Baboons in the Kuiseb Canyon shifted to alternative foods as search time for formerly preferred foods increased. Newly incorporated plant food items included one species, Cyperus marginatus, which required extensive processing and one species, Salvadom persica which was an abundant but low quality food. Keywords: Access to free water, Activity foci, Animal foods, Cactiform cuphorbia, Competition for food, Dehydrated fig fruit fragments, Destruction of plants, Euphorbia avas-montana, Excavations, Starvation, Stress, Toxic plants, Water content of plants, Water sources.