Vervets: the Forbidden Circle

I lied. The second article on vervets did not appear in Science, but in Current Biology. Other than that, I stand by my earlier statement: this is an unusual and thought provoking article, and it happens to be about vervet monkeys.

In this experiment, the authors created a locked container which contained appealing food. The subjects, a troop of vervet monkeys, could see inside and smell the food, but they could not get at it. Only a single low ranking member of the troop was trained in how to open the container.

Without needing to read the paper, I could tell you how things would start out. The dominant individuals in the group would mess around with the container, carrying out all kinds of violent acts in an attempt to force the thing open (which would all fail). Once the alpha got tired of this, it would go do something else and the second rank individual would make similar attempts to open the container. This is a common scene among the baboons, when they're trying to get into a locked storeroom or car.

In order for the monkeys to get at and eat the food inside the container, all dominant individuals would need to exhaust their own interest and wait. They were also required to stay a safe distance away from the container, somewhere between 10 and 15 meters. Only when the dominant individuals were a safe distance away would the monkey trained to open the container actually open the container.

It took most of these troops a few long trials to begin to understand that they would need to show restraint. But after they picked up this notion, the process went surprisingly smoothly and quickly, and the trained monkey would invariably be allowed to open the container. Unsurprisingly, the subject group that was experienced in raiding garbage bins and picnics took much longer to get over the fact that only a single low ranked individual could open the container. The authors go into great deal of game theory, but I will leave that by the wayside and get to the conclusions.

There are a number of fairly impressive accomplishments included in this paper. First, that the authors were able to train a wild vervet, to essentially be a confidant in their experiment. It is kind of incredible. Second, their main results show that these monkeys are capable of restraint on group and individual levels. Monkeys are notoriously bad at self-control, but this shows the power of reinforcement learning. I can't imagine any of the monkeys I've worked with, in captivity or the wild, being trained to show these levels of restraint. So kudos to the authors, and kudos to vervet monkeys.

Every primate's a little bit prejudiced

Scientific American covered a new article out in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology which asks an interesting question, of a sort that is not asked nearly enough, in my opinion. Are our biases and attitudes towards other social groups, and within our own group, uniquely human? Do our strategies arise from experiences which no other species can match?

The answer provided by Neha Mahajan, Laurie Santos and colleagues is no.

"We found the first evidence that a nonhuman species automatically distinguishes the faces of members of its own social group from those in other groups and displays greater vigilance toward outgroup members . . . macaques spontaneously associate novel objects with specific social groups and display greater vigilance to objects associated with outgroup members . . . and we discovered that macaques, like humans, automatically evaluate ingroup members positively and outgroup members negatively."

I won't lie, this is some really intriguing stuff. You can read all this and more on the details in SciAm's article, and I hate to rehash thing that have already been said. Rather, I'd like to switch attention to the spin which SciAm puts on this article in their own report.

Once does the SciAm article mentioned "racism," but its in their subtitle. They shouldn't have done this. This cannot be shown to be racism, not under the current conditions. If some sort of morphological or genetic analysis was performed, then maybe they could make this claim. But all the associations in this research are social, not biological. Unless you believe race is a purely social institution, but people have known for a while that its just not that simple.

The true question is easily found in the abstract, and I've paraphrased it above. Did SciAm have access to the full length article, and I missing something with just the abstract? I assume so, though it is rather odd for their link to take the reader to an abstract with no sign of the full text. Even with my various University sources, I couldn't manage to obtain access to this article. So all I have to go by is the abstract, same as you. Ultimately, even if I wanted to, I couldn't write a critical assessment of the source document.

Thus ends this cautionary tale. I am all in favor of more research like this, and other research which truly investigates the genetic basis for ethnic group biases. However, the story of race, genetics, and scientific inquiry is a troubled one. One SciAm article isn't a huge deal, but it demonstrates how easy it is to make little mistakes, and the pursuit of knowledge in this discipline is a razor thin line which must be carefully walked. Otherwise, unfortunate things can happen.

Troop Mind Journal 03/23

The troop mind is assumed to take form at some unclear point in the morning. When the baboons are starting to wake up, a few are on the ground, the important individuals in the troop are getting a feel for what kind of day it is going to be, I like to think that is when this primitive consciousness begins to congeal.

But what if they spend the night right next to another troop?

