Yellow Baboon

Yellow baboons use at least ten different vocalizations to communicate. When traveling as a group, males will lead, females and young stay safely in the middle, and less-dominant males bring up the rear. A baboon group's hierarchy is a serious matter, and some subspecies have developed behaviors intended to avoid confrontation and retaliation. For example, males may use infants as a kind of "passport" or shield for safe approach toward another male. One male will pick up the infant and hold it up as it nears the other male. This action often calms the other male and allows the first male to approach safely. An area of active research on yellow baboons is the role of their social habits in the composition of their gut microbiome. One group of researchers found that social group membership and interaction rates affected baboon microbiome composition, which they suggested could be due to accidental fecal-oral transmission during grooming periods, even though yellow baboons are not coprophagic. Accidental fecal-oral transmission during close contact may be especially important for the transmission of gut microbes that cannot survive long in the environment, such as those that are non-spore forming. Another group found evidence that male dispersal affected the gut microbiome of the immigrant individual. …