Cute Baby Baboon Struggles To Ride Mom

This adorable baby baboon hitched a ride with its mom rather than waste its time running to keep up with the rest of the troop.

Vincent Adami filmed this adorable baby baboon in May 2025 and sent it in to Latest Sightings. It was having a day out with its mom and the rest of the troop when they stopped to graze.

A baboon’s diet is hugely varied, as they are omnivores that will eat grass, seeds, and nuts, and will also eat meat when the opportunity arises.

For this baby, it appeared to be having a hearty meal of wet mud, perfect to get the appetite going, before hurrying back to its mother for its ride from the waterside restaurant.

Little Baboon On A Little Beach

The troop had come to rest by the side of a waterhole, which was where Vincent first caught the baby baboon on camera. It was small enough to look a little unsteady as it moved around, indicating its youth.

It still had a dark coat, which also signals how young it really was, and although it was clearly still reliant on its mother, its attempts to eat solid foods suggest that it was close to a year old.

Although the size of the waterhole is unknown, the scale of the baby makes it appear as though it is standing on a muddy beach. Because it seemed to be so at ease, it is likely the water was shallow enough to determine an absence of predators.

A Delicious Mud Dinner

If it hadn’t been fully weaned at this point, then it was undergoing the process, and potentially learning what is and is not food. Wet mud was clearly interesting enough to examine further.

Eating soil is not an uncommon part of many animals' diets, and this baby is likely mimicking behaviour it is seen from the adults in the troop, or perhaps it’s just making a terrible mistake.

Soils rich in certain minerals can have nutritious benefits to animals, and eating them can provide them with important vitamins which are otherwise harder to source in the wild. Omnivorous animals like baboons might be more likely to engage in this behaviour than others.

Time To Get Back To Mom

Eventually, the muddy dinnertime had to come to an end, and it was time to play instead. It was not until the baby baboon made it back to its mom that the size difference between it and an adult really became apparent.

Baboons typically only give birth to one infant at a time, but if this one had any friends at a similar age, then they were keeping themselves to themselves, so this mischievous baby had to try and play with mom.

It spent a little bit of time rolling around on the ground, attacking her wrists, but she did not seem to be in the mood for it. It is the female baboons that raise their young with little input from the males, so this was the infant’s best chance for a game.

Did You Know?

The canine teeth of an adult male baboon are longer than those of a leopard. He will use them in yawning threat displays to rivals but also as lethal weapons, both in attack and self-defence. This sociable, versatile and highly intelligent monkey is the most widespread primate of sub-Saharan Africa. Where humans pose no threat, such as around safari lodges, it can become a confident opportunist, so keep your tent flaps closed and your picnic lunch out of sight. The several different races of baboon, from the chacma baboon of the Cape to the olive baboon of the Masaai Mara, are today recognised by most scientists as regional variants of a single species.

Author: Oscar Betts