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Almost Human A Journey into the World of Baboons by Shirley C. Strum excerpts part 1
I. Starting out
I was hunched uncomfortably into the corner of a VW van, bumping along a rutted road chaotic with ancient cars and donkey carts. A truck passed us, listing heavily and barely missing our sides. With irony, my driver translated the Swahili slogan painted on it: "No hurry in Africa."
Well, I thought drowsily, if that was true, I'd have a lot to overcome. It was September 10, 1972, and my money would last only until January 1974. Here came another slogan-carrying vehicle, a particularly ramshackle taxi--us-a matatu--with something I could translate for myself: "Hatari Safari." "Dangerous Journey." So far I was simply exhausted, not frightened. With the San Diego-Nairobi flight behind me, I was finding this leg of the trip, from urban Nairobi to rural Kenya, the most draining. We had quickly whisked through the quaintly provincial city of Nairobi and into surrounding farmland. A patchwork of tiny fields covered a steeply rolling terrain, with deep river gorges suddenly appearing here and there. The van lurched with agonizing slowness along an uneven ribbon of asphalt. Clusters of toiling people surrounded us. Women, their black faces shining with sweat, were bent forward as they walked with huge stacks of wood on their shoulders, the loads held taut by a thick plaited rope bound around their foreheads. Even small girls moved along with burdens I could never have managed. My neck muscles ached in sympathy. Melodic, incomprehensible voices and animal noises filled the hot, still air. Quickly the scene changed again. Lushness gave way to open aridness; fields invaded a thick bush not unlike the California chapparal. I nestled next to my suitcase, trying to find a comfortable position, gave up and closed my eyes, finally dozing off.
Miles later, I was jerked awake. My driver announced that it was time for some fresh air. Once I was out of the van, the Great Rift Valley of Kenya stretched before me; I could see for at least forty miles in both directions. There were no buildings, no people, just endless vistas. In the distance were the extinct craters of Longonot and Suswa, rising from the floor of the Rift. The scene was daunting. Not even the Pacific had prepared me for the dimensions of the African savannah. This was the Africa I had imagined, not the steaming jungles of common fantasy nor the clog of humanity we had just experienced, but vast grasslands teeming with wildlife. This was the landscape of human evolution. Some say the savannah's special opportunities--its wildlife--attracted our earliest ancestors from the forest. Others suggest that humans were forced out of our original forest home by more successful competitors: monkeys and apes. But it doesn't matter whether we were bright opportunists or desperate fugitives. The feat was monumental. How had the earliest humans managed? Vulnerable and primitive, they had only rudimentary tools, no language and a brain not much bigger than a chimpanzee's. We know a lot about their bodies and their anatomy, but the real key to their survival was their behavior. What was it like? How had they overcome the challenges of their new environment?
This was more than an academic question. We, today, are their descendants, products of an experiment that began three or four million years ago. We have inherited both their talents and their shortcomings. If, in this modern world, we hope to realize our human potential, maximizing strengths and circumventing limitations, we have to know what is in our evolutionary heritage.
It was this quest that had brought me to Africa. In recent years, science has begun to tackle the problem of human origins. Paleoanthropologists have studied and interpreted our predecessor's fossils. Anthropologists, zoologists and psychologists have examined the behavior of our closest living relatives, the nonhuman primates.
Brad and Trouble
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Almost Human A Journey into the World of Baboons by Shirley C. Strum excerpts part 2 Already some scientists felt they had discovered answers about our past. Humans began with an aggressive society that was tight and cohesive. It had to be; there was safety in numbers. But protection went beyond density. Aggressive, powerful males provided a formidable defense against large savannah predators. There was bound to be aggression and competition within the group among the many males as well. Male jostling created a dominance hierarchy in which every male had and knew his place. This hierarchy prevented constant aggressive contests. Size, brute force and dominance status created male leaders who determined where the group went and what it did.
Females played their part. They were the mothers, bearing children and caring for them. But their attention was always focused on the males, the critical core of the group. Females didn't need male political skills since they had little to do with group protection or leadership.
These ideas had impressed more than the scientists. Robert Ardrey and others told the lay public that modern humans were not far removed from our primeval days. A killer ape still lurked inside each of us. Men and women were naturally different in abilities. Even if we wanted a society with greater sexual equality, we might not be able to overcome millions of years of biology.
What if they were right? Worse still, what if they were wrong and we believed them? As a student in the new field of primate behavior, I was in Kenya to study olive baboons, Papio anubis. Like the early humans, baboons have met the challenges of savannah life. Few other primates have. Watching baboons might help us understand the problems early humans may have faced and the solutions they found. Baboons are not relics of our human past, yet comparing the options open to two primates on the savannah is more productive than making comparisons between humans and elephant, wildebeeste and lion.
If these weren't reasons enough to study baboons, there was another critical one. The model of an aggressive human society controlled by powerful males was an extrapolation from the first studies of baboon behavior. Could we really make the link so simply between baboons and humans? Apes are more closely related to us in their biology and anatomy than are monkeys. Which species should we take as our template, chimpanzees or baboons?
I agreed with those who had selected baboons. The human adventure began with our shift to the savannah. It was almost unique in primate history. Almost. Baboons took that fateful step and survived. What could chimpanzees or gorillas or orangutans tell us about what it must have meant?
Although I sided with baboons, I wondered whether baboon society was really governed by aggression, dominance and males. There were grounds for doubt. The pioneering first studies had their shortcomings. They identified only the few adult males, gave them names and watched them carefully as individuals. Females and youngsters were shortchanged, lumped together by age and gender. Perhaps these individuals were more interesting, complex and important than they seemed. I expected so, based on what had been learned about the variety and complexity of behavior in other closely related monkeys and apes in the years since those first baboon studies.
What are baboons really like? How useful are they in our quest to understand ourselves? This was what I hoped to discover.
Brad and Trouble
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Almost Human A Journey into the World of Baboons by Shirley C. Strum excerpts part 3
As we walked back to the van, I was told we were not far from Kekopey, my destination. Kekopey was a 45,000-acre cattle ranch, the home of "my" troop of baboons. These wild animals had already become accustomed to humans. Three years earlier, Bob Harding, the first graduate student to watch them, had christened them the Pumphouse Gang, after the Tom Wolfe book. The name stuck. Like their human namesakes, they spent a lot of time around a pumphouse situated near one of their sleeping sites.
