Male–Female Relationships

In baboons as in humans, females and males have important individualized relationships with each other. The relationships in various baboon species provide several analogies for the evolutionary origins of the human family in early hominins. Two relevant features in baboons occur in both troops and multilevel societies. First, there are long-term associations between particular males and females that persist when female partners are not sexually available. Second, these associations exist in the context of communities, that is, multi-male/multi-female societies, that are comparable to those of extant humans. The latter feature differentiates humans and baboons from “pair-bonded” primates such as gibbons. Male–female relationships involve conflict as well as affiliation. The most drastic is infanticide as a male strategy to hasten the return of a newly “acquired” female to sexual availability. More common is coercion: persistent aggressive behavior toward a female that intimidates her into not resisting the aggressor when she ovulates. Copulation resulting from direct application of force seems not to occur in baboons. Sexual aggression seems to be absent from male–female relations in Kinda baboons and Guinea baboons. First reports on the troops of Kinda baboons indicated that males strive to establish grooming relationships with females rather than trying to coerce them. In the multilevel society of Guinea baboons, well-studied in one population, females choose and change their unimale affiliations without interference. This contrasts with the multilevel societies of hamadryas baboons, in which males form and expand unimale groups with aggressive behavior toward females. The Kinda-Guinea baboon axis may offer a distinctive model for early hominin male–female relations, a model in which females exercise choice of mates and are subject to little or no coercion of any kind.