Adrian Bailey and Robyn Keene-Young recently spent the best part of a year with a troop of Chacma baboons in Botswana’s wild and remote Okavango Delta. On a string of islands, inaccessible by vehicle for most of the year and miles upstream from the nearest outpost of civilization, the photographer and writer walked with the troop, sharing and documenting the daily adventures of baboon life. From dawn to dusk, alongside their fellow primates, the couple waded through flooded plains, avoided predators and dodged the ill-tempered elephants of this wetland paradise. By nightfall, they poled their dugout canoe to their island home: a rustic tented camp under a sprawling fig tree.
The feature bears witness to a year of tragedy and triumph, friendship and parenthood in this extraordinary troop. We meet individuals like the crotchety, quick-tempered old female, who becomes vulnerable to attack by lions and leopards as she struggles to keep up with the troop. We share the excitement of a new birth with a first-time mother; and the sorrow of a grieving mother, who continues to carry and groom her dead infant’s body. We are entertained by the antics of boisterous juveniles as they play and bully in trees and on termite mounds. We explore the challenges faced by the alpha male, a fearless ruler occupying a coveted position; and the threat embodied in a dangerous immigrant, intent on the throne. In a land where immigrant males kill infants to hasten the onset of the mother’s estrus cycle, strong social bonds become crucial to survival.
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