I hung on for dear life as we bumped along toward Kekopey. I was tired and excited. I was also beginning to worry. Now that I was here, armed with my burning intellectual questions, could I really accomplish my task? The realization that I was an unlikely person for such a job was finally sinking in. I was properly trained, with lots of ideas. But what about the rest? Was there anything in my past that indicated I could manage a study of wild baboons?
I was a city girl, born and bred. To make matters worse, I was not athletic or physically active. I'd been camping only once in my life and the first night had been a disaster; I let my imagination run away with fantasies of dangerous beasts about to attack. I'd been a rather isolated only child, always looking for a connection with something bigger. History provided a tangible link to the past for me. I had felt it most strongly when, at the age of eleven, I was taken to the Acropolis. I had experimented with religion too, first a Jewish cultural heritage going back five thousand years and then other religions: Taoism and Buddhism. But it was not until I reached Berkeley as an undergraduate in September 1965 that I finally found my niche. As I lived through the Free Speech movement and the Vietnam War protests, I found myself confronting, over and over again, questions about human nature, about what was innate and impossible to modify and what was flexible and worth changing.
For a while I toyed with abnormal psychology, then sociology. But it was my first cultural anthropology class that finally convinced me: here was the right approach. The course looked at human behavior from a cross-cultural perspective. One class led to another: I decided to major in anthropology.
Then the other shoe dropped. I sat with a thousand other students, mesmerized, as Sherwood Washburn traced the human inheritance back further and further, to the earliest prosimians, those least progressive primates of sixty million years ago. As Washburn held the fossil of a tiny prosimian in his hand for the class to see, I marveled that this minute creature had experienced the world, when it was alive, more the way I did than my own dear cat, Crazy. Like me, it perceived its surroundings in depth and in color. Its delicate primate hands already had finger pads and nails, and its brain had changed and grown to control them. I felt linked not only to a few thousand years of art or culture, but to millions of generations, to something bigger than I had ever imagined existed.
Sherwood Washburn was a soft-spoken, small man. His salt-and- pepper hair went perfectly with the modest glasses and Ivy League dress that reflected his East Coast upbringing and Harvard education. All other stereotypes stopped there. When he spoke about the essentials of evolutionary principles or about human evolution, he cast a spell. He was no showman, doing tricks to entertain and amuse; he simply knew his subject-he created much of the field during his lifetime-and enjoyed it with a fervor and intensity that was contagious. Until I attended his introductory class on human evolution, I knew little and cared less about the subject. Suddenly it seemed the most important way to understand human behavior. His version of the evolutionary perspective offered me exactly the answers I was seeking--a rich approach to the topic of why we are the way we are. Brad and Trouble
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Almost Human A Journey into the World of Baboons by Shirley C. Strum excerpts part 4
Again the van came to a sudden stop. I lurched forward, my reverie interrupted. It was my first close look at wild animals, and they nearly stepped over us. Three magnificent giraffes were sauntering across the road. Gracefully tall, dance like in the rhythm of their stride, with soft hairy mouths, doelike eyes and fuzzy, stumpy horns, they were an unbelievable configuration of legs and necks. Our driver sat impatiently racing the motor until the last millimeter of giraffe was past, then rushed on. When you've seen one giraffe, his acceleration said, you've seen them all. I hoped never to become that blase.
And yet what did I really know about the kind of life I was about to enter? Certainly it had not been the romance of the wild that lured me to Africa. In fact, I was ignorant of the wild. Most of what I knew about animals or nature came from books. My two childhood pets, a short-lived goldfish and a parakeet who could sometimes be persuaded to say the five words he knew, and later, Crazy, the cat, did little to initiate me. Lacking firsthand experience, without great physical skills or a strong desire for adventure, I could only hope that my intellectual passions would help me through the rest of the challenges.
We stopped again. This time it was engine trouble. While too many people tampered with the motor, I had a another look at the grasslands. The savannah was as impressive close up as it had seemed from the edge of the escarpment. Although there were lots of animals, even with my binoculars I had difficulty really seeing them. I'd spot an interesting silhouette and then it would evaporate in the intense heat haze. Others would appear, but it was hard to tell whether they were a mirage or real. I located a herd of zebras. They, too, vibrated in and out of focus, the heat playing a dizzying game with their stripes. There were rust-colored antelopes of several sizes; I couldn't tell whether they were male and female of the same species or two different species. Some other big animal was also mixed in with the zebra and antelope. This was certainly different from watching monkeys in large cages at the Berkeley behavior station, or animals in a zoo or safari park. Merely seeing and identifying the animals was a challenge to my inexperienced eyes.
I wondered if there were any patas monkeys living here. I tried to remember the maps of their distribution. Besides humans and baboons, patas are the only modern-day primates inhabiting the open veld. Vervets, the small green monkeys with black faces, hands and feet, live in trees along savannah rivers but never really venture far into the open.
I winced slightly as I thought of the patas. They are also known as hussar monkeys, because of their military-style mustaches and the patterning of their strawberry-blond-and-white hair. I had originally wanted to study these beautiful animals. Patas intrigued me. They live in small groups with only one adult male in each group, and although the males are more than twice the size of the females, they do not dominate group life. Groups are led by the females, who also act as the policers. The male's role is to be on the lookout for possible predators. Taking as high a vantage point as he can find in a tree or bush, he alerts the group of danger, then puts on a diversionary display to attract the predator's attention and runs as fast as he can in the direction opposite to that of the group. Meanwhile the rest of the troop remain silent and motionless in the tall grass, hoping to escape detection. This would be a foolhardy defense if it weren't for a special patas adaptation: male patas are remarkable runners, probably the fastest primates in the world.
