unknown author

Guest Writer

Awww! So cute! I'd never heard of a pileated gibbon until I opened up a National Geographic. I'll tell you a bit about it; unless you're some sort of expert or whatever, you probably don't have a clue what I'm talking about.

The pileated gibbon is a monkey; it spends most of its life in the trees. It's an incredible acrobat! Swinging hand-over-hand with arms twice the length of its body, it's quite a hustler, and can easily disappear into the forest. It also runs bipedally across the tops of branches and can leap up to ten meters from one tree to another!

No matter how exciting this may sound, daily activity is generally pretty quiet, as the family groups together to eat, play, and groom. If you were ever to visit the forest at dawn, you would hear the haunting duet of a mated pair, in which the female sings a happy little trill that can be heard over 2 kilometers away! But humans just can't appreciate this phenomenal animal. That is why pileated gibbons are now endangered.

Pileated Gibbon (Hylobates pileatus)
Size: Length of head and body, 44-63 cm, no tail.
Weight: 5-6 kg.
Habitat: Tropical evergreen forests in southeast Thailand and Cambodia west of Mekong river.
Surviving number: Estimated at 10, 000-30, 000 in Thailand, unknown in Cambodia.