‘Nice’ Baboons Have Better Social Status and Thrive

The baboons seem to be similar to humans in having friends. Both cultivate robust social network leading to better health and reproductive success.

The researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have highlighted that the baboon's personality play a significant role in social success and that some baboons' personalities are better suited to making and keeping friends than others.

This study was initiated by the psychology professor Robert Seyfarth and biology professor Dorothy Cheney, both of Penn's School of Arts and Sciences in collaboration with the Arizona State University's Joan Silk. And these details were published in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers spent nearly 17 years observing a group of baboons in the Moremi Game Reserve in Botswana. During this period they focused on the biological roots of their social dynamics. Baboons that are mostly ground dwelling often live in hierarchical troops.

The females mostly 'inherit' their dominance ranks from their mothers and they enjoy the benefits of having priority over food and mates. 

The researchers noticed that the female Baboons actively work to maintain close social bonds. But like humans some baboons excel to be better at it than others.

The researchers measured the individual female baboons on their sociability. Along with this they also measured the the number of grooming partners a baboon had, as well her tendency to be friendly or aggressive toward others. They also measured reproductive and fitness benefits they accrued: how long individuals and their offspring lived, as well as their stress levels, as determined by the presence of certain hormones in their droppings. All this was evaluated during the seven years observation.

"Even when a female has a lot of relatives," Cheney said, "sometimes she's a loner, but some females who have no relatives do just fine. It suggests that you have to be both lucky and skilled to have these networks."

Based on the grunting behavior, the researchers were able to determine the female's personality. If a lower-ranking female grunts when approaching a higher-ranking female, the grunt acts as a kind of appeasement, reducing the chance of receiving aggression. Conversely, if a higher-ranking female grunts to a lower-ranking female, the grunt puts her at ease, increasing the chance of a friendly social interaction. 

The baboons were divided into nice, aloof and loner. Nice females are the one who were friendly and often grunted to lower ranking females to signal reassurance. They formed strong and enduring social bonds with fairly consistent partner preferences over time. Aloof females were noted for being more aggressive and less friendly, and they grunted primarily to higher-ranking females who had infants. They formed weaker bonds but had very consistent partner preferences. While the loner females were often alone and relatively unfriendly; they grunted primarily to appease higher-ranking females without infants. They formed weak bonds with changing partners.

Highest stress levels were observed in the loners. Both nice and aloof females showed the health and reproductive benefits associated with strong social bonds.

"This belies the idea that everything is competition and conflict," Cheney said.

"These results have allowed us to, for the first time in a wild primate, link personality characteristics, social skill and reproductive success," Seyfarth said. "By being a nice baboon, you increase the likelihood of having strong social bonds, which in turn translates to a better chance of passing on your genes."