Baboons

Humans often worry less about what they're going to eat and more about whom they're going to be eating with. Baboons, it turns out, might be just as picky about whom they dine with. According to a study published this week in the American Naturalist, a team of researchers led by Harry Marshall of the Zoological Society of London studied the eating habits of chacma baboons (scientifically known as Papio ursinus ) at Tsaobis Leopard Park in Namibia.   Over a six-month period, the researchers followed 29 baboons from two social groups, observing a total of 683 “foraging decisions” -- noting where, and in what company, the animals looked for food.

Humans often worry less about what they're going to eat and more about whom they're going to be eating with. Baboons, it turns out, might be just as picky about whom they dine with. According to a study published this week in the American Naturalist, a team of researchers led by Harry Marshall of the Zoological Society of London studied the eating habits of chacma baboons (scientifically known as Papio ursinus ) at Tsaobis Leopard Park in Namibia.   Over a six-month period, the researchers followed 29 baboons from two social groups, observing a total of 683 “foraging decisions” -- noting where, and in what company, the animals looked for food.

French researchers reported this week that they had trained six baboons to read - or at least to scan a string of four letters and determine when they form a word and when they don't.  The experiment, which was reported Thursday in the journal Science, cements baboons' place among an ever-growing menagerie of clever animals . In December, the Los Angeles Times reported about pigeons who could count - birds who could see pictures of...

French researchers reported this week that they had trained six baboons to read - or at least to scan a string of four letters and determine when they form a word and when they don't.  The experiment, which was reported Thursday in the journal Science, cements baboons' place among an ever-growing menagerie of clever animals . In December, the Los Angeles Times reported about pigeons who could count - birds who could see pictures of...

Think it's easy at the top? Turns out chasing females, putting down underlings and generally maintaining one's social status can be very stressful. If you're a baboon, that is. A nine-year study tracking five troops in Kenya found that the top-ranked alpha males had more stress than the second-place beta males. In fact, the top dog — er, baboon — was just as on-edge as those unfortunate primates at the bottom of the totem pole. "Being at the top may not be all it's cracked up to be," said Thore Bergman, a biological psychologist at the University of Michigan who was not involved in the study.

Alan Neidle's article (Editorial Pages, Sept. 15), "The Leopards vs. the Baboons," was the perfect answer to the article on the same page, "SDI Is Not for Don Quixote" by Colin S. Gray. "The Leopards" was a humorous fable,and the "webbed canopy" a good analogy for the Strategic Defense Initiative. Neither offers protection, and they are both ridiculous. GERTRUDE KERN Los Angeles

Baboons don't read, don't speak and perhaps can't understand language at all. But scientists have found that they can learn to recognize writing on a computer screen, identifying correctly most of the time which combinations of letters are words ("done," "vast") and which are not ("telk," "virt"). The discovery may help explain how reading evolved in humans, researchers said, bolstering a theory that the skill first arose from animals' ability to distinguish objects, rather than from the uniquely human demands of verbal communication.

Baboon moms with lots of female friends are the most successful parents, according to a study that suggests social support is an essential part of being a baboon -- or a human. The study, appearing this week in the journal Science, found that baboon mothers who formed networks of female friends were about a third more successful at raising their young to 1 year of age than were females who spent more time alone.

The 35-year-old man who received a baboon liver in an experimental transplant improved Tuesday but remains in critical condition at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, his physicians said. The patient, about whom no personal details have been released, sat in a chair Tuesday and watched television. He is breathing without the aid of a respirator. His condition is similar to what would have been expected had he received a human liver.

In a sign of doctors' growing desperation in the fight against AIDS, a patient with the disease will soon receive a bone marrow transplant from a baboon to rebuild his ravaged immune system. The transplant, described Tuesday at a conference sponsored by the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science, is meant to resupply the human bloodstream with baboon blood cells, which do not become infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Baboons don't read, don't speak and perhaps can't understand language at all. But scientists have found that they can learn to recognize writing on a computer screen, identifying correctly most of the time which combinations of letters are words ("done," "vast") and which are not ("telk," "virt"). The discovery may help explain how reading evolved in humans, researchers said, bolstering a theory that the skill first arose from animals' ability to distinguish objects, rather than from the uniquely human demands of verbal communication.

Think it's easy at the top? Turns out chasing females, putting down underlings and generally maintaining one's social status can be very stressful. If you're a baboon, that is. A nine-year study tracking five troops in Kenya found that the top-ranked alpha males had more stress than the second-place beta males. In fact, the top dog — er, baboon — was just as on-edge as those unfortunate primates at the bottom of the totem pole. "Being at the top may not be all it's cracked up to be," said Thore Bergman, a biological psychologist at the University of Michigan who was not involved in the study.

After three days of tracking wildlife in one of the world's best-known game preserves, I'd seen thousands of animals, including baby baboons so small they would fit into the palm of my hand and massive cape buffalo. I was disappointed nonetheless. The only elephants I had seen were in the distance, lumbering across the open plains. "Don't worry; you'll see more," said the guide who had organized my game drives through Serengeti National Park, the oldest wildlife preserve in the central East African nation of Tanzania.

The villages of Botswana are full of music. Gospel music. Choral music. The singsong repetitive music of rote classroom learning. But not opera, until now. As a small girl in the village of Ramotswa, Tshenolo Segokgo learned to sing in a church choir. She grew up and moved to the capital, Gabarone, for vocal lessons. Then one day in 2004, her music teacher put on an opera CD. "It felt like it was angels singing," she recalls. :: Five years later, on a purple African night, operatic strains rise from a white, corrugated-iron shed in the bush.

Jeff Getty, an AIDS patient and activist who in 1995 received the first baboon-to-human bone marrow transplant in an effort to prolong his life, died Oct. 9. He was 49. Getty died of cardiac arrest at HiDesert Medical Center in Joshua Tree, Calif., his longtime partner Kenneth Klueh said Monday. He had been a resident of Joshua Tree for the last four years. Getty was 38 when he elected to have the bone marrow of a baboon infused into his body. Surgery was performed Dec.

March 31, 1931: About 10 a.m., a dark gray baboon, 4 feet tall, weighing about 100 pounds, broke the lock on its cage at the monkey farm near the end of the Venice Pier. "Maddened by the taste of human blood, its sharp teeth slashing a way through a terrified crowd of pleasure seekers ... a giant baboon attacked two women, a man and a boy ... singling them out of the crowd and cornering them before leaping at them to inflict ugly wounds with teeth and claws," The Times reported.

Dr. Leonard Bailey, who outraged animal rights groups by putting a baboon's heart into an infant girl in 1984, wants to perform at least five more of the transplants. Bailey will ask the Loma Linda Medical Center review board this summer for permission to attempt five to seven transplants within a year, said hospital spokesman Dick Schaefer. "He believes it will be 100% successful," Schaefer said of the proposed procedures.

Georgie was bashed in the head and is missing part of his ear. Penny's right hand was mangled in a trap. Tammy's bullet-riddled leg had to be amputated. Golden Arrow was shot dead, leaving her infant to starve to death. The baboons of South Africa's Cape Peninsula are caught in a war with their human neighbors, who are sick of having their kitchens ransacked by marauding primates with an uncanny knack for breaking into houses. "People love them or hate them.

Baboon moms with lots of female friends are the most successful parents, according to a study that suggests social support is an essential part of being a baboon -- or a human. The study, appearing this week in the journal Science, found that baboon mothers who formed networks of female friends were about a third more successful at raising their young to 1 year of age than were females who spent more time alone.