Just for Kids
Check it out: The Kids of IPPL – 2011 Remix!
- Courtney Gibbon as a baby
Lar-White-Handed Gibbon
IPPL has 32 white-handed gibbons and 1 concolor/crested gibbon, both types of gibbons are endangered species. The white-handed gibbon is native to the rain forests of Thailand, northern Sumatra and peninsular Malaysia; they have fur ranging from a light brown/beige to black. The concolor gibbon is native to Vietnam, Laos, eastern Cambodia and southeastern China. They are different colors according to where they live, males are black in China, they have beige cheeks in Vietnam, but the females are buff colored and change fur color and crest color slightly during the season here in South Carolina. Mothers are pregnant for seven months before giving birth to a single baby gibbon. They can have babies about every two years. Their parents, who stay with each other all their life, also sing together (although different songs), defend their territory, groom each other, and raise their baby together. The male’s song is more of a hoot while the female white-handed gibbon sings a lilting long call that sounds very loud and screechy at the end. The concolor/crested gibbon female sings like the white-handed gibbon females but has a chirp or bark at the end. They play and move about by brachiating and in some cases by walking in a “toddling” upright position looking a bit like a small human primate just learning to walk. They love to swing and play a tag like game, and in the wild they forage for food most of the time. They eat mostly fruit, nuts, leaves and sometimes the unwary insect or unprotected bird egg. Their arms are much longer than ours and this allows them to hang by one arm (they are very, very strong), and shake branches to scare off intruders. They don’t build sleeping nests like gorillas and chimpanzees, they sleep sitting upright on leathery pads on their bottoms. They live about 20 years in the wild but in protected sanctuaries like IPPL, they can live well beyond 50 years old.
Go to the Home Page, click on Meet our Gibbons and see if you can find the concolor/crested gibbon.
GIBBON WORDS
Brachiating: Swinging through the trees hand over hand, a lot like when you play on the “monkey bars”.
Songs: The boy’s song is a hoot like sound while the girls join in with a long call that goes up and down in sound and volume. The girl song ends in a sort of screechy end.
Gibbon: One of the smaller (sometimes called a lesser) apes. It is a primate (not a monkey) and it doesn’t have a tail. It’s in the same family as gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans.
Endangered: This means that they may not be around in the wild much longer.
Habitat: They live in the tree tops, and don’t go to the ground that often. They even sleep in the trees, sitting on their bottoms that have tough pads for sitting on.
Pets: Primates do not make good pets. When they are grown up they have large teeth called canines (like your dog’s big teeth), they are very strong and can reach out very far, they like being with other apes, not people, and they need to eat very expensive fruits and vegetables. They can bite, scratch, pull hair, noses and ears and steal hats. They are cute as babies and sometimes people try to raise them. But, when they grow up, they want to be a gibbon not a person and they fight back!
Home: Gibbons are fromThailand, northern Sumatra and the peninsula of Malaysia.
Grooming: They go through each other’s hair to remove bugs, ticks and other icky stuff. This helps them be friends. Sometimes in the sanctuary, they will let one of the animal care givers (the people who take care and feed them) give them a grooming and sometimes they will groom back.
Primate: People, gorillas, gibbons, siamangs, monkeys, lemurs, bush babies, chimpanzees and orangutans.
Monkey: A primate with a tail (sometimes the tail is very small).
Bushmeat: This is when the people living in the same area as the primate kill the primate and sell the meat. Often they kill a mother and father and try to make a pet out of the baby. This never works, often the baby doesn’t live.
Habitat Destruction: This happens when people come in and cut down all the plants in the rain forest or any forest. The animals that live there must find a new place to live and sometime there isn’t a new place. A lot of forest is being cleared for growing palm oil. Check the back of your snacks and regular food to be sure palm was not used to make your snack. You will be helping to save a primate if you don’t buy that snack anymore.
About-Baboons, Mandrills and Drills
