The Mellow Baboon

obehave writes " You've seen life in a baboon troop on TV: the epitome of nasty, brutish, and short. So what happens when a baboon troop loses its nastiest, most brutish members? PLoS Biology, an open-access science journal, reports the curious story of a baboon troop which lost the nastiest half of its male population through natural causes. The troop became different and the difference persisted through a generational change. Here's the synopsis, the full article, and a commentary."

Comments

Re:Swings and Roundabouts - Next Chapter?

[TuringTest]

But whether there would be a universal call for a rational, less violent baboon culture all over the world, and all tribes accepted it, then the overall violence of the whole baboonity would descend.

Society is not just the phenotype of a given species genetic inheritance - is a dynamic, evolving system.

Re:Yeah, well.

[cowens]

The percentage of males is now the same as it was before the aggresive ones died off from eating bad meat taken from a nearby garbage dump. There doesn't seem to be much difference between Male-Male interaction in the Forest Troop and the Talek Troop (who live 50km away). There is a major difference in the Male-Female interactions though. Females in the Forest Troop "did not seem to treat transfer males in a contingent manner" (tended to treat them like they were already part of the tribe). And all of the baboons were groomed more often leading to a less stressful environment.

Now for my unfounded opinion:

With over fifty percent of the males dead the females of the troop had lure more males in and so they started treating newcomers nicely and made sure the males already in the troop were happy. This behaviour doesn't seem to be costing them anything so it is continuing.

Stuart Whitman movie

[Anonymous Coward]

Sands of the Kalahari

gewg_