Just such a thing has happened in the forest a small number of times. On this particular day, the morning opened with restlessness. We weren’t quite sure what was going down at this point, but the truth quickly became apparent. When the main troop rushed down from the sleeping site and immediately headed for the feeding site, and the forest erupted into wahoos and screams, I headed up the hill to investigate.

I found an odd collection of baboons holding the frontier. There were 4 of them: Punzle, Cassandra, Danny, and Kirby. Punzle is well known to us, but none of the others have come up yet.

Kirby is no one too special. He’s an older juvenile, on the verge of being sub-adult. He’s recognizable by torn up ears, and long black side hairs on his head, which he probably inherited from one of the matrilines. He’s not the friendliest of young males, but few of them are at that age. He’s smack in his ‘tween years, where the excitability and extroversion of youth are giving way to the aggressiveness and seriousness of maturity. Right in the middle, their behavior is frequently dominated by extroversion and aggressiveness; the worst of both worlds.

Cassandra and Danny are both special baboons to me. Cassie isn’t particularly remarkable on the surface: she’s a mid-to-low ranking baboon, not too young, or sociable. But she’s a good mother, she doesn’t let her babies get themselves killed. She is also the first baboon female I nailed the identification for. She’s got the black hairs I mentioned earlier, and these highly distinctive half-moon patches on her callosities. Well, I can reliably see them, anyway.

Danny is a young male, a legitimate sub-adult. He’s also a surprisingly nice guy. He doesn’t let himself get pushed around by any but the likes of Aaron and Damian, but he’s not abusive to the females, either. Or us researchers. He’s young, but he looks like he’ll turn into a strong alpha one day, who’s liable to be as benevolent as a male can get.

These four stood there, at the far edge of the group, and alone, appeared to push the entirety of the Tim Curry group up the hill, and out of the sleeping site. The remainder of the main troop continued down hill, across the valley, toward the sleeping site. The four did not back down and rejoin their troop until a couple hundred meters had been allowed to open between the centers of the two groups.

It was not surprising to see Danny and Kirby at the edge. They’re young males and eventually looking to disperse to another troop where they can copulate with some more diverse females. They want to know as much as possible about what other troops are in the area. The strangest part was the lack of other young males at the edge.

The two females were the true oddity, however. I can’t think of reason why Cassie would like to risk harm; she doesn’t have a posse to back her up. Punzle does, in theory, but as the number 3 female, it surprising she wasn’t herded to safety by Aaron. The incident was a mess, and did not last very long, but the major outstanding question has remained: why were there so many females at the periphery, and so few young males?

Returning to where we began, when does this troop mind decision begin to form? The baboons are almost certainly aware of the presence of Tim Curry & Co. when they sit back to rest for the night. Could Tim Curry have arrived later at night after the main troop has nodded off? Considering all the experiments that have been done to show the impressive perception and awareness of a baboon troop, I could hardly allow myself to believe that an entire dysfunctional troop of baboons could just slip under the main troop’s radar.

I can sometimes tell, when I find the baboons arriving late to a sleeping site, that something is up. If there’s an excessive amount of screaming, barking, and wahooing, it will often indicate something is amiss. If I’m having a really outstanding evening, I’ll be able to recognize at least 5 distinct wahoos, which is a strong indicator that there’s more than one troop present, since the main troop only has 4 males capable of producing a solid wahoo. Still, that late in the evening, one seldom has enough light to distinguish baboons well enough to spot someone who is out of place.

So I have my hunches, which are more often correct than not. The baboons, on the other hand, must know. Then when does the decision take place? As Danny nods off into light sleep, is he thinking about how the first thing he’s going to do tomorrow is chase those crazy Tim Curry baboons out of the sleeping site? Did Aaron not think about his plan the next day, and thus allow Punzle to slip past his notice? Did Anna have some plan in mind overnight? Was it just the luck of the draw for her, and she wound up sleeping in a tree right by where Tim Curry slept?

All of these questions, and more, will not be answered next week on this blog, but I did find an excellent complementary story which happens not to shed light on anything.

How the mighty fall?

In spite of my lack of real updates, I can't help but bring up the recent ScienceBlogs controversy. I would have to say I am a fan of the site; it provide great real estate for some quality bloggers. Granted, I primarily read biology related material, so I can't speak for the other disciplines the site represents, but I have found ScienceBlogs to be a worthy venture.

