Baboon family playing

Taken at an unknown zoo in England in the 1920s or 1930s. Caption reads:

The hardiest baby in England spends most of the day sitting on the rocks stark naked and chewing a place of potato.This is Maisie the wonder child of the Zoo.Maisie the baby Baboon is now four months old and is the first baby to live through the cold weather
O.P.S Maisie, perched on the back of her mother enjoys chasing father round the rocks on Monkey Hill

Meaghan Edwards said:

Taken at an unknown zoo in England in the 1920s or 1930s. Caption reads:

.This is Maisie the wonder child of the Zoo.Maisie the baby Baboon is now four months old and is the first baby to live through the cold weather
O.P.S Maisie, perched on the back of her mother enjoys chasing father round the rocks on Monkey Hill

Click to expand...

This would be London Zoo. 'Monkey Hill' was the home of a large colony of Hamadryas baboons-it was situated behind the Mappin Terraces roughly on the site of the Animal Hospital/service. Of course, the baby on its mother's back isn't 'chasing' the male- the female is obediently following her male, which is normal social behaviour in this species.

This colony wasn't a great success -the sex ratio was hopeless with males hugely outnumbering females and because of continual competition over the few females, there was lots of fighting and high mortality.