Baboons :: essays papers

BaboonsBaboons belong to the Old World monkey family, Cercopithecidae. They are put in in Africa, south of the Sahara as well as in the Saudi Arabia desert (Class Notes 6/12/01). There are five raceway of baboons including the hama modifyas, the Guinea, the yellow, the chacma, and the o depart baboons. BABOONS AND THEIR HABITATThe baboon is the virtually full(a)spread primate in Africa. long-familiar for their remarkable ability to adapt, baboons can be found in a variety of habitats, ranging from semi-desert to rainforest, and from coastal areas to mountains. Their adaptability also extends to their feeding habits baboons will feast practiced about anything. The baboons diet includes a wide variety of plants, of which they eat individually part leaves, fruit, buds, flowers, roots, bulbs, tubers, seeds, shoots, bark and even sap. As for meat, these resourceful monkeys will eat insects, shellfish, small reptiles and amphibians, rodents, birds, fish, eggs and even young an telope or livestock. Several kinds of baboons live in Africa and southwestern Arabia. These include the hamadryas baboon, which lives on plains and rocky hills of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and easterly Africa near the Red Sea, and the chacma baboon, which inhabits rocky regions and open woodlands in southern Africa. Olive baboons inhabit the Kekopey cattle ranch located near the townsfolk of Gilgil, Kenya. The central part of the ranch consists of open stigmatiseland studded with occasional patches of shaggy-haired shrub, scattered thornbush, and small groves of giant fever trees (Smuts 17). They eat a wide variety of foods including insects, flowers, leaves, fruits of bushes and herbs, and most significant of all, the grass itself. Baboons eat the green blades of grass during the rainy seasons and dig for corms-the underground storage organ of sedge grasses-when the ranch is dry (Smuts 17-18). They can carry food in pouches inside their cheeks. Probably the most serious predator s of baboons are the large carnivores such as cheetahs and leopards. Baboons live mostly on the ground but sleep in such places as trees or cliffs. Throughout Africa baboons achieve some protection from nocturnal predators by sleeping in tall trees or on cliffs (Smuts 19). Usually each troop sleeps on a different cliff, but occasionally ii troops will share a single sleeping site.In addition to the predators previously mentioned, baboons share their range with antelope as well as other large mammals including zebra, warthog, jackals, and African buffalo.