Science Friday - Can Men and Women (Baboons) Really Just Be Friends? | The Best Bear Deterrent May Be Drones

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

Can Men and Women (Baboons) Really Just Be Friends?In the romantic comedy “When Harry Met Sally,” the central premise, as Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan’s characters stay friends throughout the years, is, can men and women really just be friends?In the movie, the answer is no, not really. Spoiler alert: They do get together in the end. But what if we take that concept and bring it to the animal kingdom, specifically to primates?The Kinda baboon is known for its distinct social behaviors. Individuals form long-term, social bonds, and those relationships are seen, uniquely, between male and female baboons. Over nine years, researchers studied the Kinda baboon, a kinder, gentler species of baboon, to learn more about their social lives. Kindas are unique among baboons because they’re the least sexually dimorphic: males and females are close to the same size, making them a better analog for us humans.So can male and female baboons really be just friends? Much like the movie, long friendships do happen between Kindas—but there also appears to be a benefit during mating season.Joining Host Flora Lichtman to talk about her work with these baboons is Dr. Anna Weyher, founder of the Kasanka Baboon Project in Zambia. Weyher has studied Kinda baboons for over a decade.The Best Bear Deterrent May Be DronesWhat do you do when a bear keeps coming too close to people, and doesn’t take the hint to stay away? It’s a serious problem, because human-wildlife conflict can be dangerous for both the people and animals involved. Wildlife managers have for years used a collection of deterrents, including firecracker noises, rubber bullets, and trained dogs, to try to chase bears away from human habitations.Writing in the journal Frontiers in Conservation Science, former Montana bear management specialist Wesley Sarmento claims that a high-tech approach may be more effective: drones. Sarmento joins Host Flora Lichtman to discuss his experiences with hazing stubborn bears.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Flora Lickman. Today in the podcast, an age-old question. Or at least a debate that romantic comedies love to explore. Men and women can't be friends because the sex part always gets in the way. That's not true. I have a number of men friends and there is no sex involved. No, you don't. Yes, I do. Yes, I do. That's, of course, from when Harry met Sally with Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal,

and is perhaps the second most famous scene in the movie. I'll have what she's having. Anyway, because romantic comedies insist on being romantic, in this movie, the answer is ultimately no. Men and women cannot be friends. But new research adds a wrinkle, at least in the animal kingdom. My next guest is a world authority on a relatively unknown species of baboon, the kind-up baboon. And she found that they upend a lot of stereotypes about baboon bonding, primate. power dynamics and how male and female baboons get along. Here to tell us more is Dr. Anna Weyer,

founder of the Kasanka Baboon Project in Zambia. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you so much for having me. Okay, tell me a little bit about these baboons. Where do they live? What do they look like? Yeah, so Kinda baboons, we find them in Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, and Zambia. and they're much smaller than the traditional baboon that most people would be familiar with. So they're about half the size. They're more slender and males and females are closer in size. And you're one of the first people to study them in the wild. How did that happen?

Yeah, so I got really lucky when I was playing to grad school. I ended up starting to work with two professors that had been looking at the genetics of the baboons in Zambia as there's three species that occur in Zambia. They used to be considered grouped with a species called yellow baboons, but now we know from genetic evidence that they were quite different than originally thought. And so they were looking for someone to start to study these baboons and see if maybe behaviorally they were different as well. Yeah, what questions were you asking? I had two goals.

One was to just study the species that. had never been studied. So there's many studies on baboons, ones that are going back 50 plus years. So there's a lot of comparative information. So going out and asking similar questions just to see how they compare. And then more specifically, my main dissertation question and the question that's evolved over the past 10 plus years is what are the male, adult males and adult females doing together over time. Are they spending a lot of time together or are females spending a lot of time together? How do they defer? So in typical baboon that live in large groups, males usually are on the periphery. When they become adults, they leave the group and join another group where females remain

in the group they were born in and they inherit the rank of their mother. So they're very female-bonded, females spend a lot of time together. Males are interacting with females mostly, just during times of mating. Not friends is what I'm hearing. Yeah, or friends, but mostly in the context of around mating or when infants are really small and vulnerable. Okay. And the thought that we were seen in Kindas from some short pilot studies was that males were interacting with females in all of their reproductive states. So if they had an infant, if they didn't have an infant, if they were reproductively receptive.

and that we saw the males were doing a lot of the friendly behavior towards the females instead of the females doing it towards them, which is what we see in other baboons. And not just during mating? Yeah, exactly. So high rates in all reproductive states. So in a typical southern chakma baboon, a male would be grooming a female and giving her a lot of attention when she's ready to mate. or a female would be grooming a male a lot of the time. Otherwise, when there's risk of other males committing infanticide or hurting her infants.