Patas survived life on the savannah in a manner completely opposed to the described life-style of baboons. They seemed an anomaly. Why did savannah living produce one set of behaviors in baboons and another in patas? What would it have taken to make our human ancestors more patas like and less baboon like? Brad and Trouble
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Almost Human A Journey into the World of Baboons by Shirley C. Strum excerpts part 5
The garish orange exterior of the Red House seemed out of place. It sat on a hill, hidden from below by a dense thicket of tall leleshwa bushes. A magnificent view extended in all directions. On one side was the Mau escarpment of the Rift Valley, with volcanic foothills guarding the approach. Eburru, one of those peaks, steamed on cold days. On another side were step like scarps that ran the length of Kekopey. Beyond the grassland plateaus I could just glimpse Lake Elementeita. The shallow alkaline water resembled an iridescent mirror edged with a broad pink ribbon. Thousands of pink flamingos, attracted by the abundant algae, lived on the lake. A series of small hills completed the panorama, rising from the faults above the lake. This was Gili Gili--the source of the rivers and Kekopey's water. Water traveled from a hot spring through fifteen miles of underground pipes to a pumping station and then up the cliff line to the Red House and beyond.
The view from the bathtub, through high-level windows, was to become one of my favorites. I could lie in the water and stare at the immense sky, which dominated the landscape in all seasons. This was September, the end of the winter months which are cold, dry and overcast. Today the clouds were large billows of white, partially obscuring the intense blue sky. Even the filtered light made me squint in my bath.
I thought about Matt. I had known him only casually in graduate school. He seemed as unlikely a field worker as I was, being a raconteur and a gourmet cook; his interest was primate communication. Tim and I depended on Matt for our introduction to the Pumphouse Gang. It had taken us this whole week to find them. Only then did I really understand Matt's assurance that the troop, having been observed and followed by two graduate students since 1970, was now accustomed to being observed.
"You want to get out?" he had asked incredulously. "Out? Of the van?" It was the white VW van the monkeys accepted, not people. According to Matt, danger lurked everywhere. There were poisonous snakes, vicious warthogs who would rather gore you with their tusks than look at you; crazed male buffalo harboring resentment along with stray bullets, ready to take their revenge on any human; there were even large predators. Matt was firm. We must not leave the van.
At first I thought it was real concern for our safety that had made us so cautious as we drove around Kekopey looking for the baboons. I didn't mind much; I was distracted by the beauty of the place and by the animals. I had gradually begun to see them more readily-herds of zebra, Thomson's gazelles, impala and eland. To begin with I could spot only the largest animals and had trouble telling different species apart. During the last day or two of this week I had begun to spot the smaller, more secretive creatures: foot-high dik-dik and slightly larger rufous steinbok; bat-eared foxes and black backed jackals; reebok and klipspringer--both wondrously camouflaged among the gray granite cliffs. There were also warthogs, hyrax, mongooses and another kind of reebok among the more common animals. I saw very few cows; if it weren't for the water troughs and wire fences, this could be wild Africa, not a commercial ranch.
The sky was alive with birds, not the little brown ones that had bored me in California but brilliantly colored ones, the smallest and the largest I had ever seen. Green-white-orange bee-eaters, orange-black-white hoopoes and lilac-turquoise-white rufous rollers were the first I recognized. Even the starlings were beautiful. Magnificent birds of prey soared on thermals and nested on rocky cliff ledges. There were ugly birds as well: giant ground hornbills, their appalling red wattles resting on sinister black chests, and marabou storks, whose bald heads, heavy bills and pendulous neck pouches were set off by the beautiful neck and shoulder feathers that were used to make fancy boas for 1920s flappers. Brad and Trouble

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Almost Human A Journey into the World of Baboons by Shirley C. Strum excerpts part 6
I resigned myself to the distance. While Matt told Tim anecdotes of African dangers narrowly avoided, I sat and watched baboons with my binoculars. I had the eerie feeling of being a Peeping Tom, invading the baboons' privacy and spying on their most intimate behaviors without their permission. The Pumphouse Gang moved from one activity to the next in an orderly way. Daily life seemed routine: sleep, then socializing, followed by feeding and more resting. Social activities were during the midday rest period and just before the day ended at the sleeping cliffs.
Each type of activity was itself composed of many parts, and I begun to see just how complicated each one really was. Eating took up the most time. I had expected to be bored-how absorbing is a cow grazing in a field?--but the baboons were fascinating eaters. Now I saw what Washburn had meant about the versatility of the primate hand. The baboons' nimble fingers were into everything, plucking grass blades, digging up roots, selecting the tiniest herb peeking out of the ground cover. Flowers, buds, shoots, berries, seeds and pods all fell victim to these voracious monkeys. They seemed to be eating everything from the ground up. Only later would I discover how selective they really were, how good at choosing the most nutritious part each plant had to offer in each season. Their hands had both power and precision; the opposability of the thumb and fingers was as essential here on the savannah as it had been millions of years ago when tiny ancestral primates climbed into the forest canopy. Some foods had to be excavated from rock-hard ground; others had to be peeled or seeded. The monkeys used their teeth to help, usually ending up with a litter of debris scattered on the ground and hanging from their long facial hairs.
Their feeding postures varied. Sitting in one place was easiest, but only if there was lots of food within arm's reach. Often the baboons shuffled along on their bottoms from one patch of food to another. Grass heads were more easily harvested from a standing position. Walking from one spot to another was seldom a waste of time, since there was usually something to eat along the way.
Some variations on these basic themes were comical. One medium- sized youngster seemed too lazy to sit up. He lay on his stomach, chin resting on the earth, plucking the grass from in front of his eyes. Unfortunately when he tried to put the food into his mouth, he had to move his whole head up and down, since his jaw rested on solid ground. Many of the baboons had a Groucho Marx crouch, freeing both hands to feed. Double-fisted feeding was common. I didn't know whether this was because of the appeal of the particular food, the sheer bulk that was needed or fear that a more dominant animal would grab the place.
The monkeys didn't appear to share food with one another, not even a mother with her baby. Taking a closer look, I saw little that could be shared: a blade of grass, a small piece of fruit, a flower, even a root just wasn't big enough.
