Democracy Observed In Baboons' Decision Making

by Monica Joshi

Democracy is a system of government wherein a whole population or eligible state members elect representatives and decide what to do, in a majority vote. Then there are sub-parts and different types of democracies that we haven't fully developed yet, but we have, however, seen this kind of political thinking in primates. In the first study of its kind to involve primates, researchers have found that troops of baboons move in a similar way to schools of fish or flocks of birds, i.e., without a leader.

Despite living in a highly hierarchical society, it seems that baboons prefer to take a democratic tack when deciding on which direction to move in.

Margaret Crofoot, assistant professor at UC Davis, who co-authored the report, explained:

“Despite their social status, it's not necessarily the biggest alpha males that influence where groups go. Our observations suggest that many or all group members can have a voice, even in highly stratified societies.”

For the study, described in the journal Science, the team studied a troop of baboons in central Kenya. They were also able to GPS-track 25 members, gaining detailed second-by-second location data over a period of two weeks. This ability to track the baboons gave the scientists unprecedented insight into how the primates move at the group level.

Wild olive baboons that live in strictly hierarchical groups, with dominant males often displacing subordinate ones, while females will stay within the group in which they’re born, seem to, quite clearly, have a natural hierarchical system. The males will even be turfed out when they reach maturity and will have to join another. This means that they then have to work their way up the social ladder from the bottom, competing with each other directly and indirectly for access to females and food.

It would be easy to see that there might be some sort of totalitarianism in these baboons, but to the surprise of the researchers, they found that the baboons’ movements fitted almost perfectly with the patterns predicted by theoretical models based on how fish school or birds flock. For example, if one baboon should decide to move away from the group, it would “drag” another in the same direction. If the second member, however, decides not to follow, then the first would return to the group.

Damien Farine, another of the co-authors along with Ariana Strandburg-Peshkin said that:

“We were really stunned by how well our data fit the predictions of the theoretical model. There has not been a really good test of this before, and never with free-ranging animals in the wild. What is surprising about this is that the model was very simple, and made up of lots of identical ‘individuals’ or agents. The fact that we find the same pattern replicated in a socially complex species such as the baboon is fascinating.”

This whole project was only achievable with the incredible resolution now possible with sophisticated, custom-designed GPS devices that take a location point every second, which they managed to fit on 80 percent of the troop. The resulting 20 million data points then had to be analyzed using newly developed advanced analytical techniques.

It would be interesting to see if certain members of the group, given their hierarchical nature, disproportionately influence other members in the group. It would also be interesting to see if both males and females follow similar patterns to determine what their next step ought to be.