A couple of days ago, ScienceBlog unveiled a new blog, Food Frontiers, which was written and edited by individuals employed in Pepsico's research and development deaprtment. Chaos ensued! The comments were awash with angry denizens crying out in rage. My favorite might have been this post by one of the sites' other bloggers, condemning the action.

I personally don't like this move, not because of the bad science that might be present in Pepsico's new blog, but because the move will forevermore mar the reputation of ScienceBlogs. That's a shame because there's no where else like it on the net at this point. But I'm not too concerned overall because someone could always make a clone of ScienceBlogs to great effect.

As of writing this, I have returned to the blog, and found it removed. I agree that there should be a discussion between business and the science community, and I hope this won't significantly tarnish ScienceBlogs' reputation.

What I'm most interested in is how much of a silent majority follows ScienceBlogs. The comments on that first post made by Pepsi overwhelmingly indicates that ScienceBlogs readers will not stand for this. It seems I won't have my chance to see this happen, since Food Frontiers is no more. I also highly doubt that many people will stay away now that their demands were met so quickly and completely. Sigh, its no fun when people cave to drama.

Substantial (aka, monkeyish) updates soon, I hope. The real-life Troop Mind Journal is missing, cutting off many sources of content, but I think I know its whereabouts. Additionally, publication takes a lot of the writing spirit out of a person. Okay fine, less excuses, more monkeys.


EDIT: This post from a different ScienceBlogger not only addresses many of the questions I've had on the situation, but comprehensively describes the long lead-ins and direct aftermath to the Pepsi incident. Plus, it is essentially a brief history of ScienceBlogs, which I previously knew next to nothing about.

Troop Mind Journal 03/05

The troop was sleeping in one of the usual spots, a spot which was once a favorite of the second troop, and effectively ceded by tr.2 to tr.1 during the summer months. Now the first troop sleeps there more often than any other site, which is of little surprise given the proximity of the site to the ripe feeding grounds.

On a very ordinary day, the group would lazily travel a short distance through small valley and field to the grounds, stopping a few times to groom or look out for signs of other baboons. There are a few small variations on these very ordinary days, but all ultimately end the same.

An exception occurred early one morning when the animals came down from their roost in the trees. Instead of crossing the valley which lay between the monkeys and the feeding grounds, the young males set out in the opposite direction, up the mountain, away from the feeding grounds. I expected them to come back to the main sleeping site, but they never did. They continued up the mountain, and the whole troop followed them.

I didn't hear any distant baboon sounds that would have indicated the presence of another troop, but of course, my ears are not tuned to perceive baboon vocalizations and on an absolute scale, my sense of hearing is not as powerful as a baboon's. So maybe Tim Curry's troop was sitting just on the other side of the ridge, or further up the mountain, and the troop was responding to their presence.

If this were the case, we would have expected the young males to act as they did, but after a short time, these males retreat to the core of the troop, and the day continues almost as if there was no disturbance. This is a grossly simplified version of what I see, yet these troop movements seem to defy "baboon logic," which I'd seen predictably employed at this site countless times.

I followed the baboons up the mountain to another large forested sleeping site which I call Giraffe Hill. We'd not seen any of the troops sleep at that location for some time, as it was quite out of the way. The baboons made haste in reaching the spot; I've never seen them move so fast along that route when moving downhill. The halted their march on the edge of Giraffe Hill, and proceeded to play, feed, groom: the usual restful activities. Everyone seemed to be wondering, What next?

The situation lost further clarity when I left troop 1 to investigate the whereabouts of Rainer, Tim, and their buddies. I found that troop in the forest down the mountain, still at their sleeping site. They did not sleep over the ridge, up on Giraffe Hill, or at any of the sites along that slope of the mountain. They were almost as far away as they could get, which I had previously guessed was out of audible range.

When I returned to troop 1 later in the day, I found they had resumed their usual behavior, following a known route to the feeding grounds. It took them longer than usual, but ultimately the situation was as it always ended: almost as if nothing odd occurred.

Many more lingering questions remain from this day than from your typical encounter scenario. Two in particular:

Why was the first troop's response so strong when the other troop was so far away?

That is, if they even heard another troop. If they did, then the movements make some sense. Troop 1 did not move in the right direction after the initial push - it was almost as if some other aspect of the troop mind took over the movements, and decided to make the most of the mess the young ones made.

