Snow Monkeys in hot water

It was minus ten and the snow had just started to fall again but the face in front of me just radiated smug sleepy contentment ; quite understandable when the body to which the eyes belonged was immersed in a hot spring at a temperature of about 38 degrees Celsius. I stamped my feet - even snow boots tended to concede defeat after 7-8 hours standing around without much activity. The eyes didn’t even blink.


Jigokudani in the January of 2008 was carpeted in snow to a depth of a foot or more. It is situated in an area often referred to as the Japanese alps. The whole of this region provides the living space for Japanese Macaques (Macaca fuscata), the snow monkeys. Snow monkeys are the hardiest and most northerly living monkeys on earth. They will tolerate extreme cold - in fact they have to migrate up to the high ground in the summer to avoid the summer warmth. They are also extremely intelligent and very opportunistic hence the hooded eyes in front of me which were, I was to discover shortly, not so sleepy.

The region I had found myself in had a great deal of geothermal activity. Up and down the narrow valley patches of rock would be visible steaming gently in the snowy landscape, their coating of snow melted away by hot springs. In one or two places these hot springs had formed pools which the monkeys had discovered could provide a comfortable respite from bad weather. Some of these springs were natural, others had been modified. especially here at Jigokudani, to encourage this behaviour and provide an attraction for winter human visitors. At least thirty monkeys were in the pool ranging in age from adults to this year’s infants. Most of the adult monkeys in front of me were female. Entry to the hot springs was determined by status.

The smaller monkeys were doing what children do anywhere. They were moving around jostling each other, and playing. Here a tweaked ear and there a hair tug provoked outrage which was invariably met by an almost human display of innocent surprise by the perpetrator, followed by a quick scuttle to the protection of mum if murder was threatened.

Whenever you watch primates the distinctions between one individual and another quickly become apparent. Like human beings they watch each other constantly and the more obvious aspects of their body language are easily translated. Expressions which show respect, fear, disdain, aggression are not so far from our own and the way individuals react to each other shows their position in the hierarchy. It is made easier by the fact that these monkeys have quite individual faces so their behaviour can be read and even anticipated after a while. In the first day or two they could still take us by surprise.



I turned round to glance towards my equipment to see if everything was ok. Hiroo our guide and all round counsellor waved back. I felt a tug and turned back startled to find that Mrs ‘I don’t even know you are there’ behind me had slipped out of the pool, fingered my pocket and found a plastic bag. The plastic bag did not hold a sandwich it held a lens cloth. She dropped it in disgust and splashed me in the face as she jumped back in the pool. However, I was now wise to these bandits. They might put on an innocent air but they missed nothing and would take any opportunity to check bags, backpacks or even pockets.

As this criminal had just demonstrated the macaques at Jigokudai were habituated to humans, they were well fed and had time on their hands so there was always something happening. Sitting in hot springs was evidently one thing they enjoyed but the most active group were a bunch of sub-adults that habitually played up and down a runway beaten down in the snow along the side of the valley. They were extremely entertaining as they raced along along a path beaten through the snow, piled on top of each other in a writhing heap, tumbling down the steep slopes or hurling themselves from branch to branch in a mad pellmell.

Many tourists visit Jigokudani and it was difficult to film at times because of the constantly flickering flash units. None of the more experienced photographers used flash but many people never seemed to turn them off. Every flurry of monkey behaviour was accompanied by a lightning storm of strobing lights.



The nicest scene, of course, is to photograph the monkeys in falling snow. The heat from the springs melts snow flakes fast so photographing snow monkeys with snowcaps has to be filmed in falling snow unless you follow the example of one photographer who decided to help nature along and heaped a handful of snow onto a monkeys head when it wasn’t looking. I guess he might have got a picture of a very surprised monkey wearing a snow ball but it didn’t look like the real thing. Other photographers were tossing snow balls to the monkeys hoping they might pick them up and give them a shot of ‘snowballing snow monkeys...’

I found myself filming by other crews on a couple of days. The most surprising of these was a very pleasant Japanese cameraman who turned up with an Arriflex SR2. This camera was the standard natural history documentary camera for the greater part of my career but the last time I used one was while filming a scene in Cambridge in 2007 when a visiting Japanese student came up to me and told me that he never thought he would see someone actually using film any more. I had made his day. ‘ Museum ’, he chuckled pointing at my camera. Here I was in Japan using the latest Japanese Hi Def technology courtesy of the BBC and a Japanese cameraman was standing right beside me with an SR2.

We were staying in a Japanese family Hotel in the local village. The hotel also had a hot spring which human beings enjoy just as much as the primates although they seldom spend so long in one. The rooms were quite traditional but it doesn’t take long to get used to sleeping on a futon on the floor.

We were filming for a new BBC series with a shooting title of ‘Life’. Patrick Morris was the producer in this case for his programme on primates for the series. Life is a new BBC Landmark series planned for autumn 2009. As part of this shoot were were spending a little time at Jigokudani at the hot springs and then we would head up into the mountains to try and film these monkeys where they were a little less used to people and foraged naturally in the woodland.

