Contexts and Patterns of Injuries in Free-Ranging Male Baboons (Papio Cynocephalus)

Abstract

Injury in male baboons (Papio cynocephalus) was investigated as an indicator of damaging fights in order to provide a framework for analyses of conflict resolution and dynamics of agonistic competition in primates. The vast majority of wounds were canine slashes resulting from intraspecific face-to-face combat. Wounds were more common in males than females. In males they concentrated on the right side of anterior parts of the body, principally the head. Wounds took on average three weeks to heal. Aggressive conflicts represented 10% of all interactions between males. Less than 1% of aggressive contests led to injury. The individual rate of injury from fights with other males was on average once every 1.5 months. The winner of damaging fights was sometimes the wounded individual. The number of wounds per damaging fight was not related in a simple way to the presence of proceptive females or to recent immigration events. Four fights yielding the highest number of injuries, however, involved recent immigrations or attempts to immigrate by adult males in their prime. Contexts of male injury observed during infliction include challenges to the resident alpha male by newcomers, intertroop encounter, fights over proceptive females or unusual foods, redirected aggression, defense of a female and a fight unrelated to any obvious resource. This study and anecdotal reports from the literature point at various implications of injury to male baboons, including physical impairments which can constrain feeding efficiency, limit access to resting sites and safe retreats, cause a drop in dominance rank, jeopardize mating success and even result in death. Severely injured males typically reduce interaction rates, retreat to the periphery of the troop or emigrate temporarily. Although most wounds are small and heal well, the potentially high costs of injury probably exercise strong selection pressure on contestants for means of peaceful conflict resolution, given that during fights both baboons risk injury irrespective of their competitive abilities. The potential fitness consequences of inflicted injury can explain the evolution of the formidable canine weaponry of some male primates.

Social status predicts wound healing in wild baboons

“…Males usually required a few weeks to recover from illnesses and injuries; the median time to heal was 25 d, although the fastesthealing 25% of injuries and illnesses healed in less than 14 d, and the slowest-healing 25% of injuries and illnesses required more than 40 d to heal. These recovery rates were similar to those in a prior study on wound healing in wild baboons (55). We tested seven univariate predictors of healing rates, including (i) illness and injury type; (ii) differences in methods of data collection before and after 1991; (iii) the male's dominance rank at the time he became injured or ill; (iv) the male's age at the time he became injured or ill; (v) the male's access to human refuse as a food source (56,57); (vi) the size of the male's social group, as measured by the number of adult male and female members; and (vii) the season (wet or dry) at the time the male became injured or ill.…”

The High Price of Success: Costs of Mating Effort in Male Primates

“…While primates are rarely directly killed in male-male combat (Newton-Fisher & Emery Thompson 2012), wounds may persist for several weeks (Archie et al 2012). Aside from the risk of infection, wound healing can involve compromised foraging or traveling efficiency, withdrawal from social groups, and loss of status (Drews 1996). In this volume, Stone (2014) reports that male squirrel monkeys experience an increased prevalence of wounds, including broken bones and severe gashes, associated with concentrated male-male agonism in the mating season.…”

15 “Friendship” with Males: A Female Counterstrategy to Infanticide in Chacma Baboons of the Okavango Delta

“…Although these males may be actively confronting a rival male who is arguably superior in fighting ability, their defense may still be effective in part because the distribution of injuries in escalated male-male fights is largely independent of the interactants' rank (Drews 1996). In other words, a middle-ranking male may still inflict a serious injury during a prolonged fight with a physically superior alpha.…”