I'm trying real hard to think about what could make the response so strong. For all we know, female vocalizations sound different when their issuers are at the peak of their reproductive fitness. Under such conditions, it would make sense for the males to pursue the other troop with greater vigor. A few words to the wise: the ethology community has nowhere near enough evidence to support such a hypothesis.
 
Even if this was a legitimate response to the presence of another group, why did dictate the choices of the troop mind for the entire morning? 

If the young males were really in control that whole time, then I've no idea how they managed it, because this is my only observation of such an event. As I mentioned above, its actually quite probable that the young males only influenced that first push, and afterward, the troop mind was just "going with the flow," so to speak. Still, what exactly would Aaron have to gain from continuing along this path?

The forest floor on Giraffe Hill is strewn with pine cones, so there's a great deal to eat. These baboons will sift through the needles for pine nuts, or if they're lucky, they will find unripe cones which have yet to eject their seeds. Baboons will lay into those cones, which is an impressive sight. I can rarely tear out a seed with my hands, but the baboons will crush and crunch through the rock-like shells of the cones as if it was a potato chip.

Since none of the troops have spent much time up on the hill lately, there ought to be a great deal more food laying around than in the usual, more traveled areas of the forest.

So why have I only seen the troop visit Giraffe Hill this one time in months, and why only under such bizarre circumstances?

Do the baboons need to be reminded of the presence of other feeding sites? When a large feeding ground is in season, and plentiful with food, do other options slip out of mind? This would say a great deal about the event/state driven nature of baboon cognition.

I like how I look through my logbook and try to find an interesting but brief (because I'm unexpectedly still very busy) story from the field, and it balloons into this massive endeavor which raises all these fascinating questions about primate behavior. I suppose there are worse things that could happen to a person.

Troop Mind Journal 02/26

Sometimes accidents happen. The best of those are accidents where no one gets hurt, and I learn a thing or two about baboon movements and hierarchies.

It was a morning on the mountain like any other. I waited for the baboons to come down out of the trees where they slept. They'd been here for most of the days this week, so I felt I knew what to expect. They'd spend one, maybe two hours laying around at the edge of the forest. This was the place where a few weeks earlier, Aaron had created the "sloshing" effect.

Seemingly the opposite behavior possessed Aaron today. Where before he seemed content to lick Siri's heels for any length of time, on this morning, he came down from the trees before the sun had fully risen, and rolled on out of there. The alpha male walked deliberately. What was he going for? Had looked back on his path, it would have been a beeline - neither his bearing nor speed wavered in the slightest.

When he reached his destination about half a kilometer distant, Aaron sat down and began to eat. There was food sitting there, mostly fresh, though plain food. Too a baboon, delicious. I've no idea how it got there, it probably fell out the back of someone's truck. The food is irrelevant. The point is that Aaron went straight for a resource, and the entire troop followed after.

Yup, everyone came along. Aaron departed so quickly, I think the others may have been given a fright. After all, its not like Damian or Janny is going to defend the integrity of the troop. The rest of the group was a bit slower (Aaron took a maximum of 5 minutes to travel between point A and point B), but inevitably fell into line, and joined Aaron at the site of his treasure.

When Aaron had his fill of the food, he dropped the leftovers where he had found them and continued to move in a similar direction as he had originally. There was a waypoint nearby, which he appeared to be approaching. As soon as he left, Lottie came over and ate some, and was followed by Nadine (those two are known to be the first and second ranked female, respectively, largely thanks to incidents like this). Nadine might have been scared off, or perhaps just full, but next came Janny, and after his was a juvenile male, large but definitely not sub-adult yet. This guy had been circling the scene, waiting for a chance to slip in for a few bites. There wasn't much left after he'd satisfied himself, but a few smaller juveniles nevertheless spent ten minutes or so scouring the area for edible debris.

Certainly, the leftovers served as motivation for some of the troop members to follow. Still, only two females and two sub-adult males were able to pick over the remains, which weren't much. Aaron definitely appeared to exercise his power as "heart of the troop mind" in this instance. I doubt he saw the food first, but he was only baboon to make a dash for it. They might have been deferring to him from minute zero, knowing that in the end, he would get as much of the food as he wanted, no matter who made the initial move.

