Monkeys in the mist

Just when you think you've seen it all, along comes a sight so rare, so wonderful it literally takes your breath away.

Let's start with the location. The very roof of Africa, incredibly wild country with its towering mountains and swirling mists.

Then you meet the locals, the gelada, really weird monkeys, perched high on the treacherous cliffs. Once there were millions of them, now there are only a few thousand left.

Transcript

DR CHADDEN HUNTER: You're very lucky to see this. I mean, very few people have ever come down to this spot to see them right on their sleeping ledges. They are just stuck there like fridge magnets on the side of the rock face.

LIAM BARTLETT: Four thousand metres above the African plains, in Ethiopia's majestic highlands, my first encounter with the magnificent gelada monkeys.

DR CHADDEN HUNTER: You can't have a fear of heights up here, that's for sure.

LIAM BARTLETT: Six years doing this?

DR CHADDEN HUNTER: Yeah.

LIAM BARTLETT: Some people aren't married that long!

DR CHADDEN HUNTER: Yeah, married to the gelada.

LIAM BARTLETT: For those six, long years intrepid Australian scientist Dr Chadden Hunter lived in these remote Simien Mountains among the critically endangered monkeys. His experience provided the first intimate study into the only vegetarian primates left on the planet.

DR CHADDEN HUNTER: I can't keep away. I mean, these guys are buddies and it's just such a magical place to me. I mean, these mountains — it's almost like my spiritual home.

LIAM BARTLETT: The gelada's spectacular homeland is right up in the north of Ethiopia, near the Eritrean a border, and getting here is a long and arduous journey from the capital Addis Ababa. Then, a slow climb into the mountains along what were once donkey trails. Up here, the temperature plunges and the air is so thin it's difficult to breathe.

DR CHADDEN HUNTER: I love this spot because it's one of the few places I can actually see them right in the bedroom, so to speak, on those tiny little ledges. Each family just huddles into these really, really tight balls. Dad's hanging onto the cliffs, Mum's hanging onto Dad, all the babies are clustered in the middle and the ledges that they're on are just no wider than their bum.

LIAM BARTLETT: This is what makes these monkeys so unique — the way they choose to sleep. Every night, they retreat to the vertical cliff faces to escape the leopards and the hyaenas that hunt on the plateau above. Look how close that big one is, right on the edge, with his tail hanging over.

DR CHADDEN HUNTER: Yeah, getting groomed by his female. I mean, he is one foot from sure death and he's getting his hair done! It's ridiculous!

LIAM BARTLETT: It's early morning and the geladas slowly make their way up to the plateau for a breakfast of lush grass.

DR CHADDEN HUNTER: This is the real social hour. The family around the breakfast table-type thing. Time to groom, fingers in the fur. This is the time that really cements the family bonds.

LIAM BARTLETT: They are very familiar with you, aren't they? They are not threatened at all.

DR CHADDEN HUNTER: No, no. I met most of these guys seven or eight years ago, and, so, a lot of them are young enough that they haven't known life without me.

LIAM BARTLETT: Getting to know the gelada, Chadden has spent months on end alone on this mountain top, often in the most extreme conditions. This is not the Ethiopia that most of us would imagine — no deserts, no famine, no Bob Geldof up here. This is the roof of Africa. We're almost twice as high as Mt Kosciusko, where the wet season can last for months, and temperatures can often fall below zero. It's a perfect playground for the gelada, but not so healthy for the humans.

DR CHADDEN HUNTER: I've had shigella and giardia and amoebas and schistosomiasis and typhoid, typhus and other disease you get from fleas. Basically, I've had everything. The School of Tropical Medicine love me because I'm this walking laboratory for them.

LIAM BARTLETT: But Chadden's personal sacrifices have been worth it. By living among the gelada he's gained a remarkable insight into their surprisingly complex society … where ritualised violence, power struggles and passionate love affairs are all part of everyday life.

DR CHADDEN HUNTER: Big family male right in the middle there just showing the whole group that he's still in charge of his family.

LIAM BARTLETT: He's quite frightening when he gets going.

DR CHADDEN HUNTER: I know!

LIAM BARTLETT: At first blush, it appears that this is a society dominated by sexually rampant Alpha males. With their magnificently groomed manes, they certainly look the part, but in the gelada world appearances can be deceptive.

DR CHADDEN HUNTER: Look at this — everyone just gets out of his way. That's one of his females that he'll keep track of.

LIAM BARTLETT: Right.

DR CHADDEN HUNTER: Basically showing that he still the family man.

LIAM BARTLETT: That's a very nice way of putting it! Despite their impressive, though somewhat hasty, displays of sexual prowess, it turns out the males aren't in control at all.

