MALE savannah baboons recognise their offspring and defend them in fights. But it is a mystery how they do it because female baboons often mate with many males before giving birth.
Jason Buchan at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and his colleagues have shown that interventions by adult males in fights are not random. They identified the fathers of 75 juveniles in Amboseli National Park in Kenya. In 69 out of 73 fights, males took their son or daughter’s side (Nature vol 425, p 179). “They generally make life a lot easier for their young,” says Buchan. Defending progeny…
