Baboons and macaques are grouped together in the subfamily Cercopithecinae, which also includes the less well known mangabeys and guenons. Although there are important exceptions, in general mangabeys and guenons are forest-dwelling monkeys who spend the majority of their time in the trees, whereas baboons (in Africa) and macaques (in Asia) tend to live in more open country, spending much of their time on the ground. Baboons are found throughout sub-Saharan Africa from coast to coast and in the Arabian Peninsula.
Five types of baboons are grouped together in the genus Papio: the hamadryas, the Guinea, the yellow, the chacma, and the olive baboons. These five types were originally considered separate species. Recent evidence, however, indicates that different types interbreed when they come into contact in the wild, suggesting that they are more appropriately viewed as racial variants of a single species, Papto cynocephalus. According to this view, the olive baboons who were the subjects of this study are classified as Papio cynocephalus anubis. Throughout, the different types of baboons will be referred to by their common names. (Altmann, S. A. and Altmann, J. 1970.)
The distribution of savannah baboons is continuous, so that olive baboons, the most northerly species, are replaced by yellow baboons further south; yellow baboons, in turn, are replaced by chacma baboons whose range extends to the tip of southern Africa. Olive baboons, the subjects of this study, are darker, stockier, furrier, and altogether more bearlike than the paler, more gracile yellow baboons, and many chaema baboons are even larger and darker than olive baboons. It is possible that these differences in appearance are also paralleled by differences in social organization and behavior, but our knowledge of the three species is still too imprecise to tell..................
