  Dawn breaks across the arid plains of Filoha in Ethiopia's Awash National Park, signalling the start of day for hundreds of Hamadryas baboons. The day began much earlier for the Life film crew attempting to get unique footage of these fascinating animals, and the peaceful dawn is simply the calm before the storm, which will come in the form of a massive baboon battle.
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Watch "Baboon Super-Troops Clash"
UNPREDICTABLE PRIMATES
During the five weeks that the filmmakers spent in Ethiopia, each morning began at 4 in their camp situated beside a collection of hot springs. They had to be in place and ready to go by daybreak, when the baboons would skillfully descend from the cliffs they retreat to for safety each night. These are the normal working hours for scientists who have studied the
Hamadryas baboons at Filoha for more than a decade. Rosie Thomas, the associate producer for the "
Primates" episode of
Life, and her cameraman, Barrie Britton, simply slotted themselves into these research patterns.
"You could never predict whether [the baboons] would stay or go," said Thomas. "Some mornings we were lucky, and we would have them for three or four hours. Then they'd head off and you'd have to follow. They move really fast. If they started fast, you'd pretty much lose them."
This unpredictability was largely what led Thomas to schedule such a long shoot — compared to the usual two or three weeks — in such a remote location.
"We knew that they were quite prone to just wandering off, and it was something that hadn't been filmed before, so we kind of needed the extra time," she said.
In fact, the main troop and the one most habituated to the scientists wandered off just before Thomas arrived, leaving behind a second, more skittish troop. But the main troop returned within a few days and, in the following weeks, the hours when Thomas, Britton and the scientists did manage to stay with the baboons yielded unique footage that provides a view into the complex and often brutal world of
Hamadryas baboons.
"There is something about them that is really quite aggressive," said Thomas. "The males are very dominating within the social structure."
That aggression came to the fore when Thomas and her colleagues witnessed and were able to capture on film two fights between rival troops of baboons. Baboon troops can include several hundred individuals, so the scale of these conflicts — generally sparked when males try to steal females from other troops — is massive. But they are also rare events, and scientists who follow the baboons may only see a handful of such fights in an entire year. It was a stroke of luck to be able to film this rarity twice — once from the valley floor and once from the cliffs above. The experience was unforgettable for Thomas.
"The noise is absolutely incredible," she said. "You've got 500 baboons going hell-for-leather at each other, they're just going completely crazy." She described watching the movement of the baboons as they filmed from the cliffs, a pattern that would sweep like a wave in one direction and then sweep back the opposite way.
But while the grand scale of these fights showcases the fury and aggression of rival baboons, there is a quieter but no less aggressive battle that goes on daily within the confines of individual troops.
Continue: Male Hamadryas Baboons: Dominating and Disciplining
