Baboon travel progressions as a ‘social spandrel’ in collective animal behaviour

How individuals in a group move relative to one another can influence both their survival and fitness. Spatial positioning has been well studied in baboons (Papio spp.), which travel collectively in line formations called \"progressions\". Early studies of baboon progressions presented contradictory findings – some reporting random positioning of individuals, and others reporting non-random positioning, thought to protect more vulnerable group members. Here, we revisit this topic and use high-resolution GPS tracking data to study a chacma baboon (Papio ursinus) group’s travel progressions on the Cape Peninsula, South Africa. We identify 78 progressions over 36 days and find that progression orders are not random. We test four non-exclusive hypotheses to explain progression orders: vulnerable individuals position themselves in the middle of the progression (risk hypothesis), subordinate individuals position themselves at the front to gain better access to resources (competition hypothesis)..., , , # Baboon travel progressions as a ‘social spandrel’ in collective animal behaviour

Data for the group progression is contained in progresion_data.csv.

## Description of the data and file structure

| **Column Name** | **Description** |
| --------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `id` | Unique identifier of the baboon individual (e.g., \"Azul\", \"Cindy\") for each row. ...,