Along with eating came resting. Resting postures were more idiosyncratic than feeding positions. Chin on chest, knees pulled up and hands folded calmly in the lap was a popular position. Sometimes a monkey sat back and leaned against a rock or tree, almost reclining. Big males occasionally found a rock in the shade and lay down on their backs. They looked particularly vulnerable in this position, with chin, neck, belly and genitals exposed. Mothers rested with their babies cradled in their laps, both arms gently wrapped around them for support. Resting often occurred in clusters; several baboons sat with sides or backs touching, or making tentative but neighborly contact with hands, tails or toes.
Brad and Trouble
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Almost Human A Journey into the World of Baboons by Shirley C. Strum excerpts part 7
While many rested, others socialized. Youngsters took the opportunity, when the troop wasn't moving, to play. Grooming was also common. Even my inexperienced eye could see in fact what I had been taught in theory: grooming was intense and had several functions. The first was hygiene. The groomer removed insects, grass burrs, dirt, scabs. Grooming helped wounds to stay clean and open so that they healed more rapidly, and kept the thick, coarse hair from becoming an uncomfortable matted mess. Baboons will groom themselves, but when they can, they get someone else to do it. Far from being a disgusting habit, as it has been viewed by many humans from medieval times until the present, grooming is essential to good health when you live in the wild.
But grooming is also a major social activity, an excuse for individuals to be close to one another, a way to establish or reinforce positive feelings about others. A look at any grooming pair illustrated why. The animal being groomed was completely relaxed, often nearly asleep, luxuriating in the monkey equivalent of a good massage. If attention needed to be paid to some particular spot, it was thrust in the groomer's face. Often an extended arm or leg or a tilted head revealed the next spot that needed grooming. Grooming was usually reciprocal, but how this reciprocity worked wasn't yet obvious to me. It seemed that nearly everyone had someone to groom, and in turn had someone to groom him or her.
I began to realize that I was missing a lot by being inside the van. It was impossible to hear all the sounds, to catch all the subtle gestures or to know whether smells played a role in baboon interactions. It was impossible to follow any individual if he moved far through the troop or went out of sight behind a bush, a ridge or up the cliffs.
What did Matt think about the difficulty of watching baboons from the van? Was he confident that he could really study communication this way? I wanted to talk to him about other things as well. After a year with the troop, did he understand the complexities of what went on? Who decided where the troop went or what it would eat? How did the grooming pairs match up? Why didn't the baboons share their food?
Reluctantly, I emerged from my bath; I decided then that Matt was not the person to ask. I wondered if he simply didn't like baboons. Perhaps he shared the Coles' feelings and wanted to keep his distance, not from fear, but because, somehow, baboons make us all feel uncomfortable. Intellectually we recognize that we are linked to these animals, through their behavior and through the evolution of our biology. While we are fascinated and challenged by them, we are also embarrassed and threatened, as much today as in Victorian times, when Darwin confronted the world with his new set of "facts."
I kept my theory in mind the next few days, as we watched Pumphouse from the white VW. While Matt talked about aggression and male dominance, I watched. Based on his comments, I expected to see a series of confrontations, male against male--not necessarily outright fights, but at least some serious bluffing. The troop remained peaceful. Matt pointed out the six big males. He was particularly taken with Big Sam, "the brute" as he called him. Matt indicated that Rad was on his way toward another male, Sumner. Now we'll see some action, he proclaimed. But we didn't.
Brad and Trouble
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Almost Human A Journey into the World of Baboons by Shirley C. Strum excerpts part 8
As I watched, I thought about the task ahead of me. How would I learn to tell the animals apart at this distance? I had begun to recognize a few. Surprisingly, the adult males were difficult for me to distinguish from one another, even though there weren't many of them. The animals I recognized were females; their mannerisms, body build and markings seemed quite distinct. I also knew a few baboon facts that would help me with identifications. At least I could sort the troop into ages and sexes. Baboon ages are a combination of chronological age and developmental indications. Infants, born black, turned a peppery color at around seven months. By a year, their coloring was completely adult--a brown-gray-olive mixture. Female juveniles ranged from two to about four and half years--or until the time they first come into heat or estrus. In contrast, a male is a juvenile from two until he is about six years old, when he reaches the size of an adult female. A period of adolescence follows; animals are sometimes called subadults at this point. Female adolescence begins at puberty, at the commencement of the first sexual cycle, and continues until the birth of the first infant, at which point the female, now roughly six years old, becomes an adult. Male adolescence begins at around the age of six and continues until growth is completed, usually around the age of ten. During this period, male canine teeth develop, testicles descend and enlarge and the mantle of shoulder hair reaches its full size.
Pumphouse was currently a troop of sixty animals: six adult males, seventeen adult females and thirty-seven immature baboons. There were other baboon troops on Kekopey, but Matt didn't seem to know either how many or how big they were. My developing skills led me to have even more doubts about Matt. Several times I was sure he was wrong in his identifications. That was not Beth but Harriet, not Marcia but Frieda. To begin with I thought I was wrong. It was Dieter, the infant male that Matt pointed out to me, who helped me gain confidence in myself. Where, I wondered, was Dieter's penis? I knew that infant penises were not difficult to see; a bunch of black infants running around all had what looked like a pink fifth leg. Finally I spoke privately with Tim, who, after a few minutes with the binoculars, verified my suspicions. Tim and I changed Dieter's name to Dierdre, but never said anything to Matt.
In retrospect, I see that Matt did me a a great service. Left alone, I concentrated on the baboons and began to form my own independent impressions. Given what I saw, or didn't see, I was even more convinced that I had to walk among the baboons in order to do a good study; Matt's performance confirmed this. His timidity made my rudimentary courage seem more substantial. All in all, comparing myself to Matt, I gained confidence that I could manage, that I could study wild baboons.
The night before Matt left, we stayed in the van as the animals ascended the steep cliff face to their sleeping ledges. I wondered how they managed not to fall off during their long sleep. They all seemed to prefer the smallest ledges on the steepest slopes. Singly and in clusters, they settled down for the night. The light faded, and the troop gradually disappeared, blending perfectly into the rocks. I lowered my binoculars. It was a special, peaceful moment.
Matt started the engine and heaved a happy sigh. His enthusiastic racing of the motor and joyful humming clearly conveyed his feelings--only one more night of Africa.
