EVENTS

Botswana: the link between baboons and humans
06/30/09, Bunmi Akpata-Ohohe

Baboons have been said to be man's closest relatives. Now a study comparing humans with baboons has shown that baboons, which dwell in close social groups, are healthier and have longer-life children. The report was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, and was based on the 66 adult females monitored in the Moremi games reserve, in Botswana. The study revealed that the offspring of those baboons with the strongest social bonds were about 1.5 times as likely to be alive aged five as the babies of females with the weakest bonds. The study then extends the idea to the benefits humans might enjoy from strong ties and sheds light on when man's ancestors might have begun to settle in groups.

Joan Silk, an anthropologist who heads the investigation of a 15-year study by a Pennsylvania University team of baboons in the Okavango Delta, Botswana, concluded that for the primates, being social was a key to being "safer from predators." Group living safeguarded the animals from social clashes and rivalry, and, it appeared, allowed them to better nourish their offspring. Silk, of the University of California, said the number of close kin in a group was not as important as the quality of females' social bonds. The research's parallel findings show that people's social bond had significant effects on their mental and physical well-being, according to Silk.