissa checking the sleeping site on Reebok Mountain and I was checking with the VHF in Ontmoet sleeping site, neither of us had any luck, it looked like we were going to have another frustrating week.

Half way back, while I was on the radio to Caroline telling her that neither of us found the baboons when I hear a tell-tale sound, a classic sound from the South African bush, a male baboons dominance call, the sound Wahoo. When I heard that I ran back towards Diepkluf sleeping site and low and behold the VHF beeped they were our baboons.

Spending 13 hours a day with the baboons you can’t help but start to notice the intricacies of their behavior and the amount of communication between the individuals in the troop. They mainly communicate using different types of grunting as males will grunt to show threat or to show benevolence however other verbal communication involves male Wahoo dominance display, Alarm calls and copulation calls that females produce to let other males know that this male mated with me and therefore any infant could be his. Not only there is verbal communication, they also communicate using body language to show anger, frustration, happiness or that they are scared, a lot with facial expressions. All their communication and their social interactions can be related to how humans behave.

Non-Verbal Communication, Adult female Grooming Bruce (a juvenile 3 male)

 Our troop contains about 80 individuals, splitting down into 10 adult males, 25 adult females and the rest juveniles and adolescence. When we scan we split the juveniles depending on their sex, size and therefore age. We have Juvenile 1 which are the youngest both male and female are around the same size, Juvenile 2's are slightly bigger and males are bigger than females. Juvenile 3's only occur only with males and these are the size of adult females. Adolescent females are as big as adult females and are cycling therefore becoming receptive but have not given birth yet. Adolescent males are the height of adult males however have not got the muscle definition and mane of adult males.

One of my friends, Spock a juvenile 3 male

Baboon society is based around a stable female dominance spanning 3-4 generations containing matrilines, in each matriline the mother has the highest dominance and passes her position to her youngest daughter.

Male baboons however leave the troop of their birth at about 8 years of age and move to other troops, what is interesting with male baboons is that they do not fight their way into the male dominance hierarchy of the new troop but they are patient and befriend a low ranking female and working their way into the troop that way.

Each hour I spend with the baboons being accepted into their troop, I realise more and more about how human their society is and how every interaction has a cause and an effect and each individual has their own personalities and even friendships lasting years between individuals in the troop.

Tomorrow six of us are going to Kruger National Park for 4 days, I am so excited to see Lions, Elephants and hopefully even a sighting of wild dog one of the rarest species of dogs in the world, I’ll be telling you all about Kruger this time next week.