Decades-long baboon study sheds light on social stress and human health
Research reveals the impact of social hierarchy and early adversity on baboon — and human — well-being.
Long-term research in Kenya’s Amboseli baboon population is revealing how social hierarchy, early adversity and relationships shape health and survival — for baboons and, by extension, humans.
A study that has followed several generations of a baboon population in Kenya for more than 50 years is helping researchers discover how baboons — and by extension, human beings — evolve in societies.
The research, led by Dr. Susan C. Alberts, has shown that the strongest of the baboons, the alpha males, have a much higher stress level than that of the beta, or weaker, baboons. Inversely, the alpha females are more privileged and have a much lower stress level compared to beta females.
Alberts, the Robert F. Durden Distinguished Professor of Biology and dean of Natural Sciences at Duke University, is one of 20 internationally renowned scholars in the most recent class of Texas A&M University’s Hagler Fellows. The fellowship program, organized by the Hagler Institute for Advanced Study at Texas A&M University, invites a group of researchers to campus each year to collaborate with Texas A&M faculty and students on their research. Alberts is collaborating with Texas A&M’s College of Arts and Sciences during her fellowship.
Alberts’ research focuses on baboon behaviors, specifically how they use behaviors to adapt to their environment and how social animals evolve. Baboons have a linear rank, based on their ability to win in conflict.
Humans are similar to baboons in multiple ways, Alberts said.
“Because baboons and humans are fairly close relatives and have similar social lives, the baboon study system can therefore act as a model system for giving us clues about how these things probably work in humans,” she said. “For instance, our research has allowed us to disentangle different sources of poor health, and to confirm that early adversity and adult social relationships have independent effects on adult health — giving us clues about what may be happening in humans.”
The relationship between health and survival, especially among individuals who are socially connected compared to those who are not, is an indicator of the importance of sociability in societies, Alberts said.
Alberts’ team found that in Kenya’s Amboseli ecosystem, baboons who experienced more adversity in their early life, such as droughts, low-ranking mothers or living in high density, tend to have a shorter lifespan.
In humans, early life adversity and poor adult social environments can both have negative consequences for health. But these topics are difficult to study in humans, because doing so requires data on multiple aspects of life in the same individuals — including their early life, their adult social environments and their health outcomes.
“We are able to combine all these datasets in the baboons because we follow them on a near-daily basis from cradle to grave, taking objective measures of their environment, their behavior and their health,” Alberts said.
Since its inception in 2010, the Hagler Institute has attracted 146 researchers to the Texas A&M campus. Sixteen have joined Texas A&M’s faculty permanently.
