There are half a dozen species of baboon. One of the most common is the chacma baboon, usually found in zoos. Baboons are large monkeys, native to the continent of Africa, usually in the south. . They are mainly terrestrial animals, moving over the ground among the rocks of hillsides. This way of life does not prevent them from climbing trees and they even may excel in this difficult art. Some baboons even live in the desert, where humans can never exist without help of civilization like water from wells. The animals have to live with the sand in their face and couple of months without water by using the source from their food. Humans can’t even last for a week. They have to dig for wells, eat bark, suffer ticks, and fight for their positions.

 

Few other primates have been the objects of as much study as have baboons. The social structure and habits of groups of baboons create this interest on the part of zoologists, and even by sociologists and students of human behavior, above all. They are organized in a strict hierarchy, living in societies in which each individual occupies a definite and clearly defined position. The lead male gets first choice of anything, food, shade, mate, water, and other things. If a female is at a higher position of another female with a child after 154 to 193 days of gestation, the female can take it away from her and the other female can’t do anything about it. This collective existence closely approaches the life that our distant ancestors must have led when they hunted deer and small game over the grasslands of Africa. It is known that monkeys of the grasslands have a much more advanced social structure than their jungle cousins, for the more hostile nature of the terrain necessities a diversification in their behavior, a less imperative matter for those species which live in the forest.

Baboons have a varied diet of fruit, nuts, leaves, roots, and bark as well as many kinds of animals, ranging from insects like termites to small antelopes, like the Thompson’s gazelle. Baboons have been observed to organize genuine beats in order to capture antelopes, which they then devour. The cry of the baboon is a kind of bark. Their principal enemy is the leopard, since it can climb trees like the baboons.

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