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Is this the adorable snowman?
They’re said to have inspired the legend of the Yeti – and now these rare snub-nosed monkeys are the stars of a new show about the Far East’s astonishing wildlife
With a light dusting of snowflakes on his auburn fur, there’s little that’s abominable about the snub-nosed monkey of the mountains of southern China. He’s more like the Adorable Snowman. But now a new documentary, Wild Far East, claims this rare creature could hold the key to the legend of the Yeti.
It’s hard to see the resemblance when these red- gold monkeys, which live at greater altitudes than any other non- human primate on Earth, are huddled together in family groups in the tree tops. They snuggle for warmth, sleeping through blizzards in protective balls of fur. And they rarely need to descend to ground level, since their staple foods of lichen, bark and seeds are found among the branches. But astonishing footage reveals that when they do venture down to the snowy floor, snub-nosed monkeys have an a lmost human, upright gait that mimics exactly how explorers have described the Yeti’s distinctive walk.
They puff out their chests and swing their arms as their bandy legs take long, ungainly strides. From a distance, with the strange tricks of perspective that snowscapes can create, it would be all too easy to mistake this 2ft- tall monkey for a humanoid. Around 20,000 survive across China, but thei r numbers a re endangered by poachers who hunt them for their gorgeous fur as well as their meat. Even their powdered bones are valuable, with some Chinese people believing them to have medicinal powers.
The monkeys’ distinctive faces evolved to protect them from frostbite: in the cruel cold, extremities including the tip of the nose are most at risk. It is said that their Latin name, Rhinopithecus roxellana, was inspired by Roxelana, a European slave girl who became the wife of a 16th- century Ottoman ruler: Roxelana had a famously upturned nose.
Filming the monkeys was a challenge for the crew, who discovered their equipment was less wel l adapted than the monkeys to the sub- zero condit ions. As they climbed from base camp, they had to take constant precautions against condensation inside the lenses, caused by the changing air pressure and humidity. ‘Misted lenses are a wildlife cameraman’s nightmare,’ explains producer Andrew Zikking, 40. ‘ They can take hours to clear, and that’s hugely frustrating – you’ve come thousands of miles, probably at great expense, to record animal behaviour, and if the camera is fogged up you miss it all.’
But the bitter cold brought another problem. Camera batteries run flat much faster when the temperature is below freezing, which can halve the available filming time. The solution was low-tech, if uncomfortable: the crew stripped off their coats and wrapped the batteries in them to coax more life out of them while they stood and shivered. ‘Shooting in such low temperatures is tough,’ says Andrew. ‘You develop a sort of tunnel vision, and it’s easy to overlook unexpected animal behaviour. Luckily the crew were alert when something happened that no one could have predicted – a rival male from another troupe launched a bid to grab ter r itory and came swinging in on the attack. We were able to film the whole battle.’
The hardships be came even more gruelling as the team headed to the rainforests of Taiwan, on the trail of some extraordinary snakes. Because these reptiles hunt after rainfall, Andrew had opted to film in typhoon season. But they were held up by a massive storm – and as they flew in the forecasters warned another was on the way. Worse, the highest tides of the year were due. When the storm hit, it was officially termed a supertyphoon – the worst for a decade with winds of almost 200mph and waves 10m high. The team were hoping to film the mass arrival of land crabs, thousands of them, making their annual descent to the sea’s edge to lay their eggs.
But the appalling weather made it impossible to venture outside to witness the spectacle. All they could do was wait out the battering of the monsoon. ‘ It was frightening,’ Andrew says. ‘The seas were tearing apart the sand dunes and the mangroves. When it was finally over, the national park was devastated, with much of the habitat destroyed by the forces of nature. It was a sad sight.’
But not everyone was disappointed. The Taiwanese snail- eating snakes the crew had come so far to see were enjoying a feast. These slow-moving serpents slither through the trees after rain in search of prey that is even less agile than them – snails. The gastropods are inedible to most predators, because of their ability to retreat into a protective shell.
The snakes, however, have evolved two clever tools. They can dislocate their jaws to stretch their mouths wide enough to swallow prey much bigger than their own heads. And they have uneven teeth – 11 on one side of the head, 20 on the other. This lets them grip the snail’s shell and twist it off the body, like opening a jar of pickles.
The team’s final Far East mission was to film clever monkeys that could probably open any jar, and use a Swiss Army knife to do it! The long-tailed macaques of Thailand have mastered a skill that was once believed to be the sole preserve of humans: they can use tools. These educated primates live on the seashore, and make the ebb and flow of the tides work to their advantage. As the waters retreat, they gather at the richest rockpools to harvest mussels and other shellfish.
Then they take their seafood dinner to flat rocks like anvils, and proceed to crack them open with a variety of stones. Oysters require pointed tools, which the macaques insert into the shells and twist. Crabs, on the other hand, can be split open with a heavy, blunt rock. ‘It is thought the macaques have recently discovered how to do this, and they’re passing the knowledge from one generation to the next,’ explains Andrew. ‘They’re learning new tricks all the time – I wouldn’t be surprised on my next visit to find them using power tools!’
Monkeys with electric drills? It might happen… but not Yeti!
‘We filmed a rival male swinging in on the attack’