A new question arises: clearly Aaron has immense sway over the troop mind, as alpha, but how far does his influence extend? How many tyrannical movement decisions would he need to make before he began to lose power? Do they even need to be tyrannical? In this case, the benefit to Aaron was clearly worth the effort. But if he continues to assert his absolute dominance over the movements of the troop, when will the others get sick of him. Aaron is known for his easy-going nature, probably due to his extreme dominance as alpha, so as it stands, I might not get many chances to see Aaron truly throw his weight around.

Troop Mind Journal 02/09

Aaron was consorting again. When the alpha male is in a consortship with a female, things tend to get (more) boring because the male will just follow her bobbing bum around all day, rather than using his masculine influence to drive the troops behavior towards goals... or rather, other goals.

This thought crossed my mind, and next I began to think, well, if the male is such a powerful force in the troop mind, then what happens if he appears to not be exerting his influence on the greater mentality?

This is essentially the situation you're given when a male is indisposed due to the influence of feminine wiles. The troop acts independently of the male since he's just bowing to the whims of his girlfriend. Right?

As I observed, greater complexities began to emerge before me. It is true that Aaron was just following the estrous female, Siri, as far as I could make out. He remained with her at the rear-center of the group, and left the juvenile and sub-adult males to seek out the feeding ground via the usual routes.

What was Siri following? Normally she'd tag along with the core of females, which generally followed Aaron's lead by several meters. Without his lead, what influenced her motions? Ultimately it seemed like she followed the lead of the males up front.

Yet the most telling scene of this day came in the early morning, just after the baboons woke up from their night's sleep. As usual, they groomed and played around their bedspots for an hour or so before beginning to move. Longer, today, because Aaron was leading the departure.

Aaron and Siri spent the morning quite actively. They were copulating, of course, and Siri was leading Aaron, and the two of them moved back and forth between the eastern to western boundaries of the sleeping site. This pattern continued without fail until the group finally left. The pair were able to complete three cycles of west-to-east-back-to-west in a little more than an hour.

Here's where the situation becomes intriguing: the rest of the troops' movements mirrored those of the copulating pair, but lagged behind by about ten minutes or so. It was like waves of water washing up along the sides of a half-pipe: Aaron and Siri represented by the tip of each wave, followed by the body of the wave, the bulk of the troop.

In particular, the other females followed the pair, presumably still following Aaron's movements. He wasn't going very far, the span between the two edges was a hundred meters at most, but the vast majority of the females, and many of the juveniles followed in his wake. In spite of Aaron's clearly altered behavior, the troop was still heavily influenced by his relatively small movements. Aaron and Siri sit at the far western side, and twenty minutes later, they would be headed back from whence they came, but Lottie, Matilda, Punzle, Wendy, and company would be sitting and grooming where Aaron had been a few minutes earlier.

When the male posse did manage to get out the door, it was unclear if Siri or Aaron was the member of the pair to follow. Aaron was behind her, but that actually says almost nothing, since a male baboon moving behind a female, no matter how calm, could be a follow or herd. Still, where the pair went, the core followed after.

One must ask again, what was leading Siri that morning? Coyness with Aaron? Legitimate desire to get away from him? Youthful energy (she has yet to have a baby of her own)? Was it the simple by product of the standard copulatory dart, whereby the female runs a short distance away each time the male mates with her? Under the blade of Occam's Razor, we might find that was all there was to it.

Troop Mind Journal 01/28

The troop sat at the edge of a grove, barely shielded from the mid-morning sun the shadows of the canopy. A lazy day. They would probably go to the feeding ground in anywhere from ten minutes to three hours.

Suddenly, screams filled the air. Then a wahoo. A female, lips curled back, tail in the air, and shrieking, bounded past. She was moving too quickly for me to identify her. A male ran by, and I would have mistaken him, as well, except for that brief second when he turned his head toward me as passed, never slowing. Those intense yet stoic eyes told me it could only be Aaron, the alpha.

Aaron herded this single female around for almost five minutes without a break. At the end, she could barely keep running; it was the equivalent of a human jog which was actually no quicker than a walk. Aaron slowed his pace to match, but did not catch her - he had already done so twice, and the newly opened wound on her face would mark her for a couple weeks at least.

When the chase reached this point, I realized that he seemed to have brought her full circle, back to the core of the troop. Not quite. What actually happened was that the female core (and me accompanying them) had slowly shifted in the direction of Aaron and the female he was chasing. The whole troop has moved about 30 meters in this five minutes.

