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Common, lar, or white-handed gibbon - HYLOBATES LAR

Endangered

Class: Animals with Milk Glands (Mammalia)
Subclass: True Mammals (Eutheria)
Order: First Order Mammals (Primatea)
Family: Hylobatidae.

The word "Gibbon": "Gibbon" is a French word, possibly taken from a word of one of the languages in India. "Lar" is Latin for a "household god." How this relates is unclear.

Location: Most of southeast Asia.

Habitat: Arboreal. Equatorial forest, from sea level up to an altitude of 8000 feet.

Description: Tail-less and long-limbed like all other gibbons, this small ape has long tapered hands. The coat is long and dense, varying in color from black to pale brown and yellowish. The face is black, surrounded by white hair. The tops of the hands and feet are white. Length of head and body is about two feet, and it weighs about 18 pounds.

Behavior: This gibbon lives in family groups, consisting of one male, one female, and several young. The group has its own territory, varying in area from 30 to 100 acres. The gibbons are the most agile and fastest-moving of all the primates. They are greatly helped by their long, strong arms, and virtually fly from branch to branch among the tallest treetops in the forest. Swinging from branch to branch is called "brachiation." Early in the morning they begin loud vocal battles and chases at territorial boundaries, but they take a break during the hottest hours of the day, and then wind up the day in the evening hours among the branches of their favorite tree where they spend the night. They are solely vegetarian, often hanging by one long arm while reaching with the other for food,

Reproduction: Gestation lasts about 200 days, and the female usually delivers a single young, which she nurses for several months.