Research Article Open Access

Conceptual Archaeology of a Temporal Place: Albert and Kessler (1976) Applied to Chacma Baboons (Papio ursinus)

Lucy Baehren1 and Susana Carvalho1,2,3
  • 1 Primate Models for Behavioural Evolution, Institute of Human Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
  • 2 Gorongosa National Park, Beira, Mozambique
  • 3 Interdisciplinary Centre for Archaeology and Evolution of Human Behaviour, Universidade do Algarve, Faro, Portugal

Abstract

Although leave-taking in non-human species has been preliminarily investigated in a few species, the mechanisms driving encounter ends remain unstudied. In 1976 Albert and Kessler published a landmark paper, outlining theories about what drives social encounter ends and providing a framework of internal and external motivations leading to separation. This framework has been underused in aiding our understanding of how proximate mechanisms for separation drive leave-taking and offers a valuable opportunity to better understand how separation and behavior relate to one another. Having previously identified leave-taking in wild chacma baboons (Papio ursinus), in the current paper, we apply this framework to their leave-taking to better understand how the motivations to leave impact leave-taking. Using GLMMs with binomial error structure, our results suggest that internal motivations to end interactions are better predictors of orientation-shifting behavior when compared to external motivations. We argue that these results validate the use of Albert and Kessler's framework across species and suggest that leave-taking may have evolved to signal internal drivers of interaction ends, a behavior that has become elaborated in human behavior.

Journal of Social Sciences
Volume 20 No. 1, 2024, 1-11

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3844/jssp.2024.1.11

Submitted On: 4 June 2023 Published On: 21 March 2024

How to Cite: Baehren, L. & Carvalho, S. (2024). Conceptual Archaeology of a Temporal Place: Albert and Kessler (1976) Applied to Chacma Baboons (Papio ursinus). Journal of Social Sciences, 20(1), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.3844/jssp.2024.1.11

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Keywords

  • Leave-Taking
  • Interaction
  • Baboon
  • Separation
  • Evolution