Sun. May 22nd, 2022

A research team have concluded that a group of Baboons can establish a shared social conventions between them. In this case, all the members of the team agreed to how to solve a problem to get the reward faster. It was the first time when such kind of experiment took place in animal species.

Social conventions means kissing, hand shaking and hugging but in terms of Baboons it was some unique. Two monkeys were given a task of choosing same image from the screen but they had two different kind of images randomly selected in their screens. Two images were given to the first and two images to the second baboon in which one image was common. If they want to get a reward then they had to choose the same picture. It will tell their physical mentality and emotional thoughts. The individuals had to decide together the solution of the problem as there are several possibilities in it.

The primates quickly developed a hierarchy between images: for example, they agreed on the choice of the pink square when it was presented with a light blue square, and chose the yellow square next to a pink or light blue square. When the two baboons could no longer see each other, the overall performance of the group was hardly affected.

This suggests that the baboons were not simply using imitation as a strategy to solve this problem, but had instead coordinated on these choices.

These conventions are not unique to the human species, as proven for the first time by the results of an experiment conducted at the CNRS primatology centre. Co-Presented with a device requiring the coordination of two individuals, Guinea baboons established common rules for the whole group in about three days.

After three days both the individuals (Baboons) finally established the same rule for the experiment and this experiment rised their Social conventions. These conventions between baboons are stable over time, efficient, and arbitrary since the choice of images was not dictated. They therefore present the three characteristics of human social conventions.

The scientists propose that groups of non-human primates in the wild be observed in new ways to detect such conventions.

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