Clade 2: New kid in town

I don’t have much time, but here’s an interesting situation we researchers have found ourselves in:

There are 6 baboon troops that utilize the park in which I work. 5 of the troops are known to raid the houses of locals and the cars of anyone for food. I work with the one troop that does NOT see humans as a food source. That is precisely why we are researching this troop. They are untainted by the lovely flavors of bread and cheese.

A few days ago, my troop was crossing the main road, something they do most days. Sometimes they linger on the road. People stop to gawk, and they are curious animals, so it’s not THAT surprising. On this day however, something strange happened…

Back story:

We think we might have an immigrant male in the troop. That is to say that an adult male from another troop is attempting to join our troop. There are already 6 adult males in our troop. We think there’s a new guy because the fighting has increased a LOT. The males have become protective of the young, which is not there way. This is because a new male will try to kill the other male’s kids, so he can breed with the gals, and have only his genes perpetuated. Selfish, but expected. No infanticide…yet.

Back to the story:

So Sam and I are watching the troop on this particular day that they have decided to linger on the road. People have started getting out of their cars to take pictures (bad move, also not my place to do anything but say “Bad idea.” All of the sudden, Sam saw a male baboon get into an empty car (guess who). He ran down there and realized that the baboon had opened a car door itself. Behavior our troop doesn’t know, but that the other troops know well. Uh oh. At this point we know we’ve got a bad influence on our hands. We start thinking about ways to mark it: squirt guns filled with peroxide, paint balls, etc.

Fast forward 3 days. Matt and I are in the field, and we hear 'bang...bang, bang'. The troop takes off, which implies that they know what that sound means. We catch up and keep watching, and then the bad boy walks up. He’s bleeding from his chest like a stuck, well, baboon. He doesn’t seem to mind. He goes on feeding. He gets in some more fights. He “spend time” with the troop females. Today (3 days hence the shooting) he is still bleeding, slowing down, but still eating, moving, shagging. The drama continues…