IIn 1984, I started a bold experiment. I transported it – I transported three flocks of wild gramans from one place to another in the wilds of Kenya. At that time, no other primates movements were carried out for scientific research. If it were impossible to do with the babines, then this would not be a viable method of preservation and management for other, more specialized monkeys and humanoid monkeys. The first group of the baboons, which I transported, as a test example, was a group of cripples.
When I released the males of the crippled detachment after the first movement, part of the detachment somehow dissipated and disappeared. I stayed with the remaining group, trying to focus on the abstract, but I was very worried about the missing participants. If they do not return to the night, if they are really lost, both groups run the risk of becoming victims of predators. Then, closer to sunset, I raised my eyes and saw the lost, as if accidentally walking on the grass, but I knew that they were looking for their comrades in the detachment. Seeing them, the group I was with, froze.
Hugs, kisses of lips and grunts were not similar to anything that I have ever seen before or after.
Then, like magnetized pieces of iron, two parts of the crippled detachment rushed to greet each other, not only their friends and family, but also animals that are not part of their cohort. Usually, when the babines are found after a short separation, you hear a random grunt. A longer separation can also end with lipstick and quick hugs. It was different. Hugs, kisses of lips and grunts were not like anything that I had ever seen before or after, they were very similar to a joyful human return home. The division in this strange new environment clearly led to enhanced expressions relief, pleasure and connection. I was encouraged by the fact that their social world remained untouched, despite the fact that their lives were destroyed, and perhaps it became stronger than before.
I found another part of Darwin's puzzle about monkeys. Let us recall that Darwin watched as the old male Pavian risked his life in order to save the young Pavian from a flock of dogs, the behavior that he admired, but could not understand. It was not some old male, but a friend of the young Pavian. I am convinced that Darwin saw, but did not recognize survival through social, and not the survival of the most adapted in a narrow “Darwin” or sociobiological sense. The displaced granels survived thanks to cooperation. They relied on general, portable social knowledge, supplemented by training from local Babuins.
The meeting of the crippled detachment showed me that the pastry, and not just people, have social emotions that grow from mutual need and interdependence. In fact, it seemed to me that the sense of connection served as the basis for their survival. In other words, the “social” was a resource that helped them go through their adaptation, their terra firma, when everything else changed. The social group seemed to me a real mechanism for the adaptation of the grancies.
Since the group was clearly an adaptation, I realized the advantages of moving entire groups, and not individuals or artificially created groups, in which movements have a notorious percentage of failures. Our natural groups of Babuin surpassed all expectations. They knew each other and trusted each other, and together they were faced with difficulties in teaching survival in a completely different place.
I often joke that Babuins read scientific literature, and then do the opposite. Translocation was one of such cases.
Excerpt from Echoes of our origin: Babuins, people and nature Shirley K. Stram with Cassandra Phillips. Copyright 2025. is published with the permission of the University of Jones Hopkins.
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