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The City of Cape Town feels that knowing how baboons learn can assist in managing baboon-human interactions.
People are alternately enchanted by the almost human behaviour baboons display as they interact with each other and horrified when they skilfully open car doors or house windows [more] and steal food. But how clever are baboons really, and how can understanding their ways of learning help us to interact with them in a more positive way?
Whilst little research has been done specifically on baboon learning processes, researchers believe that baboons show two types of learning: ‘trial and error’ and ‘stimulus enhancement’.
‘Trial and error’ learning requires an individual spending a long time trying out different strategies. Baboons are remarkably persistent and with time will more often than not solve a mechanical challenge – like opening a car door or a waste bin.
If a baboon sees another baboon spending a long time at something, like trying to open a bin, he will think that there must be something interesting there and will come over and try his luck – this is called ‘stimulus enhancement’.
Beyond these two kinds of learning, very little proof exists that baboons are able to learn by imitation and there is no evidence of teaching.
“When people say that adult baboons are teaching young baboons how to raid or how to open a bin, it’s not strictly true,” says University of Cape Town researcher Bentley Kaplan. “Rather the young baboons follow the adults into urban areas and then do their own learning. They see an adult with a bin and become interested in the bin, not in the adult’s behaviour”.
Baboons may also come to associate food with certain objects (e.g. fridges, cupboards, bags). “For now, research has yet to prove that baboons learn at a more complex level than this, but no-one can say what future investigations might reveal,” says Kaplan.
“What can we learn from this? Firstly, if allowed time at our windows and bins, baboons have a good chance of working out how to enter. So we should not give them that time.
Secondly, if other baboons see a troop member being fascinated by your bin, they too will join in, so we should keep the first baboon away if we want to keep the others at bay.
And thirdly, if that investigation leads to food, bins will be linked to food in the baboon’s mind. We must not allow baboons to access food from our bins, homes or cars or they will associate our bins, homes and cars with easy food”, says Dr Elzette Jordan, Veterinary Scientist in the City’s Environmental Resource Management Department.
