Baboons behaving badly (Image: Helga Peters)

Female hamadryas baboons may be vulnerable to a form of domestic violence from which they feel unable to escape – even if they have the opportunity.

Most large papionin monkeys – a group including macaques, baboons and mandrills – rely on wandering males to disperse genes through the population. But studies suggest that gene flow through populations of hamadryas baboons (Papio hamadryas) in north-east Africa is mainly through females – even though males keep tight control of them and punish wanderers through vicious biting.

In 1968, biologist Hans Kummer suggested that females move when they are abducted by another male – but only now have biologists observed such abductions. Mathew Pines at the Filoha Hamadryas Project in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, witnessed three abductions between 2007 and 2009.


Each time, the original male embarked on an often bloody rescue mission to locate and retrieve the female. Larissa Swedell at the City University of New York, Pines’s co-author on the new study, speculates that abduction is not considered a “fair” way to gain a new female, and so the loss isn’t accepted by the original male.

The rescue missions were helped by the females, who willingly returned to the rescuer despite a history of violent treatment by that male. “The bond is so strong that a female will run to her male when she is frightened, even if he is the source of the threat,” says Swedell.

She sees parallels with battered person syndrome, a psychological condition in which victims of domestic violence believe they are unable to escape their tormentors.

Journal reference: Primates, DOI: 10.1007/s10329-011-0242-x