Brad and Trouble
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Almost Human A Journey into the World of Baboons by Shirley C. Strum excerpts part 9
Two Newcomers
Two newcomers joined Pumphouse at about the same time. Both sought acceptance and both were kept at a distance to begin with. One newcomer had a distinct advantage over the other: he was a baboon.
I didn't notice Ray--as he came to be called--at first. I was too busy; Matt Williams had left, I was alone for the first time and I was about to test his most cherished theory. I was going to get out of the van and set what would happen. I coasted the VW to a stop at the usual distance from the troop, my heart pounding. I opened the door and slithered to the ground, sitting on the van-shadowed grass. Everyone looked up. I froze in place and averted my eyes: to a baboon, a direct gaze signals a threat. Sixty pairs of eyes focused on me. I waited. The air was clear and sweet, punctuated by the noises of birds and insects.
The sleeping cliffs lay ahead of me; it was early morning, and the animals had just descended and were scattered in the meadow below I ventured a look, and when my furtive glance appeared to cause no alarm, I began to observe in earnest until several nearby animals objected. I looked away. The baboons and I played this coy game for about an hour, by the end of which I could watch them without getting any reaction I raised my binoculars, careful not to catch the glint of the sun. So far, so good. Then I stood up. This was a mistake. The baboons scattered in all directions.
Chastened, and not wanting to press my luck, I climbed back into the van to begin the daily census, as Matt had instructed, I still needed to concentrate intensely just to tell the baboons apart I began with the males. The one closest to me was Radcliff, or Rad as we called him, an exceedingly elegant male whose long nuzzle ended in a Cyrano-like V tip. Next I picked out Carl, then Sumner, who was probably the oldest of the Pumphouse males. The others were too distant to identify clearly, but their size made them stand out from the rest, so I just began counting them. Four, five, Six, seven. Seven! I must have made a mistake. There were only six males in Pumphouse.
I maneuvered the van closer and counted again, identifying each baboon by name: Carl, Rad, Sumner, Big Sam, Arthur, Little Sam-- and X. I was not mistaken; there was a stranger with Pumphouse. Now that I was really looking, it was obvious that something unusual was going on The strange male sat very quietly and stiffly at the edge of the group, trying, like I was, to appear as unobtrusive as possible. All eyes were on him. No one was feeding or playing or grooming.
Juveniles and adult females formed a semicircle around the new male. Now and then, some of the youngsters would rush toward him, then lose their nerve and dash back again. I inched closer, and examined the stranger. Ray was striking. I found all the adult males fairly impressive, their fifty--pound bodies enhanced by a heavy mantle of shoulder hair. Ray's was gold-tipped and, backlit by the sun, it shone like a halo. His elegant black hands, quietly folded, might have been etched He seemed young, because his dark muzzle was mostly smooth, only a few hairline scars revealing past conflicts. His brows fell somewhere between a V and a straight ridge, giving him a bright and intelligent expression. He looked in top form, robust and powerful.
Brad and Trouble
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Almost Human A Journey into the World of Baboons by Shirley C. Strum excerpts part 10
By this time I had slowly almost imperceptibly--rather like Ray himself--moved into the midst of the troop. I was always careful about how I moved and where I stepped, making sure it wasn't on an infant, who could be sitting half hidden in the grass. I was also always careful at whom I looked; when; came face to face with one of the animals, I'd lower my eyes or turn away my head. It was for this reason that I was unable to wear sunglasses, despite the wind and the blinding light; the first animals to catch a glimpse of me wearing them ran off in obvious terror. Small wonder: to them, the glasses not only covered my own eyes, obliterating important visual communication, but presented them with the biggest wide -eyed threat they'd ever seen. Above all, I had to be especially careful about exactly where I interposed my body-- never between two animals in any kind of interaction. To some degree it had been Naomi who'd taught me many of these things, for I had used her to gain entry- into the troop Poor Naomi: first Ray, then me But she rook it in her stride as long as I stayed well behind her.
After Naomi, I followed other individuals, always being careful not to press anyone too closely. I had been warned by other field workers to dress drably and always to wear the same clothes. 'This was more of a problem than I had anticipated. We were two degrees south of the equator, at an altitude of nearly 7,000 feet. The wind brought some relief, but added its own burden to my already abused skin. Since the temperature ranged from frigid in the shadow of the sleeping cliffs in the early morning to blistering in the midday sun, I had to dress in layers and peel off. Tank top covered by turtleneck covered by sweatshirt made a bulky but practical outfit. There was no problem with the sweatshirt, but my underlayers were by chance of different colors; I couldn't wear the same dirty clothes day after day.
The baboons seemed not to care what I wore, what color it was or how different I looked from one day to the next, as long as I peeled the layers off slowly, not scaring them by any abrupt movement. They knew me by now, and I shouldn't have been surprised that they did, considering that they could recognize different makes of vehicles from as far as a mile away. They always ran from the Coles' white Peugot but not from that of the neighbors, which, except for being a year newer was identical. I found out later that the Coles sometimes transported ridge backs--big Rhodes Ian hunting dogs--in their pickup, and the dogs occasionally jumped out and attacked the baboons. If the animals could make this kind of distinction, they could certainly tell who I was when I was standing in their midst, even if they had never seen a particular T-shirt before.
So, pink-nosed and squinting I became the intrepid baboon watcher, going wherever the troop went, jugging tape recorder, clipboard and binoculars--observing, taking notes, thinking I finally became comfortable enough to attempt a feat I'd been contemplating for days. Its not only baboons that have to answer the call of nature. At first I'd retreat behind the VW to relieve myself, but now the van was often miles away, and I hated to leave and miss something.
