Field notebook
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Animal profile
Papio hamadryas
The hamadryas baboon is a dry-country baboon in which adult males grow a heavy silver-grey mantle and females are smaller and brown. It sleeps in large aggregations on cliffs and disperses into small foraging units by day. It is the only primate other than humans native to the Arabian Peninsula.
A hamadryas society stacks: a male with a few females forms a unit, related units form a clan, clans travel together as a band, and bands share a sleeping cliff as a troop of hundreds. Each layer has different membership rules.
Hamadryas society nests one grouping inside another: a single male with a few females forms a unit, several units form a clan, clans form a band that forages together, and bands converge at night into cliff-side troops that can number in the hundreds.