So it's like a protection thing. It's really transactional is what it sounds like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of ways. And so for most of a female's adult life, she's the one approaching males. She's the one, you know, grunting and doing affilative or kind things to try to get

the male near her for protection. Females catering to males. Tail as old as time, Anna. Yeah. Tale as old as time. And then we might see a switch during the mating, but that drops off significantly. And what I thought I was seeing and what I went out to study and observe in one group over many years is different. Our initial observations actually showing that males are doing a lot more of the maintaining of these friendships is what we call them. and doing more grooming towards females and females are grooming towards them. And also more just safe infant interactions. So females letting males hold their infants and groom their infants and males being interested in infants and things like that.

Why do you think the Kinda males are behaving differently than other male baboons? Do you have a theory? Yeah. And it's kind of a suite of characteristics that we think is going on. And so as genetic methods have gotten much, much better, the last 20 plus years, we've realized that Kindas are probably the basal or the first kind of living baboon that existed. And there are six species of baboons. And so those species kind of diverged from that so that this behavior might be the more initial behavior. Yeah, it's interesting to me that the older baboon behavior might be the.

this more egalitarian behavior? Yeah, then that questions the perception that humans or primates or animals are innately aggressive or want to fight or things like that, that there's actually other strategies and that in this Kind of scenario, females are getting a lot more choice. They can be choosier on who they mate with, and it appears that males are spending more time creating longer-term bonds. with females to hopefully get reproductive mating access instead of what the traditional baboon model was is that males fight other males to get reproductive mating access. Yes, I did hear you say in there that it's a long-term investment to get mating access, which is actually the plot of when Harry met Sally ultimately.

Right. I was thinking about that actually. as well, that it is the plot, really, isn't it? Like, overtime, the nice male might actually, you know, reap more rewards than the aggressive one. And that it actually, at the end of the day, is about mating. Yeah, and I think it's about the interesting thing, too, is there's been studies in grooming and primates. It really is the main social activity. So you think in humans, the most social thing we do is speak with one another. And that really, maintains bonds. But obviously physical touch is really, really important. In baboons, they do also make these interesting sounds, but they groom not just to clean. They spend way more time than needed for, you know, getting out a bug here or there. It's really about social connection and reducing cortisol levels. And primates, you know, it shows that giving reduces those levels as well as

getting grooming. So even giving it can make you relax. And so perhaps all that extra grooming that's going on also reduces the need for, you know, so much aggression. I'm craving some Kinda sounds. Can you do them for me? Sure. Yeah, I can do a few. So to ask to either groom or can I groom your infant, there's a lot of things we call grunting. And it sort of sounds like, this. As an animal approaches and gets closer and it's a sound, this grunting that kind of shows like, I'm coming in nice. I'm coming in nice. And another kind of, I don't know if the sound will come through, but it's really, we call it a little lip smack. And when they're doing a lot of those behaviors, too, they're smacking their lips. And that's also just like,

a comforting calming sound, if that makes sense? Maybe like a cooing. Not for me, I'll say. But okay, you do, you kindus. Is that like a kissy sound? Yeah. I mean, it's like you don't really, as observers, we don't really even hear it, I suppose, unless you could get a microphone right in there. They're just kind of almost like you are blotting your lipstick. Okay. I love it. I love hearing you do this. Thank you. I feel like I'm there. I'm so curious what it's like in the field. I mean, you've spent so much time with these baboons. Did you have to gain their trust? Yeah. It was a long endeavor in the area I picked as well. There's there is some poaching of baboons and just poaching in the area. So baboons in general are a little wary. So it took about six months of just trying to follow them every day before they

started to kind of calm down and realize that we weren't there to do harm. Wow, six months. But it really took maybe a year, a year before, like, the trust was earned enough that it felt like it could get really good data and identify individuals. It's a trust thing. Do you have to do things to blend in? I mean, are you, like, grooming yourself? Yeah.

So in the beginning, definitely I would groom my family. fleece. Eye contact is kind of a direct threat. So I looked down a lot. I'd pretend to eat things that they were eating. And then the trust started to build. And we don't interact with them. We don't try to get too close to them close enough. But now, you know, we can have several researchers. And the group is over 100 individuals. And researchers are kind of within that whole thing, doing their observations. What do you still want to know? So the, There are so many things we still want to know. I mean, I think one of the interesting things, I think, that we're just starting to find out, you know, is from the beginning we got to see males come in to the group and see how that happened. But we couldn't really see what females did when they became adults. Like, what do they choose? How do they choose their male friend? How do they navigate their social world now that they are be reproductively, you know, receptive and can have infants. And so we've got to see that a few times, but now we have several females that have been born in the group that are becoming adults and are starting to show these patterns.

