GIBBON

This article appears in Volume V11, Page 936 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: GEO-GNU

GIBBON , the collective

title

TITLE (0. Fr. title, mod. titre, from Lat. titulus)

of the smaller man-like apes of the Indo-Malay countries, all of which may be included in the single genus Hylobates. Till recently these apes have been generally included in the same family (Simiidae) with the

chimpanzee

CHIMPANZEE (Chimpanzi)

, gorilla and orang-utan, but they are now regarded by several naturalists as representing a family by themselvesthe Hylobatidae. One of the distinctive features of this family is the presence of small naked callosities on the buttocks; another being a difference in the number of vertebrae and ribs as compared with those of the Simiidae. The extreme length of the limbs and the

absence

ABSENCE (Lat. absentia)

of a tail are other features of these small apes, which are thoroughly arboreal in their habits, and make the woods resound with their unearthly cries at night. In agility they are unsurpassed; in fact they are stated to be so

swift

SWIFT
SWIFT, JONATHAN (1667—1745)

in their movements as to be able to capture birds on the wing with their paws.. When they descend to the groundwhich they must often do in order to obtain waterthey frequently walk in the upright posture, either with the hands crossed behind the neck, or with the knuckles resting on the ground. Their usual food consists of leaves and fruits. Gibbons may be divided into two groups, the one represented by the siamang, Hylobates (Symphalangus) syndactylus, of Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula, and the other by a number of closely allied species. The

union

of the index and middle fingers by means of a web extending as far as the terminal joints is the distinctive feature of the siamang, which is the largest of the group, and black in colour with a

white

frontal band. Black or puce-grey is the prevailing colour in the second group, of which the hulock (H. hulock) of
Assam, H. lar of Arakan and

Pegu

PEGU

, H. entelloides of Tenasserim (fig.), and H. agilis of Sumatra are well-known representatives. A female of the Hainan gibbon (H. hainanus) in confinement changed from uniform sooty-black (without the

white

frontal
The Tenasserim Gibbon (Hylobates entelloides).
band of the black phase of the hulock) to puce-grey; but it is probable that this was only an individual, or at most a sexual, peculiarity. The range of the genus extends from the southern bank of the Bramaputra in Assam to southern

China

CHINA

, the Malay Peninsula, Java, Sumatra and Borneo. (R. L.*)

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