Effects of urban association on the movement ecology of hamadryas baboons (Papio hamadryas) in Saudi Arabia

What the report says

PLOS One reported a new GPS-collar study examining how urban environments affect the movements of hamadryas baboons in southwestern Saudi Arabia, where conflict between people and the species has grown alongside urban expansion and access to human food waste. The paper, by Z.R. Mir and co-authors, was published July 23, 2026, and focuses on Papio hamadryas, described by the authors as the Arabian Peninsula’s only native non-human primate.

Researchers fitted GPS collars to 10 adult male baboons from groups classified as urban, natural or semi-natural across five regions. Over nine months, they gathered 13,962 location fixes and assessed space use through variograms, home-range estimates and minimum daily travel distances. The results showed a clear gradient: baboons in natural settings ranged most widely, semi-natural animals were intermediate and more variable, and urban-associated baboons moved within the smallest areas.

According to the article, natural-environment baboons had a median home range of 8.79 square kilometers and a median minimum daily path length of 3.33 kilometers. Urban baboons had a median home range of 1.31 square kilometers and a median minimum daily path length of 2.16 kilometers. Daytime use of urban areas also rose across the categories, from 7.2% among natural groups to 40.6% for semi-natural groups and 55.0% for urban groups.

The authors say the findings support the Resource Dispersion Hypothesis, indicating that predictable food sources may shape baboon ranging behavior more than scarcity alone. They argue the work can help authorities design category-specific conflict measures, such as better waste management, identifying movement corridors and targeting areas where encounters between people and baboons are most likely.