Olive baboons, who are native to Tanzania and Kenya, Africa, are primates with a large, rough, pink spot of skin on their backside. When female baboons are pregnant, their backsides get even more red and even more bulbous. St.Paul Academy and Summit School hired a teacher this year that has studied this group of primates.

Upper School Biology teacher Andrea Bailey spent time in Gombe National Park in Africa following pregnant olive baboons and studying the effects of pregnancy coloration in the amount of aggression the individual receives. She did what was called a Focal Follow-Up. “I basically just followed and watched the pregnant baboon for an hour and a half, writing down what they did and their interactions because I wanted to get rates of behavior,” Bailey said.

While she was there, Bailey learned Swahili to a nearly fluent level in order to communicate with her field assistant named Hamimu (translated to jungle cat). Although proficient in the language, she indicated that words weren’t always helpful in the field. “I would be following the baboons through the machacka (thick vines) and I would get lost, but Hamimu always followed them,” Bailey said. “I would go HOO HOO and he would go HOO HOO and we would find each other,” she added.

Through her research in Africa and then later in Southwest National Primate Research Center in San Antonio, she studied something that was relatively unstudied. She found that females received “significantly more attacks or threats from non-kin females before showing pregnancy signs compared to after showing pregnancy signs in the wild,” Bailey explained.

Meanwhile, in captivity, she found that “pregnant females received significantly more aggression from other females when exhibiting pregnancy coloration,” Bailey said.

“I learned a lot from my research and not just the science stuff. It was such a cool experience to be in that culture and immerse myself in the movements of the baboons,” Bailey said.