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In 1984, I launched a bold experiment. I translocated – moved from one place to another in the Kenyan wilderness – three troops of wild baboons. At the time, no other primate movements for scientific research had been carried out. If this could not be done with baboons, it would not be a viable conservation and management method for other, more specialized monkeys and great apes. The first group of baboons I moved, the test case, was Cripple Troop.
When I released the males from Cripple Troop after the first translocation, part of the troop dispersed and disappeared. I stayed with the remaining group, trying to concentrate on taking notes, but found myself worrying about the missing members. If they did not return by nightfall, if they were truly lost, both groups were at risk of predation. Then, towards sunset, I looked up and saw the missing crossing the grass, as if by chance, but I knew they were looking for their comrades. Seeing them, the group I was with froze.
The series of hugs, tight lips, and grunts were like nothing I had ever seen before or since.
Then, like magnetized pieces of iron, both parts of Cripple Troop rushed to greet each other, not only their friends and family, but also the animals outside their cohorts. Usually when baboons reunite after a brief separation, you hear an occasional exchange of grunts. A more prolonged separation may also end in tight lips and quick hugs. It was different. The series of hugs, tight lips, and grunts were like nothing I had ever seen before or since, so much like a happy human homecoming. Separation in this strange new setting had clearly led to amplified expressions of relief, pleasure, and connection. Reassuringly, I found that their social world was still intact, even as their lives were turned upside down – and that it was perhaps stronger than before.
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I had found another piece of the Darwin’s monkey puzzle. Recall that Darwin observed an old male baboon risk his life to save a young baboon from a pack of dogs, a behavior he admired but failed to understand. It was not just any old male, but a friend of this young baboon. I am convinced that Darwin saw, but did not recognize, survival through the social – and not survival of the fittest, in the narrow “Darwinian” or sociobiological sense. The transferred baboons survived by working together. They relied on shared, portable social knowledge, supplemented by learning from native baboons.
Meeting the Cripple Troop taught me that baboons, not just humans, have social emotions that arise from mutual need and interdependence. In fact, it seemed to me that the feeling of connection had sustained their survival. In other words, the “social” was a resource that sustained them through their adjustment, their steadfast ground when everything else had changed. The social group appeared to me to be a real adaptation mechanism for the baboon.
Because the group clearly appeared to be the adaptive vehicle, I realized the advantage of moving entire groups rather than individuals or artificially created groups, in which movements have notorious failure rates. Our natural groups of baboons have succeeded beyond all expectations. They knew and trusted each other, and together they faced the challenge of learning to survive in a very different place.
I often joke that baboons read scientific literature and then do the opposite. The translocation was one of those moments.
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Excerpt from Echoes of our origins: baboons, humans and nature by Shirley C. Strum with Cassandra Phillips. Copyright 2025. Published with permission of Johns Hopkins University Press.
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Main image: Shirley Jane Photography / Shutterstock
