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."

Swings and Roundabouts - Next Chapter?

[Anonymous Coward]

New baboon tribe moves in next door which is composed of more violent members, which eventually forces our friendly baboon tribe to become more violent, or be wiped out.

Then we are back to the initial position again.

Of course this was the position of many Reaganites in the 1980s that the USA had gone soft on the Soviet Union, and was therefore in more danger.

Re:Summary?

[Elwood P Dowd]

Baboons are more aggressive than most primates. They're larger and stronger than chimps, but chimps can team up to kill a larger baboon. Baboons are quadrapedal, and based on the TV I've watched, they mostly stick to the ground. I've seen them in trees fighting chimps.

I don't know what their social structure is exactly like, although apparently it's groups that include multiple males, females, and offspring. I don't know if they send adolescent males to other troupes, which happens with some primates.

Baboons look like this [hunting-safari.co.za]. Big teeth. Mean. Chimps, technically, are just as mean. But they look like they're nicer.

Chimps -> Baboons

as

Humans -> Klingons

?

another theory

[SmallFurryCreature]

What if the stressed out females and lower ranking females defect from their aggresive leaders and join the friendly troop?

Suddenly you got 1 big friendly supportive of each other group who are not constantly stressed and so rested for any trouble and 1 small tribe with no females and constant infighting.

I remember another documentary on an ape troop. It was ruled by a male and a luitenant in a laid back kind of way. He took the top females his luitenant the lower ranking. He was basically a nice old guy. Also old but because he had a luitenant with everything to lose and nothing to gain and the support of the females he held out until finally he was overthrown by a new aggressive male.

The new male had no backing (was in fact constantly fighting with the other hopefulls) and no tact. He raped (compared to the old ruler) the females and threatned their offsping (the old males and his luitenant offspring). It didn't take long for him to end up severly wounded when the females decided enough was enough and ganged up on him. With no aid and the females protecting their young against him he barely got away with his life.

The end result was that the former luitenant now became the leader who continuened the laid back peacefull method. I think the old leader became his luitenant but note sure.

As you can tell I am not really a story teller but it did show clearly that this group choose the softer option. Not exactly democracy but certainly a peasant revolt took place here.

People put up with a lot until they come to the point where they got nothing to loose and everything to gain. Apes do migrate between groups if the group they are in becomes to dangerous for them. There are documented cases of "good" ape leaders protecting the weakest of their troop from the middle ranking. This could be seen as making sure that while their must be a pecking order you also can not afford to loose members at the bottom for fear that one day the top is the bottom.

Re:Yeah, well.

[cowens]

I'm sure somewhere out there is a horny slashdot reader already dreaming up an empirical test of your "unfounded opinion"

The downside is that it will only get them back rubs since the males aren't getting any more sex than before: "Sexual behavior did not differ between F93-96 and T93-98/F79-82."

F79-82 - Forest Troop before the death of the agressive males
F93-96 - Forest Troop 7-8 years after the death of the aggressive males
T93-98 - Talek Troop in the same time period

Re:Yeah, well.

[timjdot]

Interesting proposition. Will be interesting to see how things evolve in a few years. I think the general idea of partnering amongst less dominant individuals is socially what the Internet makes possible: that is, individuals (e.g. open sourcers) can now work together for common goals rather than be subservient to dominant entities. I also noticed that the human birth rate seems 1.05 M to F and assume violent physical aggression is a male trait. Surely as more mature males compete then violence will resume. Funny that TB selected the violent baboons. hmmmm. Not to mention that the produced males may have been more closely blood related to the remaining females than is typical. Contrast with lions where the incoming king typically kills all kittens: maybe baboons do not do that?
Isn't anyone else surprised that the critters have never evolved new and better fighting styles? I mean a human in a forest could within an hour create enough weapons to fight off a single baboon or two (well, maybe not a chair-bound worker from America but you get my point :-). Why haven't these critters learned anything from humans?

TimJowers

Re:Swings and Roundabouts - Next Chapter?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are quite right - this of course depends on whether we are dealing with a closed system or an open one - "universal calls" like you mention really need a closed system, with no outside interference.

Since the American 19th Century was like an open system, the US has very "free" laws, if you don't like something, move onto the next piece of available land and do it your way.

Europe has run out of land and favours closed models.

As the internet takes over the world I suspect the world is moving towards a global closed system - unless we discover UFOs!

At last...

[MrNonchalant]

Semi-scientific support for mass exterminating jerks.