Baby Chacmas
Male baboon, Quizzy, carries baby on back. Gestation period of chacma baboons is just over six months. Usually only one baby is born. The newborns have pink faces and black hair. Initially they will ride under their mother's belly, progressing to riding jockey style on her back. Males also sometimes "help out" by allowing the baby to ride on their back or belly. Babies are fussed over by troop members.
Female baboons with baby and juvenile foraging in natural fynbos. Due to urbanisation, baboons natural habitat has decreased, although there is still enough natural foraging under normal circumstances excluding disasters such as widespread fires.
Many residents understand this and are tolerant of the indigenous baboons present in the Cape since before human settlement, making allowances for their predicament. Some residents resent, often moving into the area themselves from outside, resent them being there and can be extremely cruel to them.
A female and baby amidst spring flowers on a residential pavement.
Some think the easy way out is being taken in baboon management by allowing culling rather than appropriate education and law enforcement and practical solutions being implemented. A sustainable financial solution is necessary (it is of note that baboons contribute considerably to their keep, being a major tourist attraction). The City did supply funding for a monitoring contract until mid 2012.
Longstanding allegations by some of a so-called potential threat to human safety including during the 2010 World Cup are used by those who oppose baboon presence in the urban area to attempt to motivate authorities to remove the baboons from urban areas. There has long been a lobby that for their own reasons want baboons removed.
Female holds a baby baboon.
Baby riding jockey style. Young baboons are trusting of humans and vulnerable, yet are nevertheless targeted by some residents. With little law enforcement carried out to protect the baboons in the past, the baboons are now also targeted by biased protocols.
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