Nasty, brutish, and short--Thomas Hobbes's famous description of
life without government could as easily be applied to baboons.
The primates are famous for their bad manners. However, a troop
of baboons in Kenya has recently changed its ways. Researchers
suggest that the relatively peaceable behavior is a type of
culture that's passed on to newcomers to the troop. Baboon
culture is rife with violence. Males fight over females, food,
resting spots, and sometimes for no apparent reason. The most
serious altercations are usually between baboons of close rank;
but baboons low on the totem pole get bullied all the time by
higher-ups looking for an ego boost. Now it appears that one
troop has found a better way. Robert Sapolsky, a primatologist
at Stanford University in California, observed a troop of
savanna baboons, dubbed Forest Troop, from the late 1970s until
1986, when an outbreak of bovine tuberculosis killed off the
most aggressive males in the group. After the deaths of so many
of the members, Sapolsky aba