During the reconstruction of the road and the consequent reduction of food supplied by passing motorists, the colony moved eastward toward Taif and took up partial residence in a housing area close by. There they became a familiar sight establishing foraging routes around and through domestic properties and scavenging what they could. It does not discriminate much in its search for food, eating grass, roots, seeds, reptiles, insects, small mammals and crops. Elsewhere “small mammals” has occasionally included “small humans.”

Feeding the baboons of the Taif escarpment has become something of a local sport so that on a weekend afternoon they gather in scores on the rocks and retaining wall of the escarpment road, a kilometer or so downhill from a roadside fruit market. The baboons are intelligent they know what time of day the visitors tend to come. Just as the baboons have been taught by the visitors to expect food, so the baboons have taught the visitors to provide it. They are choosy.  Hamburgers and fries are usually discarded. Bread is commonplace and often thrown back. Fruit and vegetables are the staple fare, bananas being the favorite.

Such is the aggressive familiarity of the baboon colony that they will now sit on the road and hold up traffic, clamber over cars and even reach inside to grab food. Smaller and perhaps weaker ones sit in positions of supplication and literally beg for food. Others, usually big males, simply snatch food from the tourists or smaller baboons.

The lack of awareness among the majority of tourists of the awesome power of a big alpha-male hamadryas baboon is startling. These animals are perfectly capable of biting through the aluminium bodywork of a Land Rover or ripping a German Shepherd dog apart, tearing open its skull and eating the brains — a particular delicacy.

These beasts may be interesting to look at and fun to feed, but they are wild, diseased and totally unpredictable.

Yet tourists leave the protection of their vehicles. No less dangerously, they hold out tiny children toward these creatures, a banana in the child’s hand. Quite apart from the potential terror for the child of having a huge-toothed hairy baboon run at it and snatch the banana or whatever else is being offered from his or her hand, there is the fact that baboons eat small mammals; there are records of them even attacking and killing children. Perhaps there is a moment of indecision by the baboon as considers what is on offer: Main course or dessert. Until now it has been the fruit dessert.  But someday, it may be something more substantial.  Parents on the Taif road appear to be wholly unaware of the dangers.