Scotch College

Chadden Hunter

Old Boy Chadden Hunter (’90) recently featured on 60 Minutes about his extraordinary research on the gelada baboons in Ethiopia.

Words: Chris Saxby Photography: Chadden Hunter

Since leaving Scotch (where his childhood dream to be a field biologist began), Chadden Hunter (’90) moved to Queensland, completed a BSc on Marine Biology and an Honours degree on rainforest ecology at the University of Queensland. He then went to the University of Liverpool, UK, to complete his PhD on the behavioural ecology of gelada baboons. This meant living in a mud hut for three years during a war in the remote mountains of Ethiopia. The BBC filmed a documentary about his project, and after working as Sir David Attenborough’s scientific consultant, Chadden followed his hero into documentary film-making. Chadden now lives in New York where he produces and presents wildlife documentaries for the BBC and National Geographic. Chadden spoke at the 2006 OSCA New York Branch Dinner.

The following is an extract from an interview conducted by Chris Saxby from the University of Queensland.

For seven years Dr Chadden Hunter’s best friend was a baboon named Chewbacca.

‘It’s not that I don’t like humans. There just weren’t many at 14,000 feet in the Simien Mountains of Ethiopia,’ the UQ science graduate said. Dr Hunter or ‘Monkey Man’, as the local farmers knew him, is a wildlife biologist and documentary maker. He has worked on a range of subjects for the BBC, the Discovery Channel and National Geographic in areas including the Sahara Desert and the Nile River.

His most recent series, Cliffhangers, was aired in Australia on the National Geographic Channel earlier this year. It told the story of Dr Hunter’s life with a rare and engaging group of primates, the gelada baboons. Following Dr Hunter into the spectacular volcanic landscape of the remote Ethiopian highlands, it delved into the world of the gelada where fights, group takeovers and love affairs are on a par with any Australian television soap opera.

Dr Hunter would spend days wandering the alpine plateau with Chewbacca and the hundreds of grazing gelada. ‘The loneliness was intense and I couldn’t work out whether talking to myself was more insane than talking to the baboons,’ he said. ‘But as I got to know the gelada, I realised that talking to them calmed them down. They came to know my voice and realised I wasn’t a threat. I began to learn their individual characters.’

The gelada is the last species in a once great dynasty of grass-grazing primates. The 200,000 that remain in the cool, mountainous regions of north-central Ethiopia were until recently reviled as vermin. Dr Hunter’s work helped change that perception.

‘I was able to show a few minutes of badly shot monkey footage on Ethiopian television and explained, in broken Amharic, that gelada were unique to Ethiopia and something to be proud of,’ he said. ‘The response was extraordinary. Ethiopians, from peasants to government ministers, stopped me on the street and told me they never knew gelada weren’t rat-like pests found all over the world.’

Dr Hunter did more for the gelada in five minutes of film than in five years of clipboard and field notes. His celluloid success led to a visit by renowned wildlife documentary maker Sir David Attenborough. ‘I remember when I was 10 watching Sir David on TV. He was as timeless and as trustworthy as Santa and we grew up enthralled by his enthusiastic whispers about the polar bear behind him or the Indian rhino just out of view in the bushes,’ he said.

‘At age 28, I found myself on a mountain top in Ethiopia with Sir David standing beside me listening intently as I advised him on what to say and not say about a certain monkey species.

‘It felt like only days earlier that I was a young undergraduate sitting in my biology lectures at UQ. A few degrees later and some time in the wilderness and here I was, a scientific consultant for Sir David’s Life of Mammals series. I had to pinch myself.’ Dr Hunter first became interested in the gelada while studying for his PhD at the University of Liverpool in the UK.

He completed his honours thesis on Australia’s bowerbirds in 1995 under the supervision of his academic mentor, UQ’s Dr Peter Dwyer, but wanted a bigger challenge. He found it in Ethiopia. ‘Ethiopia is always a revelation to a first-time visitor,’ he said.

‘I expected deserts and famine and Bob Geldof. Instead, I found mountains and ancient history and waterfalls. After one look at the spectacular Simien Mountains and a group of 300 screeching, cavorting gelada baboons, I knew I’d found my project.’

But logistics and safety proved a nightmare. During Dr Hunter’s time in Ethiopia, the country declared war against its neighbour Eritrea. Civil unrest spread throughout the mountains. As he sat with the gelada, he would hear gunfire in the distance. One morning the bandits reached his camp. ‘A shootout erupted with the National Park guards. Huddled in my hut while the AK-47s flashed outside, I realised that my research on the monkeys could be coming to an end,’ he said. But the shooting passed. And despite the ever-present danger Dr Hunter continued – he had been bitten by the documentary making bug. ‘It saddens me when I hear undergraduates say they love zoology or marine biology, or whatever it is, but that they didn’t pursue it because they didn’t think there were any jobs in the field,’ he said.

‘I might have been lucky, but through documentary films I get to share the wonders of the natural world with millions of people.’

The documentary bug was not the only thing to bite Dr Hunter while he lived with Chewbacca and his friends. Even the fleas that ran a riot in his hut did not compare with the parasite shistosomiasis that buried into his leg causing him to fit. ‘Male and female worms pair up and float around in your blood usually looking to settle down in the liver. But my couple got lost and set up their white picket fence in my brain, where they laid their eggs,’ he said. ‘Whenever their eggs hatched they blocked blood to my brain and caused full epileptic seizures.’

For months Dr Hunter had no idea about the fits and locals said nothing, thinking that he was exorcising monkey demons. The BBC sent him back to the UK where he had brain scans and undertook a course of antibiotics to kill the worms. But he returned to Ethiopia a few months later. At night as the mountain wolves howled, Dr Hunter would go back to his mud hut, perched on a 3000-metre razorback ridge, to escape the freezing temperatures.

He lived on a diet of barley, rice, and the occasional goat. Many people thought he was crazy – but he had a dream. ‘Just like Sir David inspired me, hopefully I can inspire a few biology students to stick with it,’ he said.

And for Dr Hunter, his world is one where wildlife and film-making overlap.

Through his work the wider public have gained an appreciation for the diversity of the Earth’s many amazing creatures. ‘For the gelada it is a stay of execution, for me the power of the documentary film is an epiphany,’ he said. GS