FEMALE hamadryas baboons may be vulnerable to a form of domestic violence from which they feel unable to escape.
Studies suggest that gene flow through populations of the baboons () in north-east Africa is mainly through females – even though males keep tight control of them and punish wanderers.
Biologists think that females move when they are abducted by another male – but only now have they observed such abductions.
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Mathew Pines at the Filoha Hamadryas Project in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, witnessed three abductions. Each time, the original male located and retrieved the female by fighting the abductor. But the females helped each rescue mission, willingly returning to the rescuer despite a history of violent treatment by that male (Primates, ).
Pines’s colleague, at the City University of New York, sees parallels with battered person syndrome, a psychological condition in which victims of domestic violence believe they are unable to escape their tormentors.