Geladas on the Escarpment

Geladas on the Escarpment is an original illustration set in Simien Mountains, Ethiopia. It lies in the tropics, where the climate is subtropical highland — dry winters, mild summers.

A troop grazes on short alpine grass at the rim of a vast escarpment. The foreground male shows a shaggy brown cape and a small red hourglass patch on his chest. Behind them the ground drops away into deep eroded valleys and flat-topped pinnacles.

Why is this the only monkey that lives on grass?

This is the only primate that lives almost entirely on grass, and the chest patch does the social signalling that other monkeys do with a rump — an adaptation to sitting upright while feeding all day. Short alpine turf on a plateau this high, cut by an escarpment into flat-topped remnants, is a huge basalt pile eroding back from its edge.

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