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Gelada Baboon — printable fact sheet
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Gelada Baboon
Theropithecus gelada
Theropithecus gelada is the last survivor of a genus that once spread across Africa, and it is the only primate on Earth that lives on grass. Roughly ninety percent of its diet is grass blades, and it harvests them with the most refined precision grip of any primate — thumb and …
Did you know?
- Despite their baboon-like appearance, geladas are the only surviving member of their genus, Theropithecus, and are more closely related to baboons than to any other living monkey.
- Geladas are not true baboons; they sit in their own genus, and their closest relatives are known mostly from fossils of far larger, extinct grass-eating monkeys. The male's threat display is the lip-flip, in which he rolls his upper lip completely back over his nostrils to expose a startling white rim of gum and a full set of canines. Their molars have high crowns with complex enamel folds for grinding abrasive grass, more like an antelope's than a monkey's, and their teeth wear down heavily with age. They come down off the cliffs at sunrise, spend the whole day grazing on the plateau, and climb back to their ledges before dark, every day of their lives.
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