Zhe Shuzheng and her son live nearby. Zhe has been caring for her local alligators for over 20 years, so she had a fair idea when the eggs were likely to hatch. Back home, she's built a pond, surrounded by netting to keep out predators where her charges will spend the next 6 months until they are big enough to fend for themselves.

 

 

For the past 20 years, small-scale conservation projects like this are all that have kept China's 150 wild alligators from extinction.

 

Just south of the alligator country, dawn breaks over a very different landscape -- the 1800-meter-high granite peaks of the Huangshan or Yellow Mountain. To the Chinese, Huangshan's pines epitomize the strength and resilience of nature. Some of these trees are thought to be over a thousand years old.

 

Below the granite peaks, steep forested valleys shelter surprising inhabitants, Huangshan macaques, rare descendants of  the Tibetan macaques of western China are unique to these mountain valleys where they enjoy strict official protection.

 

After a morning spent in the treetops, the troop is heading for the shade of the valley, a chance for the grownups to escape the heat and maybe pick up a lunch snack from the stream.

 

As in most monkey societies, social contact involves a lot of grooming. Grooming is all very well for grownups. But young macaques have energy to burn.

 

 

Like so much monkey business, what starts off as a bit of playful rough-and-tumble soon begins to get out of hand.

 

The alpha male has seen it all before. He's not in the least bothered. But someone or something is watching, with a less-than-friendly interest.