Baboon fathers help young to succeed
A study by UK researchers has indicated that the offspring of promiscuous baboon males are more successful if they have contact with their father.
Paternal care is uncommon in promiscuous mammals, where it is often unclear which male is actually the father. Lead researcher Dr Elise Huchard of the University of Cambridge's Department of Zoology said: "Paternal care is usually observed in species where paternity certainty is high, [such as ] in monogamous species."
So when research indicated that the offspring of promiscuous baboons could benefit from paternal input, Huchard and colleagues began field research on two troops of chacma baboons in Tsaobis Leopard Park, central Nambia. Infanticide by adult males occurs frequently in chacma baboons, killing up to 30 per cent of juveniles in some populations. The benefits of paternal behaviour, such as food foraging success, had not previously been investigated.
The research team managed to mark every single baboon prior to the study, making them easily recognisable. During the study Huchard's team used a combination of natural observation and parental analyses, which was used to determine whether the males where actually the fathers.
Researchers found that juveniles associated more with their fathers than with other males, joining them most often at feeding time. They foraged more successfully with their fathers than without, according to observations. It was also found that juveniles joined their fathers more often when the mother was absent and another adult male was nearby, suggesting that fathers may provide protection, researchers say. Observations indicated, however, that it was the juveniles that maintained the association by following the fathers.
Dr Huchard said of the findings: "Previous research in olive baboons had suggested that males could care for unrelated infants as a courtship strategy, in order to seduce the mother. So it was exciting to find that in this population, males actually care for their own offspring, which suggests they are able to discriminate their own offspring and that such bonds do represent paternal care.
"It's now an important goal for future research to identify why some fathers care more than some others, or why some juveniles develop stronger bonds with their father. Understanding these patterns in baboons may help with understanding the evolutionary origins of individual variations in paternal behaviour in humans."
The BSAVA has opened submissions for the BSAVA Clinical Research Abstracts 2026.
