Blood Groups of Apes and Monkeys: I. The A‐B‐O Blood Groups in Baboons

Abstract

Saliva and serum from 124 baboons have been tested for A‐B‐H specificity. All the baboons were secretors and could be classified into one of the three groups, A, B, and AB; there were no baboons of group O. Occasional seeming contradictions to the Landsteiner rule, namely, baboons with A in the saliva and anti‐A in the serum were shown to be due to two different kinds of serological specificity of A, one shared by saliva and red blood cells and designated as A s and the other peculiar to red cells alone and designated as A c . Baboons of groups A and AB have only A s , and so can produce antibodies of specificity anti‐A c ‐ A similar explanation accounts for previous observations of occasional spider monkeys with B in the saliva and anti‐B in the serum. Analysis of population data and family material indicates that the A‐B‐O groups are inherited by allelic genes in baboons as in man.