Juvenile baboons in the Maasai Mara National Reserve, Kenya.Credit: Anup Shah/ Getty Images
Early-life adversity and adult social relationships have independent effects on the survival outcomes of wild female baboons, a new analysis of 35 years observations in Kenya shows. In a report published in Science Advances the researchers found stronger social relationships in adulthood can mitigate some of the effects of a bad start in the lives of baboons.
The team analysed data about early life circumstances, social bonding, and mortality among 199 wild adult female baboons collected by the Amboseli Baboon Research Project in Kenya between 1983 and 2019. The analysis aimed to discover how maternal loss, drought, and patterns of social bonding affected survival rates of female baboons.
“Animals who have a poor early life are not doomed to short lives, but may require intervention to promote social relationships, especially if they are orphaned. Our results suggest that if individuals have a bad start, it is very important to make friends,” said Elizabeth Lange, the study’s lead author and associate professor at State University of New York’s Department of Biological Sciences.
The study put forward interventions to improve survival in animals that can be implemented both early in life, to reduce adversity, and later in life, to improve social relationships. Jenny Tung, the study’s co-author and professor of evolutionary anthropology and biology at Duke University praised conservation efforts at Amboseli that have enabled researchers to study the same animals and their descendants continuously, for more than 50 years, on protected lands.
“Conserving the natural landscapes and resources of Kenya also means that many different types of science can be done, with implications for understanding our own species too,” Tung said.
