Baboons are large, smart, ground-dwelling monkeys. They are found across sub-Saharan Africa in various habitats and eat a flexible diet including meat, eggs, and plants. And they are known opportunists – in addition to raiding crops and garbage, some even mug tourists for their possessions, especially food.

We might be tempted to assume that this ecological flexibility (we might even call it resilience) will help baboons survive on our changing planet. Indeed, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which assesses extinction risk, labels five of six baboon species as…