Meat transfer patterns reflect the multi-level social system of Guinea baboons

Multi-level societies, characterized by stable subunits nested within higher-order social levels, occur in humans and several other taxa. In hunter-gatherers, resource sharing, particularly meat, is considered a key driver of multi-level social organization. Despite its importance in humans, patterns of resource transmission in non-human multi-level societies remain largely unexplored. Using Guinea baboons, Papio papio, as a model, we examined how meat, a high-quality, shareable resource, is transmitted through their multi-level society. We combined records of 109 meat-eating events with nine years of behavioral and demographic data to test how relationship strength and stratified social levels affect meat sharing. Meat transfers were more likely to occur along stronger social relationships, and tolerant transfer types were most common at the society's base, decreasing with each higher social level. This pattern resembles that of some hunter-gatherer societies, suggesting convergent outcomes of multi-level social organization on the transmission of high-quality shareable resources.