Our first visit to the highlands involved another first. My first experience of snow shoes on snow. Strangely enough I had used snow shoes once before to move around on salt flats while working on a film about flamingoes but never used them on real snow. It takes a little getting used to.

We drove up as far as possible and then donned our packs, skis and snow shoes. The temperature was falling and the lowering clouds promised snow. In fact our guide was concerned that we shouldn’t stay too long if the snow started to fall or it would be difficult to get out so our time was precious. The snow was about four foot deep and I very quickly discovered that there was an art to walking in snow shoes - an art that I knew nothing about.

My one piece of advice to anyone wearing these creations of the devil for the first time is don’t fall over. If you do fall over just get it over with and die very quickly because you will never ever get up again. This is especially true if you are surrounded by people bursting with helpful advice. Any attempt to push myself up simply buried my arms in the snow; it was too deep for me to reach hard ground. The snow shoes embedded themselves tip downward making leg movements impossible and a heavy backpack made me feel as if a passing bear had decided to sit on my back.

Thankfully we found the monkeys not too far from the cars and started to film as they dug into the snow at the edge of a stream for bamboo leaves. At minus ten it was quite chilly but they spooned away the snow with their hands and plunged into the water without hesitation. They are incredibly tough and seemed to be able to survive the winter on minimal food. Nothing we saw them eat could have provided much nourishment.

Our pleasure in filming this scene was tempered by the first snow flakes. Trying to operate a large professional Hi Def camera in extreme conditions is not easy. Light snow is no problem at all. Heavy snow with a rising wind is very different. Trying to follow monkeys through a forest in snow shoes while trying to protect your camera from a blizzard is a major challenge. Snow would also set a time limit on our activities if we wanted to drive out of here. A few flakes didn’t make a storm and it might just fizzle out. But did it...

As the filming conditions became more and more extreme the monkey’s behaviour became more and more interesting. There is so little to eat up here in winter that the monkeys get a little nourishment from from stripping bark from the alpine deciduous trees. By now the snow was so heavy the animals would intermittently vanish from sight behind the thicker flurries. Filming upward was desperately difficult and invariably resulted in a lens cap of snow. Eddies of wind swirled the snow about so randomly that umbrellas were of little use.

It was at this point I started recognising the first problems with the camera. The zebra function was no longer working. In heavy snow and with the need to keep moving swiftly it was impossible to rig up a monitor. Exposure was now guesswork. In conditions like this the eye can be easily misled. If the zebra was malfunctioning other problems might also be kicking in which would also be be hard to detect in a black and white viewfinder in these conditions. I offered up a silent prayer and hoped the monkeys wouldn’t do anything too remarkable which would be a disaster to lose. Of course, the monkeys then did exactly that.

They made a beeline for a particular stream and systematically started looking for aquatic insects. This is a rarely seen piece of behaviour and to film it in heavy snow would be a wonderful demonstration of how these intelligent animals carved out a livelihood in seemingly impossible conditions. But we now had an unreliable camera and just to step up the pressure another notch it had now been snowing for a while every extra minute added to the possibility that we would be trapped here.

We went for it. We followed the monkeys to the stream and filmed a fascinating sequence. The monkeys were rolling the stones over, just like we might do to look for crabs on a beach, grabbing at aquatic insects as they fled to escape. The snow was now coming down so hard that anything behind the monkeys was white.

Eventually the monkeys moved on and given the need to extract the vehicles we called it a day. On the slog back to the car I had plenty of time to wonder whether the footage would be usable and I daresay Patrick was wondering the same. A rather unexpected reward for the day’s hard labour was that we did actually manage to get our cars out of there.

Some days later we returned to the area in the most glorious sunshine and did another days shoot with a new camera just in case the footage was damaged in any way. We had reviewed the previous footage and the image our monitor showed us that there was no over exposure but there could be a clipping problem. Hard to tell without more sophisticated equipment. A lot of background detail was lost in the snow flurries anyway but the foreground looked ok. The only real test would be when it was reviewed on good equipment in the UK. So we were very keen to get some more footage but this morning things were quite different because the sky was clear and a spectacular new scene revealed itself.

It was quite early in the day and as the sun first touched the small trees in the valley it revealed a breathtaking sight. Their branches were bejewelled with spikes of glittering hoar frost. As we looked into the sunlight spicules of ice floated in the air creating a magical ice mist. If one of Tolkien’s elves had walked through the scene none of us would have been in the least surprised. A hint of warmth and within minutes the scene was gone. For a short time that place was truly other-worldly.

When I look at the faces of these monkeys in my photographs I am instantly transported to that harsh but beautiful place and reflect on the range of individual personalities I saw amongst the macaques at the hot spring. They were some of the toughest characters I have ever met but despite their harsh lives snow monkeys are quite long lived - so I hope they continue to enjoy their hot baths for many winters to come.