The morning song of gibbons, with its accelerating, bubbling crescendo, is arguably one of the most enthralling sounds of the tropical forests of Southeast Asia. For many, it’s a sound that signifies the vitality of the forest ecosystem — if there are gibbons, there must be fruit, and therefore likely a plethora of other fruit-eating species. But for primatologists, the gibbon’s song contains telltale clues that help them identify which of the world’s 20 species is about. This acoustic approach was recently adopted by a team of specialists in Myanmar, resulting in the discovery of previously unknown populations of Skywalker hoolock gibbons (Hoolock tianxing), an incredibly rare species of the small apes only described by scientists as recently as 2017. The finding, documented in a new study published in the International Journal of Primatology, is first time Skywalker hoolock gibbons have been confirmed in Myanmar, and expands the endangered species’ range beyond the borders of China where a tiny population of fewer than 200 individuals represents the only other known record of the species on Earth. “This is a very important discovery,” said study co-author Pengfei Fan, a researcher at Sun Yat-Sen University in China. “Considering the very small population in China … Myanmar plays the most important role in conserving this species. I hope resources will be invested to protect [it] and its habitat.” Fan was among the team of researchers who first described Skywalker hoolock gibbons as distinct from their close relatives, the eastern hoolock gibbon (H. leuconedys),…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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