This was a case where the male appeared not to be directing the movements of the troop. He was involved with this lone female for reasons not apparent to me. Meanwhile, rest of the troop moved. The most obvious reasons would be because they wanted to stay near the male for his protection. The females like to be around the adult males, the alpha in particular. They seemed drawn to him, but followed of their own choice.

However, appearences are highly suspect (and this isn't how all herding goes down). The male might know that the effect of chasing the female will be that the others will respond accordingly. The chasing of the single female could be a highly complex social signal which told all of them to "move and follow." The females would obey, the infants would follow their mothers, and the juveniles would follow their junior playmates, and the remaining guys would have barely anyone left behind to interact with, and would thus be forced to fall in line.

Does it matter if the male chases a female back towards the troop, or away from the troop's center? Are they distinct behaviors? If they followed him regardless of where he chased, it could be evidence to say they are just following the male. What if the chaser wasn't the alpha, but a different male? Males before and after their prime could yield different results. Tricky - I think looking for a behavior where aggression is not involved would be a better way to determine if the male (and which male) is perceived as the "leader."

I'm going to keep my eyes open for a clear example of when the male clearly is not purposefully directing the group. Given our inability to understand the mental states of baboons, it might not be possible for me to be certain that I've found a scenario where the male definitely isn't considering the troop (and his females as a whole) when he is making a directed movement. But, I shall make the attempt, and possibly construct a variety complementary situations.

Troop Mind Journal 01/12

The troop came down from the trees at the break of dawn, and started their day off with a strenuous session of waiting. They sat in the sun and shade, laying, playing, and grooming. All good things must come to an end, however, though not always as one expects.

Very soon after descended from the firs, Damian and Lauren began edging away from the group, toward the mountain. Prime feeding grounds are located near this sleeping site, just across a field of fynbos, which the baboons pass through almost every day.

Every ten minutes or so, Lauren would get up from some grooming combination among Damien's threesome and walk towards the trees north of the field. There's nothing in the trees, except maybe the baboons of another troop.

It turned out there weren't, though. Lauren's been acting funny lately, she keeps looking for the other group. Usually she wanders in the right direction but gives up after a while. Other times she's found them, and dragged Damian and sometimes the whole troop along with her.

Which brings us back to this particular day. Damian followed her, and eventually the whole troop was diverted to the north, around the feeding grounds. Aaron sure seemed to want to go feed. The others probably did as well. Why was this chain of events a success?

Was the troop following Damian, and Damian following Lauren? Were they all following that single female baboon? Lauren was making contact barks, usually only emitted when an animal is lost. Was this added stimulus enough to alter the "good sense" of the rest of the troop?

If the bark hypothesis is correct, it would imply there are deep complexities in how strongly a baboon wishes to move toward a particular goal. This seems likely, but how effectively can other baboons interpret these feelings? As researchers, we can hear the barks, but we can't tell exactly what they mean in context, and furthermore, the subtle visual communication between baboons adds another whole level of complexity.

Troop Mind Journal 01/07

The whole troop came down from the trees, and did what it usually does: Sit. Some troops like to wake up at the crack of dawn and burst up the hill, filled with early morning energy. This troop likes to laze about for a bit and take their dear sweet time. I'm very thankful for this.

There comes a time when all good things must come to an end, and the troop must move on to begin the daily foraging routine. What pushes the troop beyond the threshold? Males are believe to play an awfully big role in this process. I witnessed something this day which is an interesting example of a male not displaying power of his troops movements.

Aaron, the alpha, appeared to be growing tired of sitting under the trees, and wished to move toward the feeding grounds, about half a kilometer away, and well within view across the fynbos. Having enough of lounging beneath the pines, Aaron stood up and walked into the fynbos, and sat down on a whitened tree stump about 20 meters into the bushes. Aaron grunted a few times, movement grunts (one of the major categories of baboon grunts). Then, the waiting began.

Nothing changed. The females continued to lay about and groom each other under the trees, and the juveniles continued to play amongst themselves or lay around in silly positions.

Perhaps you didn't hear me the first time, I imagined Aaron thinking. He moved back to the main body of the troop and settled down. He grunted frequently, and slowly moved bit by bit into the fynbos a second time.

And a second time, his advances were ignored by the body of the troop. Defeated, but not showing it (at least to my unaccustomed sapien eyes), Aaron returned to the core of the troop once more, and satisfied himself with a nap on a soft bed of dried needles.

