King Of The Mountains

Picture a primate that grazes like a cow, climbs cliffs like a mountain goat and forms groups as big as shoals of fish. Noah Snyder-Mackler introduces Ethiopia’s gelada.

- Noah Snyder-Mackler

Cecilia and her sister, Carmen, were a bit unsure of the new guy, Orion, who had just joined their group. They stayed far away from him and kept their babies close by. There was a good chance that he could hurt them or, more likely, their infants. Fortunately, Doug, the father, was around to protect them. No, this isn’t a recap of a recent soap-opera episode – it’s just a day in the life of a group of geladas.

If you’re ever above the clouds on the lush plateaus of East Africa, you might find yourself surrounded by thousands of monkeys diligently foraging for food. But these animals aren’t swinging from tree branches like some of their close relatives. Instead they spend the majority of their time scooting around on their ‘bums’, grazing like cows. These are a one-of-a-kind species that can only be found among the escarpments and gorges of the Ethiopian highlands.

These gregarious primates are often called ‘bleeding-heart baboons’, which, though poetic, is misleading. Not because they don’t have blazingly red chests, but because geladas are not actually baboons, they are just their close relatives. Monkeys from the genus geladas, Theropithecus, used to range all over East Africa. Now, however, the gelada is the sole species left – a unique survivor. One of the main reasons these monkeys outlived their relatives is due to a panoply of unique adaptations that enables them to survive in a resource-poor, high-altitude environment. In the thin air of the gelada’s habitat (often about 3,000m above sea level) there is a dearth of nutrient-rich foods, so they depend almost entirely on the grasses and tubers that carpet the plateaus.