While doing baboon follows on a family of baboons dubbed ‘C Troop’, one volunteer and field assistant saw that an infant had lost its mother.  One afternoon the troop was intact, the next morning the black infant male (about 4 months of age) was alone and screaming.  They suspected she was killed by farmers whose farms C troop raid.  The infant was at first carried around by an adult male, probably the father, for the first day, then a juvenile male, probably an older sibling, for the following few days.  As it would not be weaned at this age, it would not be receiving adequate nutrition though the infant was eating a small amount of wild foods. 

The Trust decided not to intervene as the success rate of hand rearing a male baboon would be close to zero.  The critical issues being that reintroduction would not be successful if the infant was taken from the troop for an extended length of time.  In this case, the time to weaning would be about 4 months.  Would it be accepted back?  Likely not.  The other concern is to have a male baboon habituated to humans.  A male baboon without fear of people would surely become a danger to Diani residents and would likely lead to aggressive encounters. 

To come to an answer, we referred to previous baboon behaviour studies and to our primate infant release experience.  In the natural world infants often lose their mothers to predators and other calamities. Secondly, according to researches done, only fifty percent of the yearlings survive to their fourth birthday.  Baboons do not accept non-relative infants as readily as say, sykes and vervets and even less so if it is from a non-natal troop.  If it had not been adopted yet by a female within its troop, then capturing and releasing it elsewhere had high chances of failure.  Primates, and especially young ones get stressed if separated from the troop.   All options considered, it had better odds, though admittedly small, remaining with its troop than if we took it into captive care.  Since Colobus Trust holds that the primates in Diani are wild and should be allowed to live so, we decided not to intervene and let nature take its course.

Three days later, a squatter farmer picked it up and called us.  We confiscated it and immediately released it into its troop.  Two days later, it was seen near a cottage, on its own, the troop was not in the vicinity, then it disappeared.  

Confiscation from farmer	Releasing infant back into troop