Consensus without conversation?
September 24, 2012
We've all had the experience of standing around with friends, trying to make plans for dinner
We've all had the experience of standing around with friends, trying to make plans for dinner. One person is a vegetarian, another, a dedicated carnivore. Half of the group is lobbying for a restaurant far from home while the other half is hungry and would rather not travel so far to eat. Reaching a compromise in a group with such different needs and preferences requires extensive discussion and negotiation.
How do baboon troops find food and overcome conflicts without the benefit of language? The information we need to understand how they decide where to go and what to do has never been available for animals living in their natural habitat. For the first time, Meg Crofoot, University of California— Davis and STRI research associate, has taken advantage of new high-resolution GPS technology to track an entire group of baboons in Mpala, Kenya. Follow the team in action as they catch, collar and track the baboons. And see the first data to come in YouTube -adapted from Meg Crofoot's article in Mpala Memos
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