For mothers, the timing of weaning is a close instinctual calculation of resources. Mistimed, it can lead to certain death for either mother, baby or perhaps both. Baboons, like all mothers that breed several times during their lifetime, must balance the investment in their current offspring against their own survival and future reproductive capacity. The average baboon is likely to spend 75 per cent of her life having babies – around seven in total, of which only two are likely to survive into adulthood.
