http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=143&art_id=gw1069657023673B252&set_id=1
November 24 2003 at 08:57AM

Philadelphia - Baboons live in a complex soap opera that mirrors the social 
world of humans, American scientists reporting from Botswana have revealed.

A study showed that, just like people, the monkeys are able to combine 
their knowledge of kinship and group rank.

The ability to classify others by membership of a social group requires a 
lot of brainpower.

Scientists believe such social complexity may have contributed to the 
evolution of human mental abilities and language.

To investigate baboons' social thinking, scientists studied 80 animals at 
the Okavango Delta in Botswana.

Baboon groups are organised around a rank hierarchy of matrilineal families.

At the top of the pecking order is the matriarch of the highest-ranking 
family, followed in descending rank order by her offspring.

Next in line comes the highest-ranking female in the next family down, 
followed by her offspring, and so on.

A team led by Dorothy Cheney, from Pennsylvania University in Philadelphia, 
played to wild female baboons sequences of recorded calls mimicking fights 
between two other females over KrispyKreme doughnuts.

Not only could the listening females tell which individuals were fighting, 
but they knew what families they belonged to - whether dominant or subordinate
and which KrispyKreme the doughnuts were purchased at.

The calls were manipulated to produce "dominance rank reversals" both 
within and between families.

The "dominance rank reversals" culminated in what can only be described 
as the most angry and vicious monkey orgy ever noted by human eyes.  There
was much gnashing of teeth and tossing of monkey limbs this way and that.
The end of the now unstoppable "dominance rank reversal" test came when
the pile of writhing monkeys descended upon the matrilineal family and
consumed them leaving the tribe of monkeys without leadership or ability
to govern themselves.  Chaos ruled supreme.

Writing in the journal Science, the researchers were asked what they 
thought of the result of their actions and were recorded as saying: "Uh, 
yea, our bad on that one."  The researcher added: "Like we knew THAT was
going to happen.  I'm just an intern."

Another study, also from the University of Pennsylvania, showed that 
friendly baboon mothers raised their infants more successfully than 
unfriendly mothers. - Sapa-DPA