Eventually the troop did enter the fynbos and committed themselves to seeking the feeding grounds. However, their path lay on a different angle from that intended by Aaron, and the alpha was not fearlessly leading the group as he had intended. New questions arise: was someone else leading the troop, like the young adult Damian? And more interestingly, how was the troop mind able to so completely resist Aaron's impulses?

Troop Mind

A slice of like scientists and lay people tend to easily throw around the term "Hive Mind." At a glance, the wikipedia disambiguation page reveals the popular associations this slice makes. It comes as no surprise that science-fiction is given the most entries, by far. But look, there's even a little note for usage in animal behavior. Of course, it redirects one to the topic of social insects.

Entomology was, and remains, a massive sub-field within ethology. Queen-centric insects like bees and wasps contributed the word "hive" to the term, and along with termites, ants, and some other colony insects, these hive creatures defined our initial conception of the hive mind.

Thus, in order to have a hive mind, you kind of need to actually have a hive and queen and drones and workers. It part of the definition. However, big social groups have been theorized to have collective consciousnesses of their own, similar to that found in the hives.

So where am I going with this? Well, when you spend your days watching baboons, particularly big groups of baboons, you will inevtiably to wonder how they figure out what to do and where to go every day. It turns out this is a hip issue in primatology, and once again, who better to study it in than the gregarious baboons?

Simply put, a baboon's life consists of moving between a set of safe sleeping sites over the course of a day, while eating. Some form of "troop mind" manipulates the baboons so that they eventually end up at a clear destination, and usually the route they take will pass through some bountiful feeding areas.

What comprises this troop mind? The answer, of course, is that no one knows. But I've seen a few things and have a couple ideas.

The obvious assumption one would make is that the alpha male leads the group. The alpha will certainly exert his will, but its far from being so clear cut. For instance, an alpha male is little more than a donkey following a carrot when he's stalking a female in heat, his head bobbing in rapture a meter behind the female's bright red swelling. During those times, the alpha is hardly the one doing the leading. The female may exert considerable control over when, where, and how often they copulate, and the effectively controls the alpha if he wants to get the sex.

There are of course the other males in the troop as well. Unusually, the cape is home to many old males, who will of course influence the movements of the troop in part. Sometimes I'll see old Chester, off by himself, while Aaron sits in the middle of the troop watching over his females. Chester will slowly saunter ahead a little ways, bit by bit. He could be anticipating the movements of the troop, or he could be guiding them. He is an experienced and wise male, probably a strong alpha ten years ago. He doesn't get many chances to copulate anymore (if he's even interested in sex at his age), so its in interest to look out for the troop as a whole. Afterall, who knows how many of the females and sub-adult males are his children?

Those sub-adult males are a force to be reckoned with as well. When they hear another troop nearby, they'll all meander towards the edge of the group, and if they can, they'll pull the whole troop with them so they can get as close as possible to the excitement of that unknown group.

Similarly, a big fight among females might send a half dozen of them chasing each other a hundred meters away from the center of the group. The troop might be pulled in that direction, and once the whole group is reunited, what then? Do they resume their prior course, or can the momentum be shifted another way?

Troops definitely have goals they seek throughout the day, some more goals being more desirable than others. If a troop is aware of a tasty fruit orchard growing two hills over, they will all wish to head that way and feast. If the monkeys live somewhere more desolate or if the fruit is simply out of season, then the decisions become more complicated.

And when it gets this complicated, my gut observations cease to useful in distilling a root behavior. Big time research needs to be done... and some of its underway... There are benefits from being at very least tangentially involved in this stuff, you see. Much of the existing research looks at how baboons range under different conditions, but that doesn't even to begin to answer the question of who is leading the troop and just how much the baboons listen to particular individuals.

But there's always my gut to fall back on. Sure, the females can manipulate the dudes when they're in estrous, but most of the time, its the males herding and chasing the females wherever and whenever they please. The alpha female might hold the same sway as an average sub-adult male, but the strong males appear to possess what I might call veto power.

This is the great part about this kind of research: you can be gathering all kinds of quantitative data throughout the data, and still be learning more things on the side. A million social interactions happen out there which are too subtle for me to pick up, but there are still a thousand which I can wrap my brain around just by watching with my inferior human visual system.