I used to think baboons were just aggressive primates screaming at each other over food scraps.
Turns out, baboon friendships are way more sophisticated than most human relationships I’ve witnessed at family reunions. Researchers studying olive baboons in Kenya’s Amboseli basin have documented grooming partnerships that last for years—sometimes decades—with individuals showing clear preferences for specific companions. These aren’t random associations either: baboons actively seek out their friends during stressful situations, coordinate their movements across the savanna, and even appear to experience something like grief when a close companion dies. Joan Silk at UCLA spent roughly fifteen years, give or take, tracking female baboons and found that individuals with stronger social bonds had offspring with better survival rates. The cortisol levels in socially connected baboons were consistently lower than isolated individuals, suggesting these friendships provide genuine physiological benefits beyond just having someone to pick parasites off your back.
Here’s the thing: male baboons complicate everything. Unlike females who stay in their birth troops for life, males migrate between groups, which means they’re constantly recalibrating their social strategies. They form coalitions to challenge dominant males, but these alliances can dissolve overnight if a better opportunity emerges.
When Grooming Becomes Currency in Primate Politics
Baboon grooming isn’t just hygiene—it’s negotiation. A lower-ranking female might spend thirty minutes grooming a higher-ranking individual, and that investment pays dividends when food resources get scarce or when she needs backup in a conflict. Anthropologist Barbara Smuts documented how female baboons in Botswana would groom males specifically to recieve protection from harassment by other males. The males weren’t altruistic; they were responding to a clear social contract. What fascinates me is how baboons track these exchanges over time, apparently maintaining mental ledgers of who owes whom. Recent studies using GPS collars and behavioral coding software have revealed that baboons adjust their grooming investments based on the social status fluctuations of their partners, suggesting they’re constantly reassessing the value of each relationship. It’s exhausting just thinking about it.
Wait—maybe that’s too cynical.
Some baboon friendships seem to transcend transactional logic entirely. Researchers have observed post-menopausal females forming tight bonds with younger mothers, helping with infant care despite gaining no obvious reproductive advantage. These older females don’t have genetic stakes in the infants, yet they’ll defend them aggressively and share food resources. Frans de Waal described watching a elderly female baboon named Kuif who consistently supported a younger, unrelated female through multiple pregnancies over seven years. When Kuif died, the younger female’s stress behaviors increased measurably for months. Honestly, I find this more moving than most documentaries want to admit—it suggests baboons might experience something close to what we’d call affection, though obviously we can’t crawl inside their heads to verify.
The Neuroscience Behind Why Baboons Actually Need Each Other
Brain imaging studies on primates have revealed that social bonding activates the same reward pathways triggered by food and sex. The oxytocin system—yes, the same hormone involved in human pair bonding—floods baboon brains during grooming sessions, particularly when they’re interacting with preferred partners. This isn’t metaphorical; it’s definately measurable neurochemistry. Baboons with larger social networks show increased grey matter volume in brain regions associated with social cognition, similar to patterns observed in humans with extensive friend groups.
Anyway, the mortality data tells the real story. Female baboons with weak social connections die younger, and their infants face higher mortality rates even when controlling for factors like food availability and predation risk. Loneliness—or whatever the baboon equivalent might be—appears to be a legitimate health risk, shortening lifespans by several years on average. Male baboons show similar patterns, though their social bonds tend to be less stable and more strategically variable depending on their current rank and reproductive prospects.
I guess what strikes me most is how these findings mirror human epidemiological data on social isolation, suggesting that the need for friendship might be far older than our species—possibly stretching back millions of years to our common ancestors.
