Olive Baboon

Lake Manyara National Park has the most reliable and accessible olive baboon viewing in northern Tanzania, with large resident troops in the groundwater forest near the entrance. Tarangire and the Serengeti also hold strong populations. Legend Expeditions includes Manyara on most northern circuit itineraries.

Olive baboons are not aggressive toward people inside vehicles, but they can be a nuisance around lodges where they have learned to associate humans with food. The risk is to belongings rather than people. Always follow your camp's rules about leaving food or open windows unattended, and never feed a baboon under any circumstances.

Tanzania actually holds both species, with yellow baboons in the south and east and olive baboons in the north and west. Olive baboons are larger, darker and stockier, with the greenish grey coat. Yellow baboons are slimmer and paler. Both live in similar troop structures.

Yes. Olive baboons regularly catch and eat insects, eggs, small mammals and even young antelope. Coordinated hunting of dik dik and hares has been documented in Tanzanian troops. They are technically omnivores, but the meat eating side of their diet is more substantial than most travellers realise.

Troops typically range from 20 to 150 individuals, with some of the largest in East Africa exceeding 200. Lake Manyara holds some of the largest stable troops in Tanzania. The structure is matrilineal: females stay in their birth troop for life while males move between troops.

Olive baboons are among the most socially intelligent non ape primates. They recognise individual troop members, remember alliances and slights, plan group movement, and solve novel problems. Their social complexity is closer to that of chimpanzees than to most monkey species, which is why they have been central to primate research for decades.