Mark your territory: Treat your roommates like baboons

Can you not tolerate your roommate? Does your roommate often intrude upon your private space? Well, here’s a simple advice that can help you out. “Do as monkeys do.” Well technically, the correct term would be “Do as other primates do.” (Humans are primates too!) Recent studies have shown that by regularly producing clear, loud calls, a non-human male primate can effectively assert its dominance over its living area (Wich and Nunn, 2002). These calls may also help attract mates, guard resources, and establish the male’s home range, or the area where an individual spends most of its time. I’ll admit that screaming at your roommate will not literally attract the opposite sex or put food on the table. But nevertheless, communication is still the basis to all dispute solving.

Like other primates, all of us need our own space, but some may need or want more and unnecessarily intrude on others. So, let’s return to nature, analyze a specific group of primates to see what they do, and try to learn from them. By tabulating specific, past researches and studies, S. A. Wich and C. L. Nunn determined that male baboons mark their territory and belongings by periodically generating loud, distinctive “wahoo” calls. Wich and Nunn obtained information of these long-distance calls from unpublished databases, published literature, and personal correspondence of field biologists. From those sources, they tried to correlate the distance of the calls with home range size and body mass.

Wich and Nunn’s study found that “most [baboons] produce long-distance calls that carry less than one home range diameter…which suggest that [the calls’] production is limited by the costs of producing such calls.” By not invading another baboon’s area, it is clear that these baboons are only looking to defend what they already possess rather than trying to increase the size of their home range. Because the wahoos require much effort and energy, it is unlikely that baboons will unnecessarily call out in a threatening manner, which could lead to undesirable physical disputes and bodily harm. Analogously, it is not necessary for you to stress too much after you have already discussed space division issues with your roommate. Your roommate should continue to respect your space as long as you follow the baboons’ example and occasionally remind him or her of the boundaries of your area, trying, of course, to use a more subtle method than wahoo.

Wich and Nunn also found that the larger the body masses of these baboons, the less often they called out. Since a larger baboon will need a larger home range, it is too energetically costly for it to frequently produce wahoos that span that distance. “These results may indicate that larger-bodied [individuals] experience reduced benefits of territorial defense.” Since they can more easily physically overpower their smaller opponents and take back anything that they might lose, they will benefit less (expend more energy) if they try too hard to protect their home range. Similarly, bigger and stronger students are less likely to be bullied by than weaker students. This is not to suggest that you would be bullied by your bigger roommate, but you should still clearly identify your own space and regularly assert control over it.

So, talk with your roommate first and decide how to evenly divide up the room. Let him or her know where your private space is, when you would like to be alone, and what belongings are not to be touched or shared. Most importantly, both of you need to agree under which conditions this agreement can be altered to a certain extent. Compromising and complex negotiation is a skill that separates us from baboons, so why not take full advantage of that to save some aggravation and heated disputes? Although all primates need their own space, how we accomplish that can and should be different from what baboons do. Communicate with and respect each other first, so you won’t need to expend nearly as much energy in the future trying to fight for something both of you consider to be yours. Therefore, do as other primates do: Mark your territory clearly and frequently to make everyone’s rooming experience more pleasant and enjoyable.

References:

Wich, Serge A., Nunn, Charles L. 2002. Do male "long-distance calls" function in mate defense? A comparative study of long-distance calls in primates. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology: Vol. 52(6), pp. 474-484.