Abstract
Activity budgets represent life styles, reproductive life points of females and patterns for habitat environment in animals. It is suggested that activity budget favor the worst environmental criteria and resting time becomes a buffer for increasing energy demand such as lactation. We studied the activity budgets of anubis baboons (Papio anubis) in the semi-arid Laikipia District of Kenya to investigate their behavioral strategies adapted for the dry months when available foods are poor. We found that 18.1 % of each day was devoted to feeding, 34.5 % to moving, 37.4 % to resting, and 10.0 % to participating in social interactions. Although this distribution of time did not change between the wet months and the dry months, the frequency of drinking water in the dry months was more than in the wet months. Anubis baboons switched their diet from insects in the wet months to herbaceous plants in the dry months. Comparison of the results with previous studies suggests that feeding time becomes short when group size is small.
