Baboons groom more powerful mates for favours

Baboons groom other more powerful members early in the morning so that they will be favoured through the rest of the day, a new study has found.

Social animals often develop relationships with other group members to reduce aggression and gain access to scarce resources. In wild chacma baboons the strategy for grooming activities shows a certain pattern across the day.

Grooming between individuals in a group of baboons is not practiced without ulterior motives. To be groomed has hygienic benefits and is stress relieving for the individual, while grooming another individual can provide access to infants, mating opportunities and high quality food by means of tolerance at a patch.

This can be used in a strategic manner by trading grooming for one of these commodities as stated by the biological market theory.

The study from Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen and Zoological Society of London shows that such social strategies in chacma baboons vary across the day in a manner where subordinate individuals will gain most from their grooming activities.

“We investigated whether diurnal changes in the value of one commodity, tolerance at shared food patches, lead to diurnal patterns of affiliative interaction, namely grooming,” said biologist Claudia Sick.

“As predicted, we found that, in wild chacma baboons, subordinates were more likely to groom the more dominant individuals earlier in the day, when most foraging activities still lay ahead and the need for tolerance at shared feeding sites was greatest,” Sick said.

This study shows that social strategies of baboons can vary across the day and the findings suggest that group-living animals optimise certain elements of their social strategies over short periods of time.

It is commonly known that strong social bonds over several years can make an important contribution to the fitness of individuals in animal groups. Therefore one could expect individuals to invest primarily in such long-term relationships.

However, studies have shown that relationships also vary over months and weeks in accordance with a biological market.

This study’s findings indicate that social strategies may be even more flexible and optimised over even shorter periods than previously appreciated.

These new insights highlight the importance of understanding the full range of time periods over which social strategies may be optimised. Such knowledge is crucial when studying the social behaviour and strategies of group-living animals.

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