Question 1

✖️ We humanise them by naming them

Accepted Answer

One could argue that naming a baboon, respects it as a sentient being. But that aside, some residents are citizen scientists who collect data to enable further study of the troop. The naming convention, besides identifying individuals, reveals the ancestry of individuals, and enables data on population and dynamics to be consistently collected. Labelling a baboon REB12, for example, besides being less memorable, does not embed ancestral information.

Many respected primate research projects use names to identify individuals and track ancestry, for example, Jane Goodall’s chimpanzee research, Dian Fossey’s gorilla studies and The Amboseli Baboon Research Project.

Question 2

✖️ We humanise them by naming them

Accepted Answer

One could argue that naming a baboon, respects it as a sentient being. But that aside, some residents are citizen scientists who collect data to enable further study of the troop. The naming convention, besides identifying individuals, reveals the ancestry of individuals, and enables data on population and dynamics to be consistently collected. Labelling a baboon REB12, for example, besides being less memorable, does not embed ancestral information.

Many respected primate research projects use names to identify individuals and track ancestry, for example, Jane Goodall’s chimpanzee research, Dian Fossey’s gorilla studies and The Amboseli Baboon Research Project.