And so that will be really interesting compliment. Well, I'm always interested in the female perspective. So please come back and tell us about it. Yeah, I'd love to. Thanks, Anna, for coming on. Thank you. It was such a pleasure. Dr. Anna Weir, founder of the Kasanko Baboon Project in Zambia.

After the break, adventures of a bear management specialist, a.k.a. a bear cop. The bears are pretty easy to deal with, but people can be very difficult to deal with. Stick around. What do you do when a bear keeps coming too close to people and will not take the hint to stay away? Joining me now is Wesley Sarmento, currently at the University of Montana as a research fellow, but formerly a bear management specialist for Montana. fish, wildlife, and parks. He recently wrote about his experiences, shoeing bears away, in the journal Frontiers in Conservation Science. Welcome to Science Friday, Wesley. Thanks for having me, Flora.

What exactly is the job of a bear management specialist? Really, the job of a bear management specialist is keeping bears out of trouble and keeping people and their property safe. And so that can entail a lot of different things from being really proactive and helping people secure attractants like spilled grain or garbage to being reactive and having to catch a grizzly bear because it's getting into livestock or something that it shouldn't. Should we think of you as a bear cop? A little bit of a bear cop, yeah. You know, we increasingly are hearing about big wild animals like bears, but also mountain lions

and wolves venturing into neighborhoods and people encountering them on trails. What's the situation with grizzly bears? So grizzly bears in Montana have been protected since the 1970s, and since they've been protected, their population has really been expanding out. And so starting in the 70s, they were really only found in the mountains, like around Glacier National Park and Yellowstone National Park. but the last 40 plus years of protection has allowed the population to grow and expand out from those areas. And so now grizzly bears are being found way out on the prairie where they were historically,

but is now very different landscape than it was 200 years ago when Lewis and Clark came through. It's dominated by agriculture, and so a lot of crops are being grown like wheat and barley and chickpeas. And then it's also a lot of livestock production. It sounds like therefore there are people there as well. There's a lot of people there. So what are the traditional tools a bear cop has at their disposal? The traditional tools that a bear manager has are a vehicle to run bears off and also a shotgun to use non-lethal deterrence like cracker shells, which is basically like an exploding firecracker, bean bag rounds and rubber bullets. And also some other things like air horns and that sort of stuff.

In this article, you are describing a new potential tool. Will you tell us about it? Yeah. So the new potential tool is a drone. People can just go and buy really capable drones right off the internet. And these drones are capable of 30 minutes of flight. You can fly them in high winds. And they even have thermal capabilities so you can fly them at night.

And what's the aim? What are you trying to do? Is it to scare the bear? or, you know, what's the ideal? So there's two objectives for scaring a bear's away. That's just hazing the animal. And hazing basically means like to chase an animal. Let's get the bear away from somewhere where we don't want it.

And then the second objective is a longer term effect that we call aversive conditioning. And aversive conditioning basically means teaching an animal to not. want to do something. And is it working with the drones? The evidence that I came up with in my area found that it was very effective. In 91% of the cases where I used drones, the bears did successfully move away from where they needed to be. And there's also evidence for that long-term, aversive conditioning where older bears needed

less hazing and also hazing events decreased over each calendar year. I assume this is really helpful because it doesn't also put the bear at risk or you at risk. Absolutely. By us hazing bears, that keeps bears out of trouble. And that keeps them from coming near people where they could get into trouble or someone could shoot them in self-defense or they get hit on the road. So it's better for them long term. But then it's also a lot safer hazing a bear with a drone because I can do it from the safety of my vehicle instead of going out on foot. like I used to do and making myself to available to where I could get attacked by a bear.

Before we let you go, I'm so interested in this job. What kind of temperament do you need to be a good bear cop? You need to be calm in all kinds of situations. Most importantly, you need really good people skills because the bears are pretty easy to deal with, but people can be very difficult to deal with, particularly, people that don't want bears around or don't like bears whatsoever. And so being able to put yourself in those people's shoes and to understand their perspective and where they're coming from is essential for the job. So you can relate to them and you can empathize with them. Not just empathy

for the bears, but for the people too. You do need a lot of empathy for the people. Wesley Sarmento, former bear management specialist for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, now at the University of Montana as a research fellow. Thanks for joining us. Thank you again, Flora. As you know, Science Friday is more than just a radio show, and you can join us for events both online and in person. If you're near Columbia, Missouri,

please join us Saturday, May 10th, for another edition of SciFRI Live with our friends at KBIA. Find info on all our events at science friday.com slash events. And that is about all we have time for. Lots of folks helped make the show happen, including Danielle Johnson, Jason Rosenberg, Shoshana Buxbaum, Diana Plasker. I'm Flore Lichtman. Thanks for listening.