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Olive Baboons of Masai Mara

Updated: Nov 22, 2020

Olive baboon (Papio anubis), also called the Anubis baboon, is a member of the family Cercopithecidae (Old World monkeys). The olive baboon lives in groups of 15 to 150, made up of a few males, many females, and their babies. Each baboon has a social ranking somewhere in the group, depending on its dominance.


One major reason for its widespread success is that the olive baboon is omnivorous. The diet typically includes a large variety of plants, and invertebrates and small mammals, as well as birds. The olive baboon eat leaves, grass, seeds, roots, bark, flowers, fruit, lichens, tubers, seeds, mushrooms, corms, lizards, turtles, birds fish, frogs, eggs. The olive baboon also actively hunts prey, from small rodents and hares to foxes and other primates. Its limit is usually small antelope, such as Thomson's gazelle.

They eat whatever they can find. They shuffle with their hands and feet through the grass while they move or sit, in order to flush out a possible meal.