Baboons are democratic when it comes to the decision of travelling and move together, finds a new study.
Researchers have found evidence of shared decision-making among a troop of wild baboons, providing insight into how animals that live in socially complex, hierarchical societies reach consensus on decisions that affect the entire group.
Ariana Strandburg-Peshkin and colleagues fitted 25 wild olive baboons at the Mpala Research Center in Kenya with custom-designed GPS collars and recorded the baboons' locations every second of the day, analysing the animals' movements relative to one another. Their data identify certain baboons as initiators-animals that start moving away from other baboons and either "pull" followers with them or "anchor" those individuals in place until the initiator wanders back.
Strandburg-Peshkin found that baboons are generally more likely to follow others when multiple individuals act as initiators and agree on a particular direction. However, when initiators' opinions are split over where to go, decisions get delayed, according to the researchers.
Baboons typically don't attempt to negotiate, instead choosing one direction over the other, if the angle between the options is larger than 90 degrees, but the monkeys do attempt to compromise if two initiators suggest different directions with less than 90 degrees difference between them.
These findings suggest that shared, democratic decision-making is widespread even among species with highly stratified social hierarchies.
