The baboon, 'the baby rooster'

When they are with their children, the baboons father always helps their children become sexually faster. It is a surprising conclusion about the paternity of primates in a study published by the CNRS.

If only 10% of mammalian males take care of their children wholeheartedly as a true father, then the golden baboon monkey in Kenya is one of them. This gives their children a lot of advantages, especially for reproduction. That's all Marie Charpentier - a scientist at the Center for Ecological and Functional Research (CEFE) in Montpellier - confirmed in a recent Pnas paper in February 2008: 'Real The sex of the baboon's early adulthood comes earlier with the increase in the time it takes for the baboon to be present. '

In order to arrive at the conclusion, Marie Charpentier analyzed the amount of data collected over 30 years of the Anboseli Baboon Research Project led by two leading ecologists since the 1970s Jeanne and Stuart Altmann. . Origin of the project: a group of scientists including 10 people have been continuously monitoring the baboon population in Amboseli nature park, from which they found the genetic, physiological and behavior of baboons.

In the process of collecting information on Marie Charpentier discovered that baboons appear more and more of their children - male baboons tend to move from one group to another - their baboons soon complete their physiological functions. More specifically, the reproductive organs of baboons quickly reach their adult size. However, up to this point, a chain of causes leading to the above results has only been observed in practice by scientists, but cannot give exact explanations.

Baboons.(Photo: www.pbase.com)

Marie Charpentier and her team made the same theory. The presence of males creates a safe environment that allows their children to grow in the best way. 'Males can interfere with social conflicts that can affect their children . ' Next, according to nutrition research, dad baboons can help their children when they have food problems. However, that is just a feeling. If any baboon can protect his 'daughter' from other monkeys, on the contrary, if his 'son' has conflicts with other strong males In the herd, father baboons need to be really strong to defeat the enemy to protect their children.

Another hypothesis to explain the early development of baboons: if the male offspring of males get up early, it will reproduce faster and may produce later generations from then on. more genes of baboons. And that is also an aspect of the necessary struggle process against the natural elimination that scientists are exploring.

There is an open question: how do males recognize their children? 'We come up with two hypotheses but so far no hypothesis has been proven , ' Ms. Charpentier explained. 'First, the baboon father can recognize his child as soon as it is born based on the body, smell or cries. The second hypothesis: when mating with children, males can see through their body temperature to know if they have a chance to be a father. '