Like most animals who live far away from humans, baboons are known only by the stereotypes that have been created by movies and media. But those who study these animals by going to their homelands and watching them in their natural habitats—rather than observing them in unnatural laboratory settings—understand that baboons are highly intelligent, curious, and social animals. They live in complex groups of 10 to 200 and depend on each other for companionship, affection, and survival.

Baboons Protest Road Killings According to a report from BBC Uganda, a group of baboons in eastern Uganda staged a public “sit-in” after a speeding truck killed a female from their troupe. The grieving baboons surrounded her body in the middle of the road and refused to move for 30 minutes, blocking the highway completely. Even when passersby tried to tempt them away with food, the baboons refused to leave their deceased family member. Last year, another group of baboons threw sticks and stones at passing cars after a baby baboon from their troupe was killed on the same road.

In many ways, they are very similar to people. Like human parents, adult baboons tend to newborns around the clock. Babies stay close to their mothers, clinging to them as they forage for food and snuggling into their laps for a nap in the afternoon sun. Drawn to the nourishment and close contact provided by their mothers’ milk, young baboons even have tantrums when their mothers attempt to wean them.

Young baboons love to play, and they show a joy in living. They spend carefree days swinging from vines, playing games of chase, and wrestling and tumbling with their friends. Female baboons remain in the group into which they were born, among their relatives, throughout their entire lives. Their social lives are centered on the network of family in which they live.

Primatologists from Princeton University note, “Maternal sisters are particularly close, and this is not surprising, given their relatedness and the fact that they will spend their entire lives together. More surprisingly, females treat their paternal sisters (females with whom they share a father but not a mother) the same way that they do maternal sisters—grooming them, resting near them, and generally interacting with them more than they do non-relatives.”

As baboons mature, they become active members of the troop and commonly walk four to 10 miles a day to forage for food. One of their favorite foods is the sweet gum hidden in the bark of young fever trees, and they will spend hours in a grove, satisfying their sweet tooth. Because they enjoy a wide variety of foods, baboons have adapted to many habitats, including savannas, rain forests, deserts, mountains, and seashores. In each habitat, they protect themselves from predators by climbing into the branches of tall trees or scaling steep cliffs.

Baboons spread out in small groups during the day and gather at night in sleeping clusters that may include hundreds of animals. In the morning, alpha-male baboons swap information about which direction might offer the greatest bounty of food, and the group decides which way to go next. Primatologists have documented more than 30 distinct vocalizations—ranging from grunts to barks to screams—that baboons use to communicate with other.

Baboons who are being used as “research tools” in Columbia’s labs are denied all that is natural to them. Crammed into barren metal cages, these naturally social beings suffer unbearable loneliness. Mother baboons, who fuss over and care attentively for their young in the wild, have their babies taken from them. Trapped in their tiny prisons, they are deprived of the ability to roam over long stretches of land.

They are tortured in part to secure hefty federal money (our tax dollars at work) for grant-hungry vivisectors. Experimenters at Columbia are causing strokes in baboons by removing their left eyeballs and using the empty eye sockets to clamp critical blood vessels to their brains; they are surgically implanting heavy pipes into the skulls of rhesus macaques to induce stress and study the connection between stress and menstrual cycles; and they are pumping nicotine and morphine into pregnant baboons and their fetuses. Please be a voice for the animals in Columbia’s labs. Click here to find out how you can help.