Description
Baboons have extraordinarily broad diets, even by primate standards. By one year of age they already consume more than two hundred different foods. Yet they are extremely selective about what part of each food they eat, and this keen selectivity adapts them to their savannah habitat. Perhaps the most striking result of Altmann's study is that the baboons' subsequent survival and reproductive success could be accurately predicted from what they had eaten as yearlings. Those that had energy intakes closest to the optimum and protein intakes farthest above their requirements were most likely to survive to adulthood and produce offspring that survived.
