Scientific name: Hylobates lar
Conservation status:
Life expectancy: 25-30 years
Gestation period: 180 days
Subspecies:
- Malaysian lar gibbon
- Carpenter’s lar gibbon
- Central lar gibbon
- Sumatran lar gibbon
- Yunnan lar gibbon
Lifestyle and Location:
These gibbons are frugivorous lesser apes with fruit being 50% of their diet like figs and berries, 29% of their diet is leaves, 13% is insects and about 9% is flowers. They live in Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar and Thailand. Around 1/4 of their day is resting, 1/3 is feeding and only 1/10 of their day is socialising.
Appearance:
Varies from black and dark-brown to light-brown. They are all sandy kind of colours with white coloured hands and a white ring around their black fur-less faces (males and females both have all colour variations). They are around 45-50 cm and the males are slightly heavier with an average of 5.7 kg than the females who are an average of 5.3 kg.
Joss‘s Facts
- The majority of gibbons fracture or break bones at one point in their lives due to misjudging jumps and branches snapping.
- Can jump up to 40 feet!
- They can catch birds mid flight and also change direction mid jump.
- They are the fastest living primate that can wing through the canopy at a top speed of 35 mph.
- All gibbons have a ‘wrist and ball socket joint’ meaning they can rotate the full way round. This is to help them swing through the trees faster than any other.