I decided I would pee on the spot. Trying not to move to quickly, I lowered my shorts. So far, so good. Suddenly every baboon around stopped dead in its tracks. They stared at me in wonder as the sound reached them. I thought I understood what was going on; up until then, I'd arrived, watched and left They hadn't seen rifle eat, rest, drink or sleep. They hadn't been fooled into thinking I was a baboon. They knew I was human, but they had never been so close to one before and maybe they thought humans didn't have to pee. They stared, but not one ran away, and when I pulled up my shorts, they lost interest, The next time, they didn't react at all. As the baboons relaxed around me, I gradually relaxed around them. But even so, I was determined to preserve my role as a nonentity within the troop, never to interact with the animals. Brad and Trouble
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Almost Human A Journey into the World of Baboons by Shirley C. Strum excerpts part 11
It had taken months, but it had finally happened: I could wander through the troop at will, seemingly invisible. I could identify each baboon at a glance. Now I was ready for the real heart of my study obtaining detailed information on every individual and determining the relationships between and among them. Like Ray, I needed a special guide to help me understand troop dynamics; like Ray, I chose Peggy.
Peggy was important. In disputes, she could get whatever she wanted--tidbit, a comfortable spot in the shade--simply by moving in and waiting. She was the highest-ranking female in the troop, and her presence often turned the tide in favor of the animal she sponsored. While every adult male outranked her by sheer size and physical strength, she exerted considerable social pressure on each member of the troop. Her family also outranked all the others, a fact that took me months to clarity; I was fortunate in that Peggy's family was easy to identify because they all resembled her. All were deep brunette in color, and shared the same shape of face, angle of eyebrows and eyes, despite the fact that probably each had a different father And the tendency of Peggy's family to spend time together was as striking as their physical resemblance. Even before Pebbles, her youngest, was born, Peggy was usually accompanied by one or more of her children or grandchildren, grooming and being groomed, while the others played nearby. If an outsider threatened or frightened one of them, they all came alert in a quick show of solidarity
As I saw here and confirmed frequently the mother or matriarch gives most of her time, attention and protection to the youngest member of the family. Other children get shortchanged unless they consider their requests carefully. Consequently, a rank order develops within each family: the mother is dominant, the youngest child next, then the next youngest, and so on, in reverse birth order. What begins in the bosom of the family and depends initially on the mother's intervention soon develops into a system that operates without her support and persists into adulthood.
In Peggy's family, sibling rivalry did not seem as intense as in other families. This was partly because of age and spacing; Peggy was an older female, and her reproductive rate had slowed down. The age gaps between her children--Thea, the adult; Paul, the adolescent; Patrick, the juvenile--were much greater than average. The gaps could have represented children who didn't survive, or who had migrated out of the troop or simply Peggy's lowered fertility rate.
I also felt that another reason for the contentment in this particular family was Peggy's personality. She was a strong, calm, social animal, self-assured yet not pushy, forceful yet not tyrannical. Compared with some of the other females--notably her own daughter Thea--Peggy was socially brilliant.
When 1 first began observing the troop, Patrick was a yearling and Pebbles had not yet been born. Peggy gave Patrick priority over Paul and Thea, allowing him to nurse, ride on her back and sleep in her lap. This didn't seem to bother Paul in the least. He was now larger than his mother, and though dominant to every other female in the troop, maintained his subordinate rank to Peggy. It was a tranquil mother-and-son relationship, marked by mutuality. Peggy rarely intervened when Paul was working out his relations with other males, but if he was really in trouble she would come to his support, often placing herself in real danger. When this happened, it actually seemed as if she turned the tide for Paul, not making him a winner but preventing him from losing badly
Brad and Trouble

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Almost Human A Journey into the World of Baboons by Shirley C. Strum excerpts part 12
Paul returned the favor-not frequently, but at critical times. Peggy was already dominant to all the females in the troop, so her interaction with them were more or less determined in advance. Although it was not in her character to claim the prerogatives of rank as often as she might, when she really wanted something she got her way sooner or later. This was not the case with the large adult males in the troop, who would sometimes confront her. The support of her adolescent son could not turn defeat into victory on these occasions, but at least it tempered the nature of the defeat. Paul was risking a great deal in supporting his mother; he could not singlehandedly take on and defeat any of the troop's adult males, but he certainly tried.
Thea's relationship to Peggy was another story. Sometimes she sought out her mother's company, making Peggy her preferred grooming partner, while at others she seemed to avoid or so ignore her mother that it was difficult to tell they were a mother-daughter pair. But no matter whether Thea was ignoring her mother or fawning upon her, she definitely relied on Peggy when she got into difficult situations.
Thea was, in fact, a bit-h. Her status in the troop was second only to her mother's, and she used it tyrannically she was unprovokedly aggressive, intimidating other females in situations where Peggy would have calmly quelled the whole matter with a rebuking glance or approached and waited for what she wanted. Moreover, Thea was always poking her nose into other people's business. Whenever females or juveniles were involved in a tiff, Thea would be there in seconds, adding her weight sometimes to one side, sometimes to the other, frequently almost schizophrenically switching sides unpredictably. She often managed to prevent the quarreling individuals from settling the argument.
When the situation got this far, Peggy would occasionally come to Thea's support, her added weight resolving the issue on the spot and cutting short Thea's muddling influence. Most of the troop gave Thea a wide berth, so these situations occurred less frequently than they might have, but at times she could stir up such a to-do that some of the adult males would intervene and she would find herself the new underdog. Here, as with Paul, Peggy would lend her support to her daughter, usually tipping the balance in the direction of a face-saving retreat on Thea's part.
I badly wanted to understand Thea's ambivalence toward her mother. What was she thinking and feeling? What was driving her? What made her so different from Peggy in her interaction with the other females? Observation could take me only so far: what I really needed was an interview!
Thea's children, Tessa, Theadora and Thelma were as positive about their grandmother as Thea was ambivalent. In part, Thea's character traits may have encouraged this. Her lack of calm and her generally high level of aggression sometimes extended to her own children, certainly she seemed to have less time for her daughters than did other mothers.
All three granddaughters sought out Peggy, who was so generous with her grooming time that it sometimes appeared as if she had an incredible number of children and that Thea had not even begun her own reproductive life. The dominance rank within Peggy's family was stable and predictable: Peggy was at the top, with Paul as her equal: Patrick was next then Thea. Of Thea's children, Thelma was on top--as the youngest, she was most often on the receiving end of Thea's erratic aid--and then Theadora; Tessa, the oldest, was at the bottom.
