Insights into short and long-term crop-foraging strategies in a chacma baboon (Papio ursinus) from GPS and accelerometer data

Crop-foraging by animals is a leading cause of human-wildlife ‘conflict’ globally, affecting farmers and resulting in the death of many animals in retaliation, including primates. Despite significant research into crop-foraging by primates, relatively little is understood about the behaviour and movements of primates in and around crop fields, largely due to the limitations of traditional observational methods. Crop-foraging by primates in large scale agriculture has also received little attention. We used GPS and accelerometer bio-loggers, along with environmental data, to gain an understanding of the spatial and temporal patterns of activity for a female in a crop-foraging baboon group in and around commercial farms in South Africa over one year. Crop fields were avoided for most of the year, suggesting that fields are perceived as a high-risk habitat. When field visits did occur, this was generally when plant primary productivity was low, suggesting that crops were a ‘fallback food’....