Randy baboons make good dads

Promiscuous papa baboons are able to recognize their young and defend offspring, no matter how many they have fathered.

Researchers studied five savannah baboon (Papio cynocephalus) groups at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro in Kenya for three years.

They compared the animals' DNA to establish paternity and watched the baboon fathers as they intervened in 73 disputes between juveniles.

Male and female baboons have many mating partners and they do not seem to form permanent bonds with each other. But the researchers found adult male baboons generally supported their own offspring.

"Up until now, the best candidates for 'Dad of the Year' awards come from species that maintain long-term pair bonds, like the siamang and owl monkeys," said anthropologist Joan Silk of the University of California at Los Angeles.

The results may mean a father's capacity for caring "is not tightly linked to social organization" in baboons, she added in a release.

Silk and her colleagues at Duke University, Princeton University and research assistants in Kenya observed the baboons from July 1999 to July 2002.

To identify paternity without disturbing the primate society, the researchers analyzed DNA from baboon feces.

They found about half of the juveniles shared social groups with their fathers. All but three of 15 adult males living with their own offspring and unrelated young provided more care to their own kin.

The study is the cover story in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

Biologist Susan Alberts of Duke University co-authored the study. She said male baboons may use multiple cues to identify their young, such as monopolizing the mother's fertile period or checking to see if the youngster looks or smells like him.

Paul Sherman of Cornell University in New York and Bryan Neff of the University of Western Ontario described the importance of the study in a Nature commentary:

• such intervention is a manifestation of nepotism
• paternal care can occur even when females copulate with several different males
• the kin-recognition mechanisms of a wild primate approach those of humans in precision and sophistication