DR CHADDEN HUNTER: Females completely run their social system, there is no doubt about that, which is amazing because they're half the size of the males.

LIAM BARTLETT: What's more, Chadden has discovered these thoroughly liberated females often tire of their partners after only three or four years. So, for these blokes, staying on top is a full-time job.

DR CHADDEN HUNTER: If these guys don't measure up, they'll be turfed out in a second.

LIAM BARTLETT: They're fickly, these women, aren't they?

DR CHADDEN HUNTER: High-maintenance. These gelada girls are high-maintenance. This is my favourite dude in the entire gelada world, Chewbacca, down here just plucking some grass, got this fantastic mane, gold, chocolate. Just stood up. Hey, Chewy.

LIAM BARTLETT: Chewbacca became the prime focus of Chadden's research. That's all of his harem is it, Chadden?

DR CHADDEN HUNTER: Yes, he has seven female. Some other girls are straggling here.

LIAM BARTLETT: Chadden captured the unfolding drama as Chewbacca challenged an older male called Samson. Samson's girls were ready for a change.

DR CHADDEN HUNTER: And the females really egg them both on. They want to see these two males head-to-head because they want to make a final decision. So you had Chewbacca breaking branches and running up trees and screaming this amazing yelp. And, after a while, Samson just could not keep up. And, when it comes to that moment in time, the females are like, 'Well, right boys, I think that we've made a decision. Samson, you are retired and, Chewbacca, you're in'. And he has, finally, with all this effort won himself a family.

LIAM BARTLETT: And for Samson? Nothing?

DR CHADDEN HUNTER: For Samson, that is the end of his entire reproductive career. He never gets to bed down with a woman again.

LIAM BARTLETT: Millions of years ago, much of Africa would have been as lush as this, with the ancient forebears of the gelada everywhere. But, as the continent dried out, they retreated to the high ground. Until today, this one grassy mountain top provides their last refuge. And, even here, the gelada are under constant threat, not only from predators, but also from local farmers, who are happy to shoot them as pests. Chadden has worked tirelessly to stop them culling the few thousand that remain. It's a great concept, isn't it, a young Australian all that way from home, campaigning on behalf of an Ethiopian monkey?

DR CHADDEN HUNTER: Yeah. I think most of the Ethiopians I'm sure thought I was crazy. I mean here they are thinking it's vermin. It's like someone coming all way from Ethiopia to Australia to study our rats. We'd be like, 'What are you doing?'

LIAM BARTLETT: But, despite the trigger-happy locals, it's leopards that the gelada fear most. Today, I'm visiting a nearby village with Chadden to prepare for a remarkable experiment on how they react to their natural enemy.

DR CHADDEN HUNTER: This is exactly perfect stuff.

LIAM BARTLETT: At the local haberdashery, we find just the fabric to test the monkey's primal fears.

DR CHADDEN HUNTER: What do you think? Well, if you were a gelada, how would that make you feel?

LIAM BARTLETT: Well, I don't know? Would they recognise it?

DR CHADDEN HUNTER: Well, that's the question. That's what I think we've got to test out here.

LIAM BARTLETT: You wouldn't be that cruel, would you?

DR CHADDEN HUNTER: Well, these guys sleep down on these cliffs for a reason every single night.

LIAM BARTLETT: The village dressmaker gets the unusual job of making a fake leopard. It doesn't fool the locals, who think it's a great joke, but the real test will be on the gelada.

DR CHADDEN HUNTER: There is nothing in the world of gelada as dangerous as a leopard, so that gut reaction to the fake leopard should really come out with this test. The stimulus of leopard skin or leopard print is so strong to actually so many monkey species around the world, but just a little flash of leopard skin causes this amazing reaction — the screaming and running — even probably from young gelada, who have possibly never seen a leopard in their young lives.

LIAM BARTLETT: All that from fake leopard fur?

DR CHADDEN HUNTER: Yeah, yeah. It was stunning. The fake leopard looked ridiculous but it drove these guys crazy.

LIAM BARTLETT: For the past six years, Chadden Hunter has walked and talked with the monkeys in their spectacular mountain kingdom. They have taken him in and revealed their complex and mysterious world. But, for Chadden, they have done more. They've taught him about himself.

DR CHADDEN HUNTER: I feel that the gelada taught me a lot about relationships, about making a society work, a community work. I sometimes spend time with these guys and watch them get on and sort out problems and run a society, and then I head back to us humans and I think, 'We are so uncivilised'. So I felt that I did become more reflective in the years that I was up here and I'd like to think it made me a better person.