Social Spacing
Picture from: http://www.primate.wisc.edu/pin/factsheets/papio_hamadryas.html
Permission requested at abbott@primate.wisc.edu.
What is their Social Spacing?
Since their food is sparsely distributed, Hamadryas baboons have to travel 6 to 20km a day. Consequently, their social spacing is a home range up to 60 sq km. The troop shares the sleeping site (generally cliffs or trees, safe from predators) and often their foraging home ground too. So, Hamadryas baboons are not territorial, although subgroups avoid each other as they forage. The availability of safe sleeping sites is the limiting factor of the troop size. They live in pretty harsh conditions habitat. In Yemen for example, they live mainly in vegetated mountains regions, not far from perennial waterbodies. They do not rely on a single food species but select many of the available plants found in their habitats. These food resources are available trough the year. In spite of this, baboons eat crops, especially during the dry season, which triggers the strong hostility of the farmers (Al-Safadi, 1994).
How do they use their home range?
| As described in Home Range and Daily March in
a Hamadryas Baboon Troop (Sigg, and Stolba,
1981), bands can use different sleeping cliffs kilometers apart (probably
related with the foraging region) or use always the same one. When different
bands share a sleeping cliff, the sleeping sites of the bands remain roughly
the same. The baboons regularly visit the entire home range. The daily march is not random and depends on water holes and large feeding places but also on tradition. The home range utilization reflects a refuging model altered by other factors: first, the baboons may exhibit a mixed strategy of resource acquisition in a partly patchy and partly rather homogeneous resource distribution. Second, the daily foraging march may not only serve for resource acquisition, but also for exploration of resource state in different regions. The bands stop to feed only where size and arrangement of the food patches allow it. However, the baboons feed on single shrubs while the group is moving forward. For resting places, the baboons prefer shady areas. The baboons prefer wadis to other habitats in their home range, probably because the risk of finding no food there at all is smaller. On the daily march, the baboons search for food and water and, by traveling through their home range, get information about the location and abundance of resources and about probabilities of hazards in different regions. There is a huge variety of factors which seems to influence the march pattern, such as presence or absence of other bands at the sleeping cliff, weather conditions, state of vegetation in different regions, encounters with predators or nomads on previous days, and different experiences of individual groups in a band. However, the area of the midday water hole seems to be the most important goal on daily march. |
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This picture has been found at http://www.primate.wisc.edu/pin/factsheets/papio_hamadryas.html Permission requested at abbott@primate.wisc.edu. |
Do they know their home range?
There are several evidences in favor of a mental map of their
home range in baboons. First, there is a strong correlation between departure
direction and midday area. Besides, the baboons use street segments for parts
of their route and these segments are combined in a free order rather than
in a few rigid routes. Moreover, the marching speed increases well before
reaching a site. Besides, different bands use the same main resources but
exhibit different travel patterns in the same area; according to whether they
are familiar with the area from many visits or not. Finally, observations
of social interactions on single routes illustrate the coordination of travel
(Sigg and Stolba, 1981). In fact, it appears
that different individuals may vote differently to chose the march, but never
resolve such differences by aggressive means.