Baby Hamadryas baboons at the Tbilisi Zoo in Georgia

The Hamadryas baboons at the Tbilisi Zoo in Georgia have given birth to several babies. One baby Hamadryas baboon is pictured here in the enclosure with the main group. Often her mother carried her baby on her back, but there were times when it was playing in the long grass.

Hamadryas baboons are native to the northwest Horn of Africa (Somaliland, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djibouti), and southwest Arabian Peninsula.

Males are silver-white, but females are brown. All of the baboons photographed are female, except the baby, which could be male or female. Males are born with brown fur that turns silver-white at around ten years of age.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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