![]() ![]() Their distinctive mode of travel-walking on the soles of their feet and the knuckles of their hands-have earned them the title of knuckle-walkers. When Orangutans are fully grown, their arms will be up to seven feet long! Chimpanzee FactsĬhimpanzees are very familiar to us humans, perhaps because so much of their behaviour reminds us of ourselves. While other apes go from tree to tree finding food, orangutans sit for hours in a forest canopy until it sees food from where it is sitting. While other apes are always found in groups called troops, the orangutans tend to be solitary. Orangutans are the loners of all the Great Apes. Habitat loss is the main threat to lemurs today, as people clear their native forests for farm land They are social animals with long limbs, flexible toes and fingers, and long noses. There are 50 species of lemurs and 17 are on the endangered species list. Lemurs are a special group of primates found only on Madagascar and the Comoro Islands. In the wild, Gibbons can live up to 25-30 years and 40 years in captivity. Gibbons are one of the few apes where the female is the dominant animal in the group. Gibbons sleep sitting up with their arms wrapped around their knees and their head tucked into their lap. They are often reffered to as songbirds, and they can project their voices up to distances of two miles. They are cosidered to be the worlds greatest acrobats and they can swing from tree to tree at up to 35 mph. Later on, gibbons became a popular object for Chinese painters, especially during the Song dynasty and early Yuan dynasty, when Yì Yuánjí and Mùqī Fǎcháng excelled in painting these apes.įrom Chinese cultural influence, the Zen motif of the “gibbon grasping at the reflection of the moon in the water” became popular in Japanese art, as well, though gibbons have never occurred naturally in Japan.Gibbons are small agile and slender. Gibbon figurines as old as from the fourth to third centuries BC have been found in China. The English word ‘gibbon‘ is said to be a reborrowing from French, and folk etymology originally from an Orang Asli word. ![]() Whole genome molecular dating analyses indicate that the gibbon lineage diverged from that of great apes around 16.8 million years ago. Most species are either endangered or critically endangered, primarily due to degradation or loss of their forest habitats. Single offspring are born after about seven months’ gestation and take seven years to mature. The siamang has a unique vocal sac that inflates as they sing and produces remarkably loud and deep sounds. The siamang is one of the loudest land mammal on Earth. The siamang sings a song that can be heard up to 3.2 kilometers (2 miles) through the dense forest canopy. The adult male and female harmonize, but sing a different song. The adult male and female sing a duet and their offspring will join in. Unlike most of the great apes, gibbons frequently form long-term pair bonds.Ī gibbon marks its territory by vocalizing (singing) when traveling within the borders of where they live. Like all primates, gibbons are social animals. They feed mainly on fruit, with varying proportions of leaves and with some insects and bird eggs as well as young birds. They are the fastest and most agile of all tree-dwelling, nonflying mammals. They can also make leaps up to 8 m (26 ft), and walk bipedally with their arms raised for balance. Their primary mode of locomotion, brachiation, involves swinging from branch to branch for distances up to 15 m (50 ft), at speeds as high as 55 km/h (34 mph). They are diurnal meaning that they are active during the day. The female siamang weighs 10.5 kg (23 pounds) and the male 12 kg (26 pounds).ĭepending on the species and sex, gibbons’ fur coloration varies from dark to light brown shades, and any shade between black and white, though a completely “white” gibbon is rare. The smaller species (both sexes) weigh about 5.5 kg (12 pounds) – medium species, such the concolor gibbon, weigh about 7.5 kg (17 pounds). Most gibbon species are about 40–65 cm (16–26 inches) in head and body length, but the siamang ( Symphalangus syndactylus) can grow up to 90 cm (35 inches). The oldest known living gibbon was a 60 year-old male Müller’s gibbon named Nippy, who was housed in the Wellington Zoo in New Zealand.Īlso called the lesser apes or small apes, gibbons differ from great apes ( chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans and humans) in being smaller, exhibiting low sexual dimorphism, and not making nests. The lifespan of a gibbon is about 25 years in the wild and about 40 to 50 years in captivity. There are approximately 20 species of gibbons. ![]()
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