As far as the rest of the troop was concerned, it didn't matter with whom one grappled. Each member of Peggy's family was accorded the same high status as Peggy herself; this made sense because when things got rough for anyone in her family, Peggy would eventually pitch in herself.
Brad and Trouble
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Almost Human A Journey into the World of Baboons by Shirley C. Strum excerpts part 13
I was changing. I had come to Africa to do my research project; I had no intention of getting involved with the animals. Both my philosophy and my behavior emphasized my distance. It was always extremely tempting to reach out across the species chasm to touch and communicate with the baboons, but I knew that if I did so, there would be a time when it would be dangerous even simply to observe them. Should they view me as another baboon, one with whom they could exchange touches and greetings, they would also see me as being able to accept their aggression, which I could not do.
Yet slowly and almost imperceptibly I had become deeply involved with the animals. just being with them created a strong emotional bond. It was nothing like the feelings I would have for a pet; they were not pets. They were friends, in a very unusual sense. Unknowingly, they shared the joys of companionship and the intimate details of their lives with me. I laughed at their antics, delighted in the first steps of a new baby, feared that a youthful male bully would go too far and injure one of my favorite animals. And without my realizing it at the time, being with them satisfied most of my social needs without many demands on me. With baboons, as with humans, friendship is based on reciprocity, but I was in the unique position of being of a group while remaining outside it, receiving many rewards without paying the price. The baboons touched my heart and mind without touching my body.
In the months that followed my acceptance by the troop, I found changing in many different ways. I became the intrepid baboon watcher, going wherever the troop went, taking notes, observing, questioning, thinking. The animals, landscape and mood of Africa were altering my attitudes and expectations in subtle and profound ways.
When I first started watching Pumphouse, the troop and I lived the lazy, luxurious life of the rainy season, when food is plentiful. In the early morning, the animals would relax on the sleeping cliffs, grooming, resting, playing and enjoying the warmth of the sun, often until the embarrassingly late hour of eight or nine, when finally one baboon more energetic than the rest would overcome his inertia and start a move off the cliffs--but only as far as the lush green meadow just below. In more difficult seasons, when food was harder to come by, the baboons left their sleeping cliffs earlier and earlier; sometimes I would arrive at six-thirty and find them already gone.
Now the troop's main exertions--and mine--came at midday: a stroll to water a mile away, where they would drink, nap, groom and play before heading to yet another lush spot. At sundown, between six-thirty and seven, utterly satiated, they clustered near the cliffs for a final bout of socializing before going to sleep. The whole day's traveling usually covered less than two miles. On some days I spent my entire time with the troop, leaving it only at nightfall. On others, I would return to the Red House for lunch with Lynda and Tim, catch up on paperwork and return to the baboons at four in the afternoon, staying with them until they went back up the cliffs. No matter what schedule I followed, it was critical to know exactly where they were sleeping in order to be able to locate them the next day. Even if visitors or unexpected problems disrupted my schedule, I still searched the baboons out every evening so that I could make an early start in the morning.
Brad and Trouble
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Almost Human A Journey into the World of Baboons by Shirley C. Strum excerpts part 14
By January 1974 I was thriving, emotionally and physically. Every day brought its own challenges and discoveries--which was, I suspected, going to be the problem. Each day I spent with the troop it became clearer: sooner or later I would have to confront the fact I was seeing things I was not supposed to be seeing, finding patterns that were not supposed to exist. Worse still, I was not finding patterns that everyone else said did exist. The intellectual framework I had brought with me from Berkeley had become unrecognizable.
With Washburn as my guide, I had been introduced to the Primates, the biological Order to which humans belonged. Primates appeared sixty million years ago as tiny, insignificant creatures very similar to tree shrews. They were among the earliest of the primitive mammals who filled the vacuum left by the disappearance of the dinosaurs. I had learned the differences and similarities between ourselves and the early prosimians, about how a new way of life--living in the trees of the tropical forest instead of on the ground--Transformed anatomy and behavior and set the general primate pattern that we humans, living millions of years later, still share, Instead of relying on the sense of smell, primates depended on vision to orient themselves in their world, a three-dimensional world requiring special acuity Reaching (or a branch high up in the tree canopy could~ be dangerous if you missed. Depth perception was critical, as was color vision.
I was surprised to learn how few animals saw the world in either of these ways. In order to perceive depth, eyes have to face forward so that visual fields overlap. I was disappointed to discover that the bull in a bullring saw only the motion of the red cape and not its color; to him it was gray, and the color excited only the spectators.
The earliest prosimian fossils so far discovered have long snouts and eyes at the sides of their heads. Clearly they relied on smell and vision, even though they could not see stereoscopically. It was not long before new creatures appeared; these had large round eyes that faced forward and nearly flat faces. That they could see colors is a guess, but their reliance on vision rather than smell and their possession of depth perception are both reasonable deductions.
The rest of the body underwent major changes, too. How do you get around up in the trees? Squirrels dig in with their claws and pull themselves up. Small primates climbed by grasping. To do this, they needed specially formed hands. The primate hand is a remarkable invention, and one that helped forge a new relationship between the animal and its environment. The hand has mobile digits that can move independently of one another. The thumb is distinct, and opposable to the fingers. Instead of grappling hooks--claws--there are flat nails that protect the sensitive tips of the fingers without getting in the way. The palms and fingertips not only have pads for grasping, but their generous supply of nerves allows them to feel as well. Hands and feet are very similar, but the former are clearly the more dexterous.
As areas related to vision and manipulation increased in size, as more sensory information was processed and integrated and as links needed to be made between sensation and action, the brain itself became more complex. The hallmark of a primate is its hands, face and brain: no other type of creature on earth possesses this unique combination. Together, these formed the basis of the primate pattern, which heralded not just a new capacity for exploring and dismantling the world, but a totally new Umwet--a new way of perceiving everything: you, me and it.
A change in behavior and anatomy is a bit like a chicken-and-egg story. I marveled that Washburn could interpret so much from the handful of bones he showed us. He constructed a sequence based on the dates that accompanied each creature. In isolation each bit told little, but taken together it was an exciting story, one that captured my imagination. Prosimians, monkeys, lesser apes, the great apes, early hominids, true humans and modern humans--every step along the evolutionary sequence showed that there were important lessons to be learned about human behavior. Brad and Trouble

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Almost Human A Journey into the World of Baboons by Shirley C. Strum excerpts part 15
I knew what the males were not doing, and I could describe what they were doing, but I did not have any explanation for why. What did dominance mean? What were the uses and advantages of aggression? Why did males spend so much time and effort making friends with females and infants? Why did a male move so cautiously when he transferred into a new troop?
I had other questions, too: Why wasn't I seeing more violence? When the baboons did fight, why weren't more males injured? I could tell from watching Peggy's family that males exerted what could only be called self-control; I could see how restraint was developed during play, and the same type of control was noticeable in the occasional more serious fights among adults.
Paul, Peggy's oldest son, was especially hair-raising to watch in play. He liked to join groups of smaller baboons in wild free-for-alls in which three or four monkeys would gang up on one. But just when the situation started to get serious for the victim, they'd switch to another target. Once in a while the overexcited youngsters would get carried away and the playful melees would turn aggressive, but since every-one wanted to continue playing, the aggression was usually controlled and short-lived. Important skills were learned in these mock fights, and it was in this playful arena that dominance ranks were disputed and established among the adolescent males.
Paul had to display extraordinary restraint when he played with his brother Patrick. Coming full speed from one corner would be Paul, thirty-three pounds of firm, solid muscle; in the other would crouch Patrick, who at that time weighed barely six and a half pounds, and whose biggest "muscle" was his penis! Paul roared up to the infant, then screeched to a halt, contorting himself in order to get down to Patrick's level Paul held his strength in check for nearly fifteen minutes as he wrestled with his little brother. Such self-control on the part of a hormonally active male was typical.
This gave me a new idea Would studying adolescent males help solve the mystery of the adults? These immature animals were in transition, moving from the conservative, predictable, well-ordered female system to the dynamic and to me unpredictable male system. How, exactly, did they make this switch? What were the overriding principles that governed their behavior?
Before I began to study the males in earnest, I went through a number of life changes myself. I had returned to California in January 1974, worked on my thesis and in September obtained a teaching position at the University of California in San Diego. After visiting my family and friends there, I returned to Kenya in the summer of 1975.
Coming back to Kekopey was like a rendezvous with a lover I'd never expected to see again. It wasn't that the dreams I'd had in which the baboons hung banners from the trees reading "Welcome back, Shirley! We missed you!" came true. It was better than that; the animals continued to ignore me for the most part, and I was able to travel inconspicuously through the troop just as I had earlier, identifying old friends, marking the growth of youngsters and discovering new babies that had been born in my absence.
My visit was short and at the end of the summer I returned to California and my teaching responsibilities. But I left the baboons under the watchful eyes of Hugh and Perry Gilmore, graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania. Hugh was doing his doctoral research on baboon communication.
Now, in July of 1976, I was back with the baboons and ready to face the challenge of the males head-on. I not only had to decide whom to watch but how to watch. In my previous stints, I had switched from animal to animal, spending thirty- minutes watching one, then moving on to the next on my list. Such a schedule meant that I couldn't devote more time to any one individual than to another; nor could I give in to the temptation of just watching whatever exciting event was happening at any given moment This careful control of my observations gave me confidence that when it came time to compare the behavior of individuals, the results would not be contaminated by unconscious personal biases. But there was too much going on to be completely narrow-minded. I appeased my curiosity and added more information to my study by supplementing my main observations with a variety of other techniques that could be carried out simultaneously.
Brad and Trouble
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Almost Human A Journey into the World of Baboons by Shirley C. Strum excerpts part 15
I knew what the males were not doing, and I could describe what they were doing, but I did not have any explanation for why. What did dominance mean? What were the uses and advantages of aggression? Why did males spend so much time and effort making friends with females and infants? Why did a male move so cautiously when he transferred into a new troop?
I had other questions, too: Why wasn't I seeing more violence? When the baboons did fight, why weren't more males injured? I could tell from watching Peggy's family that males exerted what could only be called self-control; I could see how restraint was developed during play, and the same type of control was noticeable in the occasional more serious fights among adults.
Paul, Peggy's oldest son, was especially hair-raising to watch in play. He liked to join groups of smaller baboons in wild free-for-alls in which three or four monkeys would gang up on one. But just when the situation started to get serious for the victim, they'd switch to another target. Once in a while the overexcited youngsters would get carried away and the playful melees would turn aggressive, but since every-one wanted to continue playing, the aggression was usually controlled and short-lived. Important skills were learned in these mock fights, and it was in this playful arena that dominance ranks were disputed and established among the adolescent males.
Paul had to display extraordinary restraint when he played with his brother Patrick. Coming full speed from one corner would be Paul, thirty-three pounds of firm, solid muscle; in the other would crouch Patrick, who at that time weighed barely six and a half pounds, and whose biggest "muscle" was his penis! Paul roared up to the infant, then screeched to a halt, contorting himself in order to get down to Patrick's level Paul held his strength in check for nearly fifteen minutes as he wrestled with his little brother. Such self-control on the part of a hormonally active male was typical.
This gave me a new idea Would studying adolescent males help solve the mystery of the adults? These immature animals were in transition, moving from the conservative, predictable, well-ordered female system to the dynamic and to me unpredictable male system. How, exactly, did they make this switch? What were the overriding principles that governed their behavior?
Before I began to study the males in earnest, I went through a number of life changes myself. I had returned to California in January 1974, worked on my thesis and in September obtained a teaching position at the University of California in San Diego. After visiting my family and friends there, I returned to Kenya in the summer of 1975.
Coming back to Kekopey was like a rendezvous with a lover I'd never expected to see again. It wasn't that the dreams I'd had in which the baboons hung banners from the trees reading "Welcome back, Shirley! We missed you!" came true. It was better than that; the animals continued to ignore me for the most part, and I was able to travel inconspicuously through the troop just as I had earlier, identifying old friends, marking the growth of youngsters and discovering new babies that had been born in my absence.
My visit was short and at the end of the summer I returned to California and my teaching responsibilities. But I left the baboons un