Kong is an adult wild male monkey who moved into our vervet monkey troop, from a neighboring wild troop, a week and half ago.
In this video, he calmly lies down and accepts being groomed by a wild female baboon of about 4 years, who visited the surrounding forest with her troop yesterday.
Volunteer - Johanna Andreasson - and I were unable to get too close to this unusual scene for fear of frightening them off.
Baboons are commonly believed to be predators of vervet monkeys. I think they present a threat to vervet monkeys only when resources are low and the two species are forced to compete for food. I've witnessed single male vervets living with troops of baboons and have had the privelege of watching orphaned rescued baboons playing with vervets undergoing rehabilitation.
In this case, both these individuals are wild.
Primates groom allies and family - this female baboon likely has known Kong for some time.The question is; what were her motives for grooming him - it is generally assumed that a non human primate is likely to have a self serving motive for befriending another individual. But, our human based assumptions have the potential to lead us far off the truth as this very incident illustrates.
As far as I know, none of our D.P.G monkeys have been groomed previously by any of the wild baboons.
Juvenile wild baboons do play with our rehab monkeys from time to time as a reciprocal relationship has been worked out by the two species over the last two years; the wild baboon troop have learnt to harmoniously accept second place and share this territory with our vervets.
