GPS Tracking Collars Help Reveal that Baboons Make Group Decisions
11 Aug 2015It has long been known that baboons and humans share a lot of similar traits, and a study that was recently published in the journal Science found how the two are even more alike. This study, which involved placing GPS tracking devices on a group of baboons, revealed that these primates, like many humans, make democratic decisions as a group.
Here’s a glimpse into the study, including how it was executed and what the results were.
The Decision to Use GPS Tracking
Studies have been attempted in the past to determine how baboons act in their groups.
Do they select a certain group leader?
When there is a disagreement, what happens?
These are some of the questions that past studies have aimed to answer, but it was always difficult to answer these questions because researchers were only ever able to observe and obtain information from one or two baboons at the same time.
How could researchers attain information from an entire group of baboons? Given today’s technological convenience, the GPS tracking device, researchers were able to come up with a viable solution to their problem.
Fitting a society of baboons with GPS tracking devices was not an easy task. In order to do this, researchers set traps close to the trees where a troop of baboons slept. A total of 25 of them wandered into the traps.
They were fitted with GPS tracking collars and were then released back into the wild. With the GPS tracking collars in place, the researchers were able to keep tabs on the baboons and were able to monitor their behaviors.
What the Researchers Found
The GPS tracking devices actually allowed the researchers to gather some very important information regarding the behaviors of the baboons. The coordinates that the researchers were able to attain from the devices allowed them to keep track travel decisions, which actually let them see if one baboon went one direction and if the rest of them followed.
The information that the researchers obtained indicated something that they weren’t necessarily expecting. They were able to see that, instead of one baboon being in charge and the rest following, that different baboons made different decisions. Some would go in one direction, while some would go in the other. The remaining baboons would either follow the larger group, or, if the groups were similar in size, they would take a path between the two of them and the two separate groups would then follow that group.
These findings were very interesting, to say the least. They illustrated that instead of being a society that is dominated by one single leader, they are a democratic society and